My Sister Eileen (1955, Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon)

Sisters JANET LEIGH and BETTY GARRETT arrive in New York from Columbus, Ohio to seek their fortunes as actress and writer respectively and have trouble finding somewhere to live. Finally they rent a Greenwich Village apartment from KURT KASZNAR and set about looking for work. Finding this far from easy they are considering going home.

Meanwhile soda fountain manager ROBERT (BOB) FOSSE and TOMMY RALL enter their lives, the latter trying to cut in on Fosse’s romance with Leigh. Then magazine editor JACK LEMMON starts to take an interest in Garrett’s stories and she tells him that she is the heroine of the amorous encounters described in them: in fact, the heroine is Leigh. Lemmon discovers the deception but falls in love with Garrett and Leigh falls for Fosse just in time.

With music and lyrics by Jule Styne and Leo Robin and a smart screen adaptation by director Richard Quine (who had acted both in the first Broadway production and the 1942 film) and director Blake The Pink Panther Edwards.

production details
USA | 108 minutes | 1955

Director: Richard Quine
Script: Blake Edwards Richard Quine Joseph Fields Jerome Chodorov Ruth McKenney

cast
Janet Leigh as Eileen Sherwood
Jack Lemmon as Robert ‘Bob’ Baker
Betty Garrett as Ruth Sherwood
Bob Fosse as Frank Lippincott (as Robert Fosse)
Kurt Kasznar as ‘Papa’ Appopolous
Dick York as Ted ‘Wreck’ Loomis (as Richard York)
Lucy Marlow as Helen
Barbara Brown as Helen’s Mother