Clubs in Film: How to Murder Your Wife (1965)

A tale of misogyny in Manhattan

The 1950s and 1960s were something of a ‘golden age’ when it came to glossy, sleek, technicolour depictions of New York City on the silver screen. And as one of the city’s largest clubs, the New York Athletic Club enjoyed more than its fair share of onscreen references. Perched on the southern edge of Central Park with a membership of some 8,000, it was a local landmark, and was hard to miss. Sometimes, as in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960), it had a simple name-check, as the film’s main antogonist (the philandering Madison Avenue insurance executive Mr. Sheldrake) is thrown out of his marital home, and admits “I’m staying at the Athletic Club,” pending his divorce. At other times, as we have seen, the real-life NYAC was used as a filming location, as in That Touch of Mink (1962).

The Club in the Jack Lemmon comedy How to Murder Your Wife (1965) is unnamed. But it is clearly meant to be the New York Athletic Club; being a vast, historic, mass-membership central Manhattan men’s club with extensive facilities centred around an elaborate athletics offering.

The Club’s austere and formal 19th century entrance, complete with a protective receptionist (right), insisting that none of the members can be located at the moment.

The film itself is a typical “battle of the sexes” comedy of the 1960s, of the kind unlikely to be made anymore - not least because the misogyny is barely masked; and like Ladies’ Night (1986), it is based on the scenario of a member of a gentlemen’s club murdering his wife - though if anything, here the film’s sympathy is with the member rather than the wife. Stanley Ford (Lemmon) is a widely-syndicated cartoonist, leading a comfortable bachelor’s existence. After a drunken night out, he awakens to find himself married, with his valet despairing that his new Italian bride does not speak a word of English. Growing gradually more frustrated with married life, Ford vents by spelling out in his daily newspaper cartoon strip how his lead character murders his wife - only to find after his own wife vanishes that he is put on trial for her murder, with the public convinced that he has executed the same killing in real life as his cartoon counterpart. He comes up with the novel defence of seeking acquittal from his all-male jury, by telling them he did murder his wife; and that if they acquit him, it will terrify wives nationwide. (He is acquitted on that basis, only for it then to emerge that his wife is alive and well.) Subtle, it is not.

The film is not well-regarded, and is part of a string of glossy-but-formulaic mid-60s comedies that Lemmon made with Richard Quine while under contract to United Artists, which he later said was the unhappiest time in his career, personally and creatively, as he struggled with alcoholism and indifferent scripts. Nonetheless, the film looms large in popular culture, even getting a reference in Fawlty Towers. (Basil Fawlty claims to be a fan in the episode ‘The Wedding Party’, pointedly saying within earshot of his wife that he thought it, “Awfully good. I saw it six times.”)

In the film, Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon, above in the grey tracksuit) meets his lawyer Harold Lampson (Eddie Mayehoff) while using the Club’s athletics facilities - here, he yells down at his suit-clad lawyer, while performing laps along the running balcony around the gym.

The Club as seen

We glimpse a fair proportion of this unnamed club: the exterior, the reception, the elevators and corridors, a gymnasium, a steamroom, a swimming pool, massage rooms, locker rooms, and (apparently) a banqueting room. The members can quite literally spend their whole lives here, especially as it is hinted at also being a residential club, with bedrooms. All of these facilities (and more) are mirrored in the real-life NYAC.

And the internal architecture certainly bears a close resemblance to the NYAC; certainly more so than the similarly-themed but more elitist Racquet & Tennis Club on Park Avenue. The screen counterpart is older than the NYAC, however - we are told that it is 123 years old in 1965, suggesting a foundation date of 1842, whereas the NYAC was not set up until 1868 (and the R&T not until 1874), putting the screen incarnation closer to the vintage of the New York Yacht Club (founded in 1844) or the Century Association (established 1847), neither of which have athletics facilities of this kind. And it appears that a number of the Committee are on the premises at any given time, certainly during daylight hours. The Club is heavily staffed by specialised uniformed staff of all kinds - its staff headcount may well be in the hundreds.

The running balcony of the real-life New York Athletic Club, around the gymnasium below, upon which the unnamed club seen in How to Murder Your Wife (1965) is clearly based. (Photo credit: Website of the American Club of Hong Kong,)

The Club as a place of business

Modern ears are familiar with the phrase, “No business in the Club.” That definitely does not apply here, for reasons that will be explained. A key plot point of the film is how members freely mix business with pleasure by holding their work meetings at the Club - and using the Club’s rules to exclude their wives from their working lives.

