The Perfect Furlough

The Perfect Furlough is a 1958 American romantic comedy directed by Blake Edwards, written by Stanley Shapiro, and produced by Robert Arthur for Universal-International Pictures. Tony Curtis plays Corporal Paul Hodges, a womanizing soldier at an Arctic Army outpost who rigs a raffle for a dream furlough in Paris, and Janet Leigh plays Lieutenant Vicki Loren, the military psychologist assigned to chaperone him.^{1 • 2}

Production

Stanley Shapiro's original story went through changes during development. According to a December 17, 1956 Los Angeles Times article, his story first presented Corporal Paul Hodges as a stodgy scientist uninterested in the Parisian trip he had won, and suggested Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren for the role of Sandra Roca. A March 2, 1957 item reported that Robert Stack was being considered to play Paul and Dorothy Malone to play Lieutenant Vicki Loren, a role then described as a public relations representative in the French capital.¹

Casting dispute. Producer Carl Krueger brought a $4 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against Linda Cristal and Universal, claiming she had entered into an exclusive agreement with him in 1955, and asked the court to bar her from appearing in the film. On January 24, 1958, a federal judge denied the injunction, and Cristal stayed in the cast.¹ A June 22, 1958 Hollywood Reporter item noted that the studio planned to add a title song to be written by the novelist and poet Robert W. Service, described as "the poet laureate of the Yukon"; no such song appeared in the film as viewed by the AFI.¹

The film was shot at Universal Studios in Universal City, California, in CinemaScope with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.³ In November 1958, Universal decided to hold back the release until January 1959 to avoid the box office competition of the holiday releases; IMDb nonetheless lists a United States release date of November 30, 1958.^{1 • 3}

Curtis and Leigh

Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh were married in real life from 1951 to 1962, and this was neither their first nor their last film together.^{6 • 5} Jamie Lee Curtis, their daughter, was born exactly one week before the film's release.³ Reviewers have noted that the two stars underplay the frantic elements of the plot, with Curtis praised for a knack for underplaying or throwing away a reaction line.^{5 • 1}

Reception

Contemporary critics treated the film as polished light comedy. TIME called it "an almost perfect formula farce" and joked that Shapiro and Edwards had applied the formula so well that the studio could guarantee customers exactly 287 laughs, calling the film "a definitive encyclopedia of comic cliché."⁷ Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that there was nothing in it to warrant superlatives but plenty to keep viewers giggling; Harrison's Reports called it "a highly amusing spicy romantic comedy"; and Jean-Luc Godard, writing in Cahiers du Cinéma, called it "a very small film" that left his confidence in Blake Edwards intact.⁴

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer from 5 critics and a 33% Popcornmeter from more than 100 audience ratings; IMDb users give it 6.3 out of 10 from about 1.3K votes.^{4 • 3} Later retrospective reviews have been mixed to favorable: one calls it a cheeky satire with a serious message about taking someone at their word, while another notes that despite the CinemaScope production many Paris scenes are flat backscreen jobs and most of the action is confined to hotel rooms.^{5 • 8} The Ace Black Blog also observes that the film treats a woman in military leadership with matter-of-fact respect, though not without moments of sexism.⁸

Legacy

The film is remembered as an early entry in Blake Edwards' run of military service comedies; one retrospective critic describes it as virtually a rewrite of Edwards' own screenplay for Richard Quine's Operation Mad Ball, with comic staging Edwards later escalated in Operation Petticoat.⁹ Linda Cristal, who won a Golden Globe for the role, went on to her biggest success starring in the television series The High Chaparral.^{5 • 6} Universal keeps the film in circulation on digital and DVD, including an eight-movie Wartime Comedies collection.²

References

1. The Perfect Furlough (1959), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. The Perfect Furlough, Universal Pictures At Home
3. The Perfect Furlough (1958), IMDb
4. The Perfect Furlough, Rotten Tomatoes
5. Neglected film: The Perfect Furlough (1958), Of or Involving Motion Pictures
6. The Perfect Furlough, Great Old Movies
7. Cinema: The New Pictures, TIME, February 9, 1959
8. Movie Review: The Perfect Furlough (1958), The Ace Black Movie Blog
9. The Perfect Furlough review by Fernando F. Croce, Cinepassion

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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