The Gingerbread Lady

Only When I Laugh is a serious Neil Simon screenplay with jokes, rather like The Sunshine Boys. This is better than The Sunshine Boys, but it's still a difficult watch. Marsha Mason is excellent, but most of this feels stagey and forced. Simon's dialogue often sparkles, and it certainly has the capability of being very funny, but it never quite feels natural, and this is a movie that wants to talk about depression and alcoholism and the losses that can attend it. So this often feels witty, but it never really feels true. Only When I Laugh's racist jokes have also not aged well, and I find it surprising that anyone ever laughed at them. They're not remotely funny.

Joan Hackett, in her final film performance, is absolutely great in Only When I Laugh. She reminded me a great deal of one of the acting professors at my university when I was in college, Leslie Rivers. She rather looked like Leslie and her performance made me think of her. In any case, she's great. She would die of ovarian cancer within two years of making this film.

Incidentally, Only When I Laugh is based on Simon's play The Gingerbread Lady (1970), which starred Maureen Stapleton in the U.S. and Elaine Stritch in the U.K.