The Tender Trap by Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you find thousands of notes on films from The NYT 1,000 and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, plus a multitude of book reviews

 

The Tender Trap by Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you find thousands of notes on films from The NYT 1,000 and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, plus a multitude of book reviews

 

8 out of 10

 

Frank Sinatra has the leading role of Charlie Reader in this comedy, a sort of Casanova https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/06/memoirs-of-casanova-by-giacomo-casanova.html which I understand Sinatra himself was, albeit I am biased and tend to believe rumors on this matter, or even think I have rea about it

 

He was also alleged to be the inspiration for the singer in The Godfather, Johnny Fontane, the one who comes at the wedding to complain, Don Corleone gives him a lesson, to the effect of ‘be a man’, and then intervenes on his behalf, the director of the film refuses to give him a role, and then he gets the infamous ‘offer he could not refuse’

There are no horse heads in beds in The Tender Trap, Charlie Reader is dangerous only in a romantic way, to begin with, we see that he is called by close to five hundred women, again, Sintra was very admired, even if I have read in The Kid Stays in The Picture https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-kid-stays-in-picture-by-robert-evans.html about him

 

Robert Evans is the author of this book, and he was an actor, producer and head of Paramount; as a producer he was involved in classic like The Godfather, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, the latter with Mia Farrow in the lead, she was Sinatra’s spouse at the time, and he demanded her to stop shooting on the picture

She did not want to and this lead to tension and conflict, Bob Evans says in his book that the thespian asked him to take a two-page ad, in which on one side there would be the box office of Rosemary’s Baby and on the other, the film in which Sinatra had just acted, one of them was a failure, and I thought that was funny

 

Charlie Reader enjoys this Don Juan life, until Julie Gillis enters the frame, he also reminds me of Patrick Standish from Take a Girl Like You https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/take-girl-like-you-by-kingsley-amis-one.html by Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis – he is one of those who decide the result of auditions

Julie wants to be in this play, but only for a short time, because her goal, meaning in life is to…get married – this is so anachronistic that it might contribute to the mirth – and we have this debate, she explains her plan, to marry, have three children and then move into the countryside, leave New York and the theater

 

She refuses Charlie’s invitation to dinner, because there would be no point, he is too old, and inappropriate, she also has a timeline, and has to be a spouse in just a few months, nevertheless, she becomes infatuated – love is not the word I would use – with the man who does not want to settle down, or maybe he will change his ways?

 

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