by David C. Terr

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Title: Good Neighbor Sam

Director: David Swift

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Romy Schneider, Dorothy Provine

Release Date: July 22, 1964 (USA)

Running Time: 130 min

Genre: Comedy

Commentary
Good Neighbor Sam is a hilarious comedy starring Jack Lemmon as a good, wholesome family man who gets caught in a very difficult and embarassing situation but stands to collect a fortune if he can get through it.

Plot Summary
Sam Bissell (Lemmon) is a rather ordinary family man who works in advertising. His wife's best friend Janet Lagerlof (Schneider), who is getting a divorce from her husband, is moving next door. Meanwhile, a client of his company, Simon Nurdlinger, is very impressed with Sam, considering him to be exactly the type of wholesome family man he's looking for in his advertising campaign.

Things get complicated when Janet inherits 15 million dollars from her recently deceased uncle under the provision that she stays married to her husband. Janet finds that in order to collect the inheritance, in particular to fool her snoopy cousins, she must pretend that Sam is her husband. Sam, Janet, and Sam's wife Min (Provine) end up putting on a big act, which involves having Sam and Janet appear like they're married during the daytime and Sam sneaking back into his house at night. Things become more complicated when Sam's client sees him kissing Janet after going to work in continuation of their act. Now Sam finds he must also fool his client into thinking he's married to Janet! Eventually, after a lot of fuss, everything works out and Sam and Min end up with a million dollars of Janet's inheritance.

Social Relevance
Good Neighbor Sam is a very dated movie in many ways. Sam's life depicts mainstream mid-1960s American values. The topsy-turvy nature of his predicament is rather symbolic of the times, in which mainstream values were being challenged. The movie pokes fun at big business (advertising in particular) as well as traditional suburban life.

The Hertz Commercial
One of the funniest gags in the movie involves the famous '60s Hertz commercial, "Let Hertz put you in the driver's seat!", in which a man is made to appear as if he slowly lands into the driver's seat of a moving convertible from above. The commercial filmmakers try unsuccessfully three times to film the commercial. The first time, the driver lands on the trunk, which pops open. The second time he lands on the windshield and the convertible top opens up. The third time, following a perfect execution, he mistakenly delivers the line, "Man, that's real coffee!"