Mister Buddwing is a 1966 American film drama starring James Garner, Jean Simmons, Suzanne Pleshette, Katharine Ross, and Angela Lansbury. Directed by Delbert Mann, the film depicts a well-dressed man who wakes up on a bench in Central Park with no idea who he is. He proceeds to wander around Manhattan desperately trying to figure out his own identity. He meets various women, played by Lansbury, Ross, Pleshette, and Simmons, and each woman triggers fragments of his deeply-buried memories.
Based on the 1964 novel Buddwing by Evan Hunter, the black-and-white drama was written by Dale Wasserman, and accompanied by a jazz-based musical score written by Kenyon Hopkins.
In his memoirs, Garner said "I'd summarize the plot but to this day I have no clue what it is. Worst picture I ever made. What were they thinking? What was I thinking?"[1]
A man wakes up on a New York park bench to find that his mind is a total blank. He has no identification or money on him, just a slip of folded paper in his pocket, enclosing two large white pills and with a phone number written on it.
He rings the number, reaching Gloria, who first mistakes him for her shiftless husband Sam. Arranging a rendezvous, he creates a name for himself, appropriating "Sam" and cobbling "Buddwing" from the first two things that seize his attention, a Budweiser beer truck and an airplane. Gloria, a liquor-sodden slattern, does not recognize him but, as he is leaving, gives him a handful of cash, purely out of pity.
Trying to pull himself together over breakfast he sees a giant headline blaring the news of the escape of a violently insane criminal. Finding a possible match with one of the initials inside the ring he is wearing he immediately fears he is this criminal.
Shortly, he spots a woman on the street he thinks he knows and hails her as "Grace". A student at a music school in Washington Square, Janet proves a stranger, but a flashback of a romance with her from college days goes through Buddwing's mind. In it he is the music student, she is "Grace", and they impulsively marry.
Back in the park Janet rejects his attentions and creates a scene. A policeman arrives, Buddwing is questioned, but flees when the patrolman becomes distracted by hecklers.
He is pursued by a mad street person, who raves that indeed Buddwing is the murderer on the loose. More spooked than ever Buddwing races away, ending up aimlessly roaming the sidewalks. Soon he meets coquettish actress "Fiddle". They have sex, after which he instinctively begins to play piano, jarring loose more fragments of his possible former identity. Falling asleep in her arms he roils in a nightmare of fighting with her - by the name of Grace, and again his wife - over a pregnancy he feels they cannot afford. He insists on an abortion. Crushed, "Grace" climbs over the guardrail of the 59th Street Bridge, ready to commit suicide. He arrives to save her just in time.
Snapping out of it, he flees once again, ending up buying a pint of whisky and looking for somewhere to paper-bag it alone. A socialite out for kicks on a scavenger hunt spies the tall, handsome man on the sidewalk. After boozing some together on the nearest stoop the pair end up in Harlem, seeking to clear $100,000 in a craps game to complete her list. Becoming woozy, Buddwing once again lapses into a conscious flashback, this time with The Blonde as his troubled wife Grace. In spite of having achieved success the couple has lost everything: she is a miserable tramp, unable to get over an abortion that left her sterile, he is trapped in his own web of affluence at the expense of honoring his inborn talent.
In his trance he sees a blood-spattered vanity top and a razor blade.
Like a lightning bolt it dawns on him he had, that morning, dialed the right phone number in the wrong area code. It was not for "Monument" on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, it was for Mt. Kisco up in Westchester County. He calls and finds that it is a hospital, and it all starts to come together for him: he had married Grace, she had had an abortion, they never could have a family, he had indeed sacrificed his talent for success as an A&R man just like he had told her intended to, and revolted her. And she had slashed her wrists, but was still alive. Just barely.
He begs to be able to see her. He takes her lifeless arm. He fears her last breaths are ebbing away. Slowly the limb moves, beckoning his hands. He takes her hand and clasps it in his, sharing his rediscovered life force with her.
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