THE BUNCH

THE GROUP (1966)
dir: Sidney Lumet

THE BUNCH
MAD #106, October 1966
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

Another movie that seems to have fallen through the cracks, and a parody that was never reprinted in any collections to my knowledge. About a group of women who went to an all-woman's college (it has no name, but here they say it's Vassar) in the thirties and stayed in touch over the next several years.

Lakey (Candace Bergen) was the founder of the group, she's abroad for most of the movie and when she comes back she's revealed to be a lesbian. Dottie (Joan Hackett) is seen here waiting at a park bench with a package from Planned Parenthood. Priss (Elizabeth Hartman) is leftist who doesn't conceive until after a few tries. Polly (Shirley Knight) becomes a medical technician at a psychiatric hospital, Kay (Joanna Pettet) is the first to be married and her marriage isn't as happy as she makes it out to be. Pokey (Mary-Robin Redd) has several twins. Libby (Jessica Walter) is the gossip of the group and works for a literary agent. Helena (Kathleen Widdoes) is the writer and artist and much of the movie is narrated as notes she writes for the college alumni newsletter. The movie opens with them all graduating and immediately Kay announces her marriage.

Kay marries Harold (Larry Hagman), a playwright with no immediate means of support.

Dottie meets a guy named Dick (Richard Mulligan) and has a one-night stand with him.

Harold and Kay have an apartment that's too expensive for them, she gives up her career to work at Macy's so he can have his. They have a party in honor of his play. He's secretly an alcoholic womanizer and acts out during the party, throwing his play down the incinerator. Harold is caught having an affair with Noreen (Carrie Nye). Polly shacks up with Libby's former boss (Hal Holbrook) who's waiting for a divorce to come through and confides in his dreams and neuroses.

When he goes back to his wife, Polly's father (Robert Emhardt) moves in her. Prissy finally gives birth after several tries. Her husband's a staunch Republican and she's a staunch Democrat and he insists the baby not be breastfed and raised more experimentally than by the book (I'm not sure what either party has to do with anything. They're the ones who bring it up.) Kay gets beaten by her husband who walks out on her. She finds herself institutionalized at the hospital where Polly and her fiancee work. Kay falls out a window spotting plans for the war and they all get together for her funeral.

They get more into Lakey revealing she's always had feelings for Kay, which angers an estranged Harold. Lakey is referred to in this as a "daughter of Sappho". Ask any lesbian friend of yours if they've ever been unironically referred to as a daughter of Sappho.

UPDATE:
There was a stage play and comedy album parodying the movie, cover art by MAD's Jack Davis. Listen to both sides here.