Ford repeatedly arranges meetings with his lawyer, Harold Lampson (Eddie Mayehoff) at the Club. These meetings are often held in the Club’s athletics facilities - during a swim, during a massage, during a sauna, and so forth. And the participants often blur reflections on their personal lives with business and tax matters.

Ford at one stage telephones Lampson’s office from his home - by now an increasingly domesticated space, being redecorated by his wife. He demands:

“I want a full-scale meeting, and I want it this morning: you, me, the guys from the syndicate, the accountants, and everybody. Eleven o’clock. No, not here, I hate here. I hate your office. AT THE CLUB! AT THE CLUB!!!”

And then for good measure, he yells upwards (presumably to his wife upstairs) “CLUB!!!”

The single-sex nature of this club ensures that the business meetings are kept men-only. While a 1988 Supreme Court ruling relating to 125 clubs across New York state would later deem this practice to be illegal - and paved the way to the mantra of “No business in the Club” (for it could open the Club to legal challenge, under US discrimination laws - whereas clubs could not be prosecuted if they insisted that there was no business transacted at the Club). But in the 1960s, there was nothing in US law as interpreted at the time to prevent this kind of de facto segregation to exclude women from business - indeed, in many quarters, it was commonplace. And it is not only a men-only club, but clearly also a whites-only one: in common with many real-life American clubs of the 1960s, the only black faces seen onscreen are among the servants. This is Mad Men territory.

Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon, right) convenes a business meeting in the steamroom of his club.

The Club as a refuge

Both before and during Stanley Ford’s marriage, it is clear that the Club is his place of refuge. As a bachelor, he frequently tells his valet (Terry-Thomas) that he will be at his club. Once married, it is a cause of increasing discord, that he spends so much time away from home, at his club.

Edna Lampson (Claire Trevor), the wife of Ford’s lawyer, rings Mrs. Ford (Virna Lisi - her character is never given a name), complaining of their husbands’ meetings at their club:

Mrs. Lampson: I just called Harold’s office, and they told me he’s in a meeting with Stanley at the Club!

Mrs. Ford: I still [do] not see. What is wrong with the Club?

Mrs. Lampson: Well, you can’t keep track of them when they’re in the Club, that’s what’s wrong with the Club. You can’t even be sure that they’re there.

Mrs. Ford: Of course he is there! I will call him on the telephone…

Mrs. Lampson: Oh, go ahead! Call him on the telephone! I’ll tell you what you’ll get. You’ll get, “Ahem, I’m very sorry, but Mr. Ford cannot be reached at the moment. He’s in the gymnasium.” Gymnasium! He’s probably off hand-holding with some movie starlet.

Her suspicions aroused by this, Mrs. Ford tries to call the Club, asking for her husband, and she is given the all-too-predictable reply: “I’m sorry I can’t reach Mr. Ford just at the moment. He’s in the gymnasium.” Indeed, when we see the Club receptionist later, he is in the middle of answering another (unrelated) call with “I’m sorry I can’t reach Mr. Edwards right now. He’s in the gymnasium.”

And these concerns are reflected by their husbands. When Stanley Ford hosts a business meeting in the steamroom, his lawyer asks:

Eddie Lampson: “Why do we have to have the meeting here, Stan? Edna must have called me at least fifteen times at the office by now. You see, Edna doesn’t like it when I’m someplace where she can’t reach me by phone, Stan.”

Stanley Ford: “That’s the beautiful part about the Club: they can’t reach us here. It’s the one place left that’s safe.”

For the ‘Mad Men’ of How to Murder Your Wife, their club is their “safe space.”

The stag party when Stanley Ford first meets his bride-to-be, rising from the cake, which appears to be in a function room of the Club.

The stag party

It is ambiguous as to whether the film’s fateful stag night for one of Ford’s friends - at which he meets his bride-to-be, when she jumps out of a cake - is set in a club. But it seems likely. The male-only company, the servants’ livery, and the club-like furnishings, all suggest that this black tie event is being held on the main banqueting floor of Ford’s club. In keeping with the film’s anti-marriage message, the tone of the event is funereal - until the groom-to-be turns up drunkenly proclaiming that his prospective bride has broken off the engagement, at which point the evening turns into a bacchanalian celebration.

