THE BACHELOR PARTY as a thing guys do for/to each other, dates as far back as 5th-century BC Sparta. Time evolved numerous versions in many cultures. Today’s bacchanal bound menboys can be forgiven (once damages are tallied) for assuming the practice owes anthropological links to 2009’s The Hangover or Bachelor Party (no ‘The’), the 1984 goofoff that helped boost 27-year-old Tom Hanks to stardom. Yet some among us are sufficiently aged  to recall the stunning 1957 drama that spun around a night out where romping leads to revelation. Paddy Chayefsky’s teleplay had first been done on the small screen three years earlier, directed by Delbert Mann. In between Mann had steered Chayefsky’s Marty to great success. Reunited, they scored another dramatic knockout with this intimate look at forced bonhomie covering aching loneliness, beautifully acted by a faultless ensemble cast.

“You just wait until you’ve been married eleven years.”

Five bored bookkeepers liven up the humdrum with a bender on the town. Helping ‘Arnold’ (Philip Abbott) celebrate his groom-to-hubby rite of passage are ‘Charlie’ (Don Murray), ‘Eddie’ (Jack Warden), ‘Walter’ (E.G. Marshall) and ‘Ken’ (Larry Blyden). Arnold’s haplessly naive, Eddie’s a tireless player, Walter’s health is an issue, Ken acts as a voice of reason. Overburdened by work, school and impending fatherhood Charlie is tempted to stray with ‘The Existentialist’ (Carolyn Jones) an alluring but exasperating beatnik while at home his wife ‘Helen’ (Patricia Smith) commiserates with ‘Julie’ (Nancy Marchand), her marriage-jaded sister-in-law.

KEN: “Go home, Charlie. I can see you’re gonna get fried tonight, you’re gonna end up picking up some tramp, and you’re gonna feel like two-bits in the morning.”   CHARLIE:  “That’d be a profit.”

In the lead in his second film role, Murray’s quite good as the stress-compressed Charlie, much more likable (and better directed) than he was in Bus Stop. Warden’s blithe carouser Eddie and Marshall’s wildly unleashed sad sack Walter are pitch-perfect and it’s a treat to see the personable, multi-talented, ill-fated Blyden in his first feature film: he only did three. Abbott, in his debut, is first-rate, allowed much greater latitude than his subsequent yeoman work, mostly on TV, best known for nine ‘safe’ seasons on The F.B.I. This first feature was his finest hour. Marquand (feature debut) and Smith had both done theater and TV work: they’re fine in the less-showy roles. The walk-away winner in the group was Jones, 26, whose brief scenes as the sexy, self-obsessed neurotic were so vivid and arresting that she copped the film’s sole Oscar nomination, Supporting Actress, and boosted her career into deserved limelight. *

THE EXISTENTIALIST: “Just say you love me.”   CHARLIE: “What?”  THE EXISTENTIALIST: “Just say you love me. You don’t have to mean it.”

Done for $960,000, grossing $4,300,000, placing 55th in ’57 where its penetrating 92 minutes dovetailed with a slate of superior dramas parsing levels of stress on tap in New York City: 12 Angry Men, A Face The Crowd, A Hatful Of Rain, The Garment Jungle, Edge Of The City and Sweet Smell Of Success. Excellently photographed by Joseph La Shelle, the superlative interplay could have served as inspiration for pictures like Diner. It was one of one of the first American movies to show a married couple in the same bed (!–how’d all those Boomers get here? by stork?): there’s even a sequence where the fellows watch (as opposed to enjoy) a stag film. This matter-of-fact candor really must have stunned the uptight types of the late Ike Age.

* Delbert was the Mann: Marty, The Bachelor Party, Separate Tables, Middle Of The Night, The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs, That Touch Of Mink, Dear Heart. 

Patricia Smith, 26, had done TV and theater, but after a one-two launch in 1957 with this and the high-profile The Spirit Of St. Louis a big screen career faded. In 1969’s Paint Your Wagon she was uncredited as a dance hall girl.