THE PERFECT FURLOUGH (or STRICTLY FOR PLEASURE as it was called
here, furlough not being a word we use here) or ‘Tony and Janet Go To
Paris’. This 1958 Universal-International comedy was a cherished memory
of when I was about 12, but I had never re-seen it since, odd it never
surfaced as its an early Blake Edwards, scripted by the master Stanley
Shapiro (the Rock and Doris comedies, COME SEPTEMBER, THAT TOUCH OF MINK
etc). Its still quite amusing now, on a Spanish dvd, if not laugh out
loud.
100 sex-starved men are spending a year on a project in the Artic
Circle and morale is very low – they are all bachelors, as married men
would not be able to cope. Army lieutenant Janet Leigh comes up with the
idea of the perfect furlough – where one man wins a dream holiday the
others can share vicariously. It’s a trip to Paris with movie star
Sandra Roca – The Argentine Bombshell – nicely played by Linda Crystal.
Smooth operator Tony Curtis makes sure he wins the contest and wants to
continue his skirt-chasing ways in Paris – a typical Curtis role then –
but Janet and the army brass have to keep him in line. 
Sandra turns out
to be a nice girl secretly married to an accountant and in fact
pregnant. Her bombastic agent Keenan Wynn tells her secretary Elaine
Stritch that he holds her personally responsible! Janet decides to
loosen up and the usual complications follow to the expected happy
ending. A pleasant piece of fluff, Janet looks great and it looks like they really are in
Paris, perhaps on their way home from THE VIKINGS in Norway. Troy Donahue pops up too.
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