Of course, the biggest point against the scene being set in Ford’s club is the presence of Ford’s future wife, springing out of a cake, in a supposedly men-only establishment. But it has long been the case that in supposedly men-only clubs, exceptions have been made - especially on occasions like the stag night depicted in a private function room. And the ‘regular’ serving staff are noticeably all-male, only confirming making it more likely.

“No ladies allowed inside the Club,” insists the doorman to Mrs. Ford.

Confrontation

Once Ford settles into the routine of married life, his wife becomes increasingly suspicious of his absences at his club. Unable to reach him on the telephone, she resolves to go and see in person whether he is really there. A doorman attempts to block her path, protesting “Just a moment! I’m sorry, but no ladies allowed inside the Club.” She pretends to comply for a moment, before dashing around him, and walking right in.

Her route through the clubhouse, punctuated by members dropping things in shock, takes her into the members’ steam room, which is clearly marked “Members Only” on its glass door. (This presumably means that not even male guests are allowed in. It also supports the idea that even in this men-only club, there are some areas regarded as an inner sanctum, with the building having several tiers of access.) Chaos ensues inside the athletics area: terrified members leap up onto benches as if they have seen a mouse, dumbbells are dropped, while outraged members flee to report the matter to the Committee.

Members and staff in the changing room physically recoil in shock as Mrs. Ford walks in.

Eventually, she does indeed track down her husband, who is receiving a massage; and she guiltily exclaims, “Oh darling! Oh darling! Oh, forgive me for doubting you even one moment!”

He does not have time to reply. At that moment, a besuited club official, flanked by five other men incongruously clad in suits in the middle of the gymnasium, marches in to deliver the following rebuke:

“Mr. Ford! In the 123 proud years of this club’s existence, not once, not once, has a female of any description set foot on these premises! Now, we’re an understanding bunch here at the Club, Mr. Ford: A feller has one too many at the bar, we see to it that he gets to his train alright; A feller has a little hokey-pokey going in the afternoon, his wife calls, we say he’s in the gym; But this, Mr. Ford, is too much! As Chairman of the Rules Committee, I suggest you spare yourself the embarrassment of an open hearing, and submit your resignation at once!”

Stanley Ford, a broken man, tearfully yields. For him, this incident proves the final straw before the film’s central murder “plot” unfolds.

Although Ford is eventually acquitted of the “murder” of his wife, and the film ends with the couple kissing as he belatedly embraces marriage, there is no suggestion that his club membership is ever restored - it seems to represent his bachelor years, which are now long behind him.

Stanley Ford receives a dressing-down from the Chairman of the Rules Commitee (Lauren Gilbert).

As I have noted elsewhere, the comic conceit of a woman tearing into a previously men-only club and bringing chaos in her wake was a popular device in screen comedies of the 1950s and 1960s (see, for instance, the 1956 screen version of Around the World in 80 Days, when this point was not found in the original novel), and would remain so (for instance, with the much-reviled 1998 screen version of The Avengers, in which Uma Thurman’s Emma Peel tears into John Steed’s club of Boodle’s, to general astonishment). But it was not particularly accurate. These clubs were far from being the men-only zones suggested, with plenty of precedents for female visitors at least part of the time, and/or on at least part of the premises; while the idea of a woman charging unannounced into a men’s locker room (or a man into a woman’s locker room) would have been considered objectionable in any setting, not just a club one.

Conclusion

How to Murder Your Wife is very much a product of its time. While the film is now viewed as something of a historical curio, with its clumsy, overstated “battle of the sexes” theme, it still tells us much about prevailing attitudes and depictions of American city clubs in the 1960s.

In an era before the 1988 US Supreme Court ruling sharply reset the boundaries around working out of a club, How to Murder Your Wife shows how a masculine club was used by its members to not only socialise separately from their homes, but also to keep women out of the top-level decisions of the workplace. The Club here is portrayed as both a “safe space” for the film’s men, and a battlefield between men and women. While some details are exaggerated for comic effect, it is clearly a well-researched portrayal, with the architecture mirroring the real-life NYAC, and the habits of the Club from the rules to the members’ behaviour being sharply observed. Given how unflattering a portrayal it can be, it is not surprising that there is some obfuscation as to the precise name of the Club.

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