Touch of Class

"a Touch Of Class" 1973 Sealed Vhs Glenda Jackson And George Segal

A married American man on the prowl for an uncommitted affair in London genuinely falls in love. Academy Award Nominations: 5, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Song ("All That Love Went to Waste"). Academy Awards: Best Actress--Glenda Jackson.

A Touch of Class [VHS]

It's tame in hindsight, but A Touch of Class brought much-needed prestige to the romantic-comedy trend of the early and mid 1970s. Glenda Jackson won an Oscar® for her performance as a savvy London divorcée who falls in love with married insurance agent George Segal, and the film surprised critics by earning a Best Picture nomination as well. Chemistry's the key, with Jackson and Segal equally adept at bickering and making up (and she even has a gay male friend, long before that became a genre cliché). What begins as a routine affair-- complicated by a wide spectrum of lightly comedic pitfalls--ends with mutual love and the dilemma it creates. Writer-director Melvin Frank keeps the dialogue briskly intelligent, and while he can't match Neil Simon word for word, Touch mines the same romantic territory that was perfected in Simon's later hit The Goodbye Girl. Consider them a fine double bill, with A Touch of Class ranking a respectable second. --Jeff Shannon