All Around the Town

The Manhattan of Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed is a swinger’s paradise, an island-wide pickup free-for-all, and it’s heavenly.

It’s 1980, a seemingly ancient era of checker cabs and roller discos. A pillow-lipped cabbie (Patti Hansen, soon to be Mrs. Keith Richards) gives a lift to a suave older man (Ben Gazzara) at a morning heliport rendezvous. By the time she drops him off in the East Village, they’ve agreed to a date. In Times Square, a gawky guy (John Ritter) and his incognito accomplice (Blaine Novak) trail an ethereal blonde (Dorothy Stratten) to the Algonquin. While keeping tabs on her at the bar, the accomplice flirts with a brunette, and that night they all wind up on roller skates. A married European (Audrey Hepburn) in town for a few days submits to the allure of a stranger while her school-kid son (Glenn Scarpelli, the smart aleck from One Day at a Time) flirts with the stranger’s daughters (Alexandra and Antonia Bogdanovich, the director’s own kids). And a fast-talking country singer (Colleen Camp) sweeps through three men in as many days.

Read the rest of my review of the They All Laughed DVD here.