Word: vaccaro
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CACTUS FLOWER. A playboy dentist (Barry Nelson) who has drilled himself into a trap of lies persuades his spinsterish nurse (Lauren Bacall) to fill in as his "wife" because his mistress (Brenda Vaccaro) won't agree to marry him until she meets his supposed spouse. Abe Burrows directs this daft farce with a deft touch...
...speaks with an antiseptic voice that would intimidate gangrene, and lives a prim life with mother. The dentist (Barry Nelson) holds a master's degree in bachelorhood, and while he appreciates spinsterish efficiency in the office, he turns for amour to a Greenwich Village post-adolescent (Brenda Vaccaro). This child wants to be a bride, but the dentist has lied to her that he has a wife and three children. In distress, the girl turns on the gas oven, and the suicide attempt, foiled by a friendly neighbor (Burt Brincker-hoff), convinces the dentist that he has been...
...concerned young mistress wants to meet the wife and see if divorce will agree with her. Grudgingly, Bacall agrees to the role and the ruse. Nelson butters the lie by telling his bride-to-be that his wife has a boy friend whom she wishes to marry. This makes Vaccaro extravagantly solicitous: she must meet Bacall's supposed lover and see if he is a good sort. By the time the fictional couples are locked on a discotheque floor in the steely bonds of subterfuge, Cactus Flower is a prickly web of deceit. Inevitably, Bacall kicks over...
...Burrows is up against tough and lonely competition-himself-and there are some cavities in his comic lines. But the cast fills them handsomely. Besides looking good, Lauren Bacall handles dialogue like a bone-dry martini. Barry Nelson's whole being winces with boyish mock innocence, and Brenda Vaccaro's characterization draws royal flushes from mental blanks...
...research photograph in his fellowship thesis, and a court of dons deprives him of his fellowship. Since Howard is a boor whose better-Red-than-well-bred political stance and personality irked most of his colleagues, his departure is viewed as good riddance. But his spitfiery wife Laura (Brenda Vaccaro) is certain of his innocence, certain that he has been victimized for his fellow-traveling ideology. She pleads with Sir Lewis Eliot (Brewster Mason), a renowned lawyer and former university fellow, to reopen Howard's case and fight for his reinstatement...