Wild and Wonderful

Wild and Wonderful is a 1964 film comedy starring Tony Curtis and his then-wife Christine Kaufmann (whom he had married in 1963). The plot revolves around a clever French poodle named Monsieur Cognac, and the dog's effect on the newly married couple portrayed by Curtis and Kaufmann. The film was Curtis's last under his long contractual relationship with Universal Studios. The film had six credited writers, including Waldo Salt, who was then still working his way back from years on the Hollywood blacklist and who reportedly "hated" the film. In his 1999 obituary for Larry Markes, another of the credited writers, Dick Vosburgh of The Independent commented, "Critics found it hard to accept that it had taken six writers to fashion the wafer-thin tale of a jazz flautist whose marriage to a French film star is threatened by the jealous tricks of Monsieur Cognac, her neurotic, alcoholic French poodle." In his obituary for Tony Curtis in 2010, Dave Kehr dismissed the film as "disastrous," noting that Curtis was rebuilding his reputation after an earlier affair with Kaufmann, his co-star in Wild and Wonderful, and subsequent divorce from Janet Leigh.