Any Wednesday (1966)
Premiered at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan on October 13, 1966
Any Wednesday is a model of a moment when major achievements on Broadway were being mined by Hollywood studios in an attempt to conjure the same level of praise. A silly little film starring a young and fresh-faced Jane Fonda as a woman who wants to be in love but also just really wants to stay in her New York City apartment.
Any Wednesday
Director: Robert Ellis Miller; Producer/Writer: Julius J. Epstein; Based on the Stage Play by: Muriel Resnik; Cinematographer: Harold Lipstein; Editor: Stefan Arnsten; Music: George Duning; Costume Design: Dorothy Jeakins
Cast: Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, Dean Jones, Rosemary Murphy
Released by Warner Brothers at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan on October 13, 1966.
Runtime: 109 minutes
Any Wednesday is based on the stage play that opened February of 1964. The rights were acquired by Warner Brothers four months after the opening for a reported $750,000 at the time. The play ran from February 14, 1964 to June 26, 1966 for 983 shows. It opened at the Music Box Theater on W 45th Street and 8th Avenue.
The play was written by Muriel Resnik, and according to her New York Times obituary “the instant success of the play… took even the author by surprise… ‘I was just praying it wouldn’t be a complete bomb.’" Any Wednesday was her first and only play. She wrote a handful of novels and a memoire about the making of Any Wednesday called Son of Any Wednesday: The Making of a Broadway Hit. The play was originally conceived as a short play that was used at the Actors Studio. After many noes, the full length version of the play was only finally financed by funds from five different producers. The play then went through three directors and one leading man before opening. Mike Nicholas was also in the running for director, but the producers thought he lacked experience. He instead went on to direct his first play, Barefoot in the Park, to rave reviews, followed by LUV (two romance plays set in New York that turned into romance films set in New York).
The play starred actress Sandy Dennis, who would go on to act in a handful of New York City romances. Her start was on Broadway in the play A Thousand Clowns for which she won a Tony for the role of Sandra Markowitz. Her performance in Any Wednesday won her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Among the many positive reviews, Dennis’s performance seems to stand out as the main draw of the play. The play also starred Don Porter, Rosemary Murphy (who reprised her role in the film adaptation), and Gene Hackman.
In June of 1965, Lewis Funke of the New York Times reported that Dennis would be “committed to two films, ‘Any Wednesday’ and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ and will not be available until the spring or fall of next year.” The film was also supposed to star Frank Sinatra who backed out of the role in October of 1965 because “after reading the draft of the screen play, Sinatra concluded that the basic dramatic value of the play would suffer by efforts to expand the role of John Cleves to justify Sinatra’s starring the vehicle.” The Sinatra/Dennis version was set to be directed by Jack Smight. The shift from Dennis to Jane Fonda wasn’t explicitly explained anywhere I could find, but Fonda was in the middle of a handful of similarly twee characters. The only mention of Any Wednesday in the autobiography was a reference to her trepidation in playing these “silly young women.” In the years leading up to Any Wednesday, she had starred in Tall Story (1960) and Sunday in New York (1963).
Fonda stared alongside Jason Robards as her part-time lover and Dean Jones as the one who fusses up an already topsy arrangement. Robards was a well-awarded actor on the stage and in films. He is best known for film roles in A Thousand Clowns (1965), All the Presidents Men (1979) (winning him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), and Magnolia (1999). He also acted opposite Fonda a second time in 1977 in Julia, the Oscar winning drama about playwright Lillian Hellman’s experience during WWII. He received his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for that role. Jones was best known to me specifically for his iconic role in Disney’s That Darn Cat (1965), but for everyone else, you may recognize him from The Love Bug (1969) and Beethoven (1992), among other family-friendly films like The Ugly Dachshund (1966).
This was director Robert Ellis Miller’s first feature film after directing television for over a decade. He would follow this film with another New York City romance Sweet November (1968). Writer and producer of the film Julius J. Epstein is best known for co-writing Casablanca (1942). He had a long career as a writer beginning in the mid-1930s, while his producer credits are few and far between, mostly producing films he had a role in writing as well. He wrote Tall Story (1960) also starring Jane Fonda and the Rock Hudson/Doris Day vehicle Send Me No Flowers (1964), among many other romances.
