Cinema Revisited: The Goodbye Girl (1977)
Directed by Herbert Ross. Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason, Quinn Cummings, Paul Benedict, Barbara Rhoades, Theresa Merritt. Released November 30, 1977. Running time: 110 minutes.
It is hard to fathom that this Neil Simon comedy had originally cast dour looking Robert DeNiro in the role of struggling Chicago actor Elliot Garfield, whose big break in a New York off-Broadway play is ruined by an oddball director. This is coupled with a domestic conflict when he discovers the man who sub-let an apartment to him left behind a discarded girlfriend and her daughter. But, DeNiro was not only hired, he started filming with Mike Nichols directing, but things quickly fizzled. The project was resurrected and perfectly cast with Richard Dreyfuss turning in an Oscar-winning performance as Elliot. Marsha Mason, originally cast opposite DeNiro, remained with the film when Dreyfuss signed on, and maintains her space beautifully playing opposite him. Ten-year-old Quinn Cummings makes a remarkable movie debut.
"The Goodbye Girl" was originally called "Bogart Slept Here," and was to be based on what happened to Dustin Hoffman upon arriving in New York to embark on an acting career. Neil Simon stated: "The basic idea of the story was that Marsha, an ex-dancer, was married to a very promising but struggling off-Broadway actor who gets discovered in a small play and is whisked out to Hollywood, where he reluctantly moves with his family. He feels very out of place there...and they have trouble adjusting, especially after his first film makes him an international star...and it creates chaos in their marriage. The story was coming out a little darker than I had imagined, but I envisioned the character of the wife as a very good role for Marsha."
The film was completely revamped into a witty, bickering domestic-level comedy during the apartment scenes, and a nightmarishly funny farcical comedy when concentrating on Elliot's theatrical career. Paul Benjamin is a delight as a flamboyantly gay director who wants to present Shakespeare's "Richard III" in a manner that he felt was courageous, but was obviously a terrible idea by someone with no real vision. Benjamin insists that Richard is a flaming homosexual and the physical deformities were merely symbolic of his inner torment. Elliot is forced to play one of the great characters in the English-speaking theater as a swishy stereotype, which could ruin his career for all time.
"The Goodbye Girl" is fast-paced and funny, filled with laugh-out-loud dialog right up through the "Richard III" performance, that gets exactly the negative reaction as predicted. The director forces an "it was ---er --- interesting" comment from his own mother, and dances about back stage hollering "mother loved it," which is the only criticism that matters to him (and that he misrepresents). The critics pan the production relentlessly. The show closes after its first night.
However, once that period of the movie passes, and Elliot suddenly starts to connect romantically with Paula, both the anticipation, and the conflict, have concluded. The film limps along for about another 40 minutes trying to approach their conflict dramatically and its lapse into more seriousness slows its pace.
Unlike other Neil Simon movies, "The Goodbye Girl" was an original screenplay, not based on one of Simon's plays (it did become a play later). It was remade in a terrible TV movie with Jeff Daniels and Patricia Heaton in the lead roles.
In the praising of Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason is sometimes overlooked. She keeps up the pace of the dialog and action, and plays off Dreyfuss quite effectively. Quinn Cummings, one of the reasons why the film works as well as it does, continued to do some acting, but probably never matched her big screen debut. She later worked as an agent, a writer, and owned her own business.
"The Goodbye Girl" was released during the magnificent cinematic decade of the 1970s, the same year as "Annie Hall," "Star Wars," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Smokey and the Bandit," and "The Hills Have Eyes." It fits comfortably among those films,