Designing Woman

Designing Woman is a 1957 American romantic comedy directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Gregory Peck as sportswriter Mike Hagen and Lauren Bacall as fashion designer Marilla Brown, who meet in California, marry on impulse, and then discover in New York how little their worlds have in common. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced the film from a screenplay by George Wells, written from a suggestion by the studio's costume designer Helen Rose, with Dore Schary producing.¹

Production

The film began as a sketch by Helen Rose, MGM's Oscar-winning costume designer, who conceived a romantic conflict in the style of the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn comedies, centered on a sportswriter and a high-style fashion designer.⁸ George Wells wrote the screenplay from her suggestion, and was credited onscreen as "written by George Wells Associate Producer."¹

Casting changed hands repeatedly. According to Hollywood Reporter news items from July and August 1955, Grace Kelly and James Stewart were originally considered; when Kelly refused the part because of her recent marriage, Stewart also declined. A March 1956 item reported that Cyd Charisse was slated to star, but she was replaced by Bacall. Peck completed his deal to star with Bacall in July 1956 in return for MGM's loan of Ava Gardner to appear in his own independent production, Thieves' Market, which was never made.¹ Minnelli cast Peck against type; Peck, who had just made dramas such as Moby Dick and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, found the comedy a change of pace, and his deal gave him approval of his leading lady.⁴ Dolores Gray substituted for the originally cast Charisse in the role of Lori Shannon.⁴

Shooting ran from 10 September to early November 1956, with location work at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Marineland, and in Hollywood.¹ The production was a difficult time for Bacall: her husband Humphrey Bogart was in the final stages of the cancer that killed him on 14 January 1957, four months before the film's release. Bacall later said she loved working with her old friend Peck and that the comic material took her mind off things at home; the film became one of her favorites.^{3 • 7}

A studio milestone. Designing Woman was producer Dore Schary's first comedy and his last film for MGM, the studio where he had been head of production since the late 1940s.¹ It also marked the first acting role for choreographer Jack Cole, who had previously worked in films only as a choreographer or onscreen dancer, and who also staged the film's musical numbers and dances.¹

Style and reception

Minnelli gave the film a playful formal structure: after the opening credits several lead characters introduce themselves directly to the camera, Peck, Bacall, and Gray provide competing voice-over narration throughout, and the characters deliver closing epilogues to the camera. In the early hangover scene, every sound around Mike is amplified, down to a shirt pin dropping into a wastebasket.¹ The critic Richard Brody, a film critic at The New Yorker, wrote that Minnelli pries the story open with this artifice and that there is real chemistry between Bacall and Peck, while noting that some jokes about the punch-drunk ex-fighter fall flat.⁹

The "ravioli scene" became the film's most famous interlude, used at Peck tribute screenings to demonstrate his underrated comic timing.⁵ Reviewers have been divided on the leads' aptitude for farce. Emanuel Levy, a film historian who has written a biography of Minnelli, judged that neither Peck nor Bacall was deft at physical comedy, while the DVD critic Glenn Erickson found Bacall's delivery in the ravioli scene so right that it defused the joke while underlining it.^{4 • 2} Levy called Wells's Oscar-winning script "shopworn" and the award one of the Oscars' inexplicable scandals; the film was nonetheless popular at the box office.⁴

Relationship to Woman of the Year. Several critics have described the film as a reworking of George Stevens's 1942 MGM comedy Woman of the Year, with Peck and Bacall in the Tracy and Hepburn roles. The AFI Catalog records that although the characters and themes bear similarities, the stories are different, and that the remake claim comes from modern sources.^{5 • 4 • 1}

Awards and home video

At the 1958 Academy Awards, George Wells won the Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay, Written Directly for the Screen. The film also received Golden Laurel nominations for Top Comedy (fifth place) and Top Female Comedy Performance for Bacall, and a Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Written American Comedy.³ Helen Rose received a Golden Hatbox Award for her costume work, reported by the Los Angeles Times on 17 April 1957.¹

Warner Archive released the film on Blu-ray on 12 June 2018.¹⁰ The Museum of Modern Art screened it in 2019 as part of its "Modern Matinees: B Is for Bacall" series.¹¹

References

1. Designing Woman (1957), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. DVD Savant Review: Designing Woman, DVD Talk
3. Designing Woman Blu-ray review, Le Cinema Paradiso
4. Emanuel Levy, Designing Woman (1957): Minnelli's Oscar-Winning Comedy
5. Designing Woman, Rotten Tomatoes
6. Designing Woman (1957), IMDb
7. Dennis Schwartz, Designing Woman review
8. Designing Woman, Turner Classic Movies
9. Richard Brody, Designing Woman, The New Yorker
10. Designing Woman (1957), The Numbers
11. Designing Woman, Museum of Modern Art

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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