1962 US comedy mystery film by Richard Quine
The Notorious Landlady is a 1962 American comedy mystery film starring Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, and Fred Astaire.[4][5] The film was directed by Richard Quine, with a script by Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart.
Plot
When American diplomat William Gridley arrives in London, he rents the second floor of Carly Hardwicke's townhouse and promptly falls in love with his sexy new landlady. But Gridley isn't aware of what many people suspect—that Carly murdered her husband Miles. However, since there is no body, Carly cannot be prosecuted. A Scotland Yard inspector, Oliphant, visits the embassy and convinces Gridley to spy on her. However, that evening, a fire erupts as he and Carly grill steaks in her back yard. The fire makes Fleet Street headlines, and a scandal results. But since Carly is an American, she goes to the embassy to plead Gridley's case. She tells Gridley's boss, Franklyn Ambruster, that Gridley is a good man and not to transfer him out of the country. Ambruster is touched. He takes Carly to lunch, becomes smitten with her, and proclaims her innocence in the murder affair.
One evening, Miles turns up in the townhouse, alive and well. His uneasy reunion with Carly degenerates into violence, and when Miles approaches her with a gun, there is a struggle, and the gun goes off, killing him. The fatal report is heard by Gridley while on the phone with Inspector Oliphant. But at the coroner's inquest, Carly is cleared when a crippled neighbor's private nurse testifies that Miles assaulted Carly. After the inquest, the nurse attempts to blackmail Carly over a pawn ticket to a candelabra that Miles had stuffed with stolen jewels. Carly and Gridley try to retrieve the candelabra but find the pawnbroker murdered. Gridley and Carly then locate the nurse in a Penzance retirement community. They catch her in the act of pushing her elderly patient off a cliff to silence her. (It was, in fact, the elderly patient who witnessed Miles and Carly fighting, not the nurse.) Gridley and Carly save the elderly lady as Ambruster and Oliphant arrive by helicopter. The crooked nurse is arrested and led away in cuffs.
Lemmon and Novak had appeared together on screen twice previously, in Phffft! (1954) and in Bell, Book and Candle (1958). In both later films, Novak portrayed a landlady.
The song "A Foggy Day (in London Town)" by George and Ira Gershwin serves as the main theme for the movie and was introduced in the 1937 Fred Astaire film A Damsel in Distress.
Filming started 15 May 1961. The opening London scenes set in so-called 'Gray Square' were filmed on The Columbia Ranch (the original back-lot of Columbia Pictures Studios at Burbank, California), now the Warner Bros. Ranch. For the closing scenes set on the cliffs of Cornwall, the location used was Point Lobos Reserve State Park, Carmel.
The film was announced in December 1957 with Quine to direct, and Lemmon to star opposite Victoria Shaw.[6]
Larry Gelbart was working at Columbia adapting the musical Fair Game into a film for William Holden that was going to be directed by Richard Quine. Quine enjoyed Gelbart's work on Fair Game and invited him to work on the script for The Notorious Landlady which had originally been done by Blake Edwards. Gelbart wrote a draft and says S. N. Behrman was brought on to rewrite him.[7]
Novak was paid $600,000. It was her last performance for Columbia after eight years with the studio.[8]
