General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

The Gazebo

The Gazebo is a 1959 American black comedy film directed by George Marshall, starring Glenn Ford, Debbie Reynolds, and Carl Reiner, adapted from Alec Coppel's 1958 Broadway play about a television writer who murders a blackmailer and hides the body in the concrete foundation of a backyard gazebo. It was produced by Lawrence Weingarten for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Avon Productions from a screenplay by George Wells, runs 102 minutes, and opened in wide release on December 16, 1959.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Source	Play The Gazebo by Alec Coppel, from a story by Myra Coppel and Alec Coppel; Broadway opening 12 December 1958, presented by The Playwright's Company and Frederick Brisson³
Film credits	Director George Marshall; screenplay George Wells; producer Lawrence Weingarten; cinematographer Paul C. Vogel; MGM and Avon Productions¹
Cast	Glenn Ford (Elliott Nash), Debbie Reynolds (Nell Nash), Carl Reiner (Harlow Edison), John McGiver (Sam Thorpe), Mabel Albertson, Doro Merande, Bert Freed, Martin Landau¹^•⁴
Release	Wide theatrical release 16 December 1959; Los Angeles opening the week of 19 December 1959 to qualify for the 1959 Academy Awards²^•¹
Recognition	Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design (black and white), Helen Rose; lost to Some Like It Hot¹
Later adaptation	French film version Jo (1971), directed by Jean Girault, starring Louis De Funès and Claude Gensac¹

Spoilers

Plot

Elliott Nash, a writer and director of television mysteries, is blackmailed by Dan Shelby, a photographer's assistant who demands $10,000 to suppress nude modeling photographs of Elliott's wife Nell, a Broadway star who knows nothing of the situation.⁵ Unable to raise the money, including by selling the house Nell refuses to part with because of the 18th-century gazebo she plans to install in the garden, Elliott decides to kill the blackmailer.³ He plans to bury the body in the quick-drying cement foundation of the new gazebo, but everything goes wrong: the contractor fills in the hole, the body turns up elsewhere, and Elliott, advised over the telephone by his prosecutor-neighbor Harlow Edison, who believes he is workshopping a screenplay, must track down whom he actually buried.²^•⁶ The plot resolves with the revelation that Elliott did not kill the man he thought he had, and his pet pigeon, Herman, carries off the bullet evidence.⁷

Production and cast

Frederick Brisson, credited onscreen as "presenting" the play on stage, sold it to MGM in 1959.¹ The film marked the screen debut of two performers: the television actor Carl Reiner, playing the prosecutor-neighbor Harlow Edison, and Peter Ford, Glenn Ford's son with the dancer-actress Eleanor Powell, who appears as a page boy.¹ Alfred Hitchcock is mentioned in the story, with Ford's character receiving telephone advice on body disposal from the director, but Hitchcock is neither seen nor heard.¹^•⁴ James Kirkwood and ZaSu Pitts were listed in production charts as the "McGruders," but neither actor appears in the released film; the characters are only discussed.¹

The film includes one song, "Something Called Love," with music by Walter Kent and lyrics by Walton Farrar, performed by Reynolds as Nell on Broadway.³ Helen Rose designed the costumes, Jeff Alexander wrote the music, and George W. Davis and Paul Groesse handled production design.¹

Reception

Contemporary reviews divided over Glenn Ford's comic turn as the harried Elliott Nash, a role far from the tough, laconic parts that built his career. The Variety critic wrote that the film was "nearly all Ford" and that he earned "both sympathy and laughs as he muddles through his farcical 'crime,'" and summed up the picture as a "cheerful murder-can-be-fun comedy" with good box office prospects.⁴ Bosley Crowther of The New York Times disagreed, judging that Ford "hasn't got it" and "is not a comedian."⁴ Time Out later called it an amiable black comedy that is much too long and leisurely, while praising the central murder sequence and the supporting cast.⁸ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a Tomatometer score of 74 percent from one critic review and an audience Popcornmeter rating above 3.5 out of 5 from more than 50 ratings; IMDb users give it 6.8 out of 10.²^•⁹

The play and later versions

The stage play, a full-length melodrama with a cast of 3 women and 9 men, remains licensed by Dramatists Play Service with a minimum fee of $110 per performance.⁶ Alec Coppel (1907–1972), an Australian-born writer of screenplays, novels, and stage plays, wrote it with his wife Myra, whose stage credits include The Gazebo and Not in My Bed You Don't, both co-written with Alec.⁶ An Irish-language translation, An Gazebo, by Críostóir Túinléigh was first produced at An Taibhdhearc in Galway on 21 October 1963, directed by Traolach Ó hAonghusa.¹⁰ The 1971 French film Jo, directed by Jean Girault and starring Louis De Funès and Claude Gensac, is a second adaptation of the same play.¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1939 to 1997

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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