Billy Wilder and Dean Martin make a sex comedy, scandalize nation

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: It’s Love Week at The A.V. Club, so we’ve followed our hearts and lined up a slate of unconventional love stories.
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
Writer-director Billy Wilder made a lot of great movies, but Kiss Me, Stupid, released the week of Christmas 1964, is one of his least-known films. Basically, it’s Wilder’s version of a European sex comedy (and was actually based on an Italian production starring Gina Lollobrigida), and to say it’s bizarre is an understatement. It kicks off with Dean Martin purposefully playing himself as “Dino” in an opening number that’s a send up of his own Vegas show (glass in hand, surrounded by showgirls, various name-drops to Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.).
On his way to Hollywood, Dino gets stranded in the conveniently named Climax, Nevada, where he encounters amateur songwriter Orville (Ray Walston) who’s been looking for his big break. Orville is also insanely jealous of his wife Zelda (Felicia Farr, married in real life to Wilder favorite Jack Lemmon), who’s the prettiest girl in town. Here’s where it gets tricky: Dino is so over-sexed that it appears Orville is going to have to let Dino sleep with his wife to keep him around long enough to listen to one of the songs he wrote. Because Orville loves his wife, he picks a fight and sends her out of town, and hires Polly The Pistol (Kim Novak), a waitress at local notorious roadhouse The Belly Button, to stand in for her and sleep with Dino, clinching the songwriting deal. (Gershwin cast-offs stand in for Orville’s songwriting efforts.)
The situation is so weird that even Dino seems occasionally creeped out, but underneath the sex farce, the movie is much more romantic than it might appear at first glance. For Polly The Pistol, a girl who wears a rhinestone in her navel at work, one night of being treated like a lady is enough to make her realize she deserves more from her life. She sweetly blossoms into a domestic creature under Orville’s roof, reminding him to wear a sweater and to get a deposit on the milk bottles.