No Way to Treat a Lady (film)
| No Way to Treat a Lady | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Jack Smight |
| Produced by | Sol C. Siegel |
| Written by | John Gay |
| Based on |
No Way To Treat a Lady 1964 novel by William Goldman |
| Starring |
Rod Steiger Lee Remick George Segal Eileen Heckart |
| Music by |
Andrew Belling Stanley Myers |
| Cinematography | Jack Priestley |
| Edited by | Archie Marshek |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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108 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $3,100,000 (US/ Canada) |
| Author | William Goldman |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Fawcett Publications |
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Publication date
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1964 |
| Pages | 182 |
No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) is a black comedy thriller directed by Jack Smight, with a screenplay by John Gay adapted from William Goldman's novel of the same name. The film starred Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, George Segal and Eileen Heckart. Segal was nominated for a BAFTA for his role as Detective Moe Brummel.
Rod Steiger stars as Christopher Gill, a serial killer who is fixated on his late mother, who had been an actress. Gill preys on older women who remind him of her. A Broadway theater director and costumer, he adopts various disguises, e.g. priest, policeman, plumber, hairdresser, etc., to put his victims at ease (and also avoid being identified) before strangling them and painting a pair of lips on their foreheads with garish red lipstick.
Gill strikes up an adversarial relationship, via telephone, with Detective Morris Brummel (George Segal), who is investigating the murders. As Brummel realizes that the killer has access to costumes, he seeks out local costume outlets, and tracks down Gill. Once he sees a portrait of Gill's mother with bright red lipstick in the theater, he knows he has his man.
A B-plot concerns Brummel's own mother (Eileen Heckart), who wants her son to be more like his brother (and settle down). Brummel's love interest in the film, Kate Palmer (Lee Remick), manages to win over Brummel's mother, but is later targeted herself by Gill—for reasons other than his mother fixation as Palmer does not fit the profile of his previous victims.
Goldman wrote the original novel while he was blocked writing Boys and Girls Together. He was inspired by an article about the Boston Strangler which suggested there might be two stranglers operating, and Goldman wondered what would happen if that were the case and they got jealous of each other. (In the film adaptation, there is only one strangler. Goldman hated this change.) He says as he walked to his office "the book simply jumped into my head. Start to finish. The whole thing... And I remember getting to my office and frantically scribbling down an enormous number of chapters." Goldman was worried about never finishing Boys and Girls Together so he gave himself two weeks to write the new novel.
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