Warner Brothers was coming off the great success of My Fair Lady in 1964 when the acquisition of Any Wednesday was announced. This announcement also included plans to produce other highly anticipated films Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Planet of the Apes, The Great Race and Sex and the Single Girl.
The production shot exteriors in New York City for one week. The New York Time’s Vincent Canby reported on the production of Any Wednesday: “The ivy in the window boxes at 165 East 64th Street yesterday was a brilliant, unnatural emerald green, the work of Hollywood’s technicians rather than of God’s little helpers.”
Canby continued the article on the state of film productions in New York City:
While New York film people, particularly union representatives, are happy about the spurt in local activity, they regard these six features as “about par for the season” and not indicative of a new trend.
Almost all feature-film work here is confined to the May-September period, when the weather is good. Last year 13 features were shot here, in whole or in part, and nine in 1964.
Yesterday one local film-union official pointed out two developments since last year that could serve importantly to stimulate future activity.
One was the recent agreement of members of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees to modify their requirement that the work day for craftsmen must start at 8:30 A.M. Visiting Hollywood producers have long sought such a modification to bring New York work schedules and budgets in line with Hollywood’s.
The other development was the formation of a joint union-management committee to hear grievances of producers working in New York. The committee was formed last year after Delbert Mann, here from Hollywood to direct scenes for “Mr. Buddwing,” charged local unions with obstructing his work.
Since Mr. Mann made his grievances public, the unions have apparently gone out of their way to be cooperative. Yesterday on East 64th Street, Julius J. Epstein, film producer of “Any Wednesday,” reported that his only grievance was with the weather…
There were two films that shot in New York City around the same time in the spring of 1966: Any Wednesday and MGM’s Penelope starring Natalie Wood as the wife of a bank owner who robs one of her husband’s banks.
Publicity for the film utilized Ellen’s (Fonda) romantic weakness. She goes weak in the knees when her lover surprises her with a room full of balloons. In a publicity move that would probably not fly today:
Because balloons figure importantly in the story of “Any Wednesday,” 50,000 were distributed throughout New York to help publicize the world premiere engagement of the Warner Bros. motion picture comedy at Radio City Music Hall.
“Happiness is a room full of balloons,” says Jane Fonda in the Technicolor film version of Muriel Resnik’s Broadway stage hit—so Warner Bros, will be trying to fill the city with happiness.
The film was met with far less positive reviews than its source material.
The New York Times review by Richard F. Shepard reads:
To fill out what were dull interludes in the theater, [Epstein] has taken the comedy out of its one set and splashed it in color, exhibited the fashionable East Side, thrown in a New York power blackout and given the whole affair an introduction to show how a nice kid could get into such a situation.
It all doesn’t help much. By the time everything is straightened out and love has paid its way, there is a feeling that it might have been better if it had been shorter.
To take “Any Wednesday” on its own terms, it is a pleasant-enough, somewhat overdrawn film that will dispose of a few hours painlessly. And it really doesn’t matter if, a few days later, you won’t be able to to distinguish it from those East Side stories with Doris Day and Rock Hudson.
And the review from Motion Picture Exhibitor reads:
This comedy about the misadventures of a wealthy married Romeo was quite a hit on stage, and the filmed result emerges as a funny entry that should please most viewers looking for something light in the way of entertainment. While it is a bit on the talky side, it’s amusing, colorful, and aided by expert acting, smart direction, and efficient production. Adults will best appreciate some of the extramarital situations. The use of color dresses the release nicely.
Despite the uninspired reviews, the film did well at the box office. Any Wednesday reportedly “did $117,000 from Thursday through Sunday, with the opening week sure to hit $180,000.” Steadily continuing the four week run with around $150,000 a week.
The film is available to rent on most streaming platforms.
More romance to come…
xx Paris