Lord Love a Duckby Anonymous

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November 06, 2005: The first film that George Axelrod directed as well as co-wrote, "Lord Love a Duck", set in a Southern California high school, deals not only with kids and adults but American culture in general. It's wide-ranging and indescribable. Only Tuesday Weld, that rarest of Sixties phenomena, a supremely talented actress, had the necessary blend of innocence and carnality in the role of Barbara Ann Greene (she could have easily played "Lolita"), a performance of remarkable flexibility and charm. As the high school belle courted by the slightly unhinged Alan 'Mollymauk' Musgrave (Roddy McDowall), her starry-eyed desire for a dozen cashmere sweaters, a beach holiday, a handsome husband, a movie contract--in short, all the insubstantial ideals of a cotton candy culture--expresses precisely the brainlessness of teenage society, but underlines it with an incautious ebullience and eroticism that makes the character briefly real. Maybe the film was too different, or--as many critics thought--too vulgar in its dissection of American vulgarity. The Cashmere Sweater Club is a clever touch--"All you need," says one of the girls, "is twelve cashmere sweaters"--and most of the gags are amusing, as when a Hollywood producer (brilliantly played by Martin Gabel) jumps into the ocean to rescue a script, then cries, "Oh! I forgot. I can't swim!" Tuesday Weld, under Axelrod's zany direction, sparkles in her best screen role (and her favorite film part) before "Pretty Poison" (1968). In addition, his adroit handling of McDowall, Lola Albright, Martin West and Ruth Gordon revealed a variety of tone and mood previously expressed in his writing for Broadway ("The Seven Year Itch") and Hollywood ("Breakfast at Tiffany's"). [filmfactsman]