Most cable television subscribers in America recieve the Arts & Entertainment channel as part of their basic cable service. One late night while flipping through channels I came across a movie from the late fifties or early sixities featuring an incredibly young (and beautiful) Shirley Maclaine. I'm not sure of the title of this movie, but "What a Way to Go" seems right to me.

The movie is about a young woman, Maclaine, living in a small town in Nowheresville, U.S.A. and follows her life's pursuit of love with a number of different men, which unfortunately, always die once she marries them. These men are played by Dean Martin, Dick Van Dyke, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly and maybe one other.

In her youth she is courted by the most elligible man in her small town, played by Dean Martin, the son of the owner of the local, corporate department store. But she has just read Thoreau's "Walden" and is is not interested in his money and clout. She wants a simpler man and finds Dick Van Dyke, who also happens to own a country store on the verge of going out of business because he'd rather go fishing. They fall in love and get married. Soon, his love for her instills in him a desire to provide for her and he becomes compulsive about the success of his store. His profits skyrocket and soon Maclaine discovers that her lovemate no longer has any time for her. She wishes for the way things were when they were poor and led simpler lives. But as luck would have it Van Dyke dies of a heart attack. He had worked himself to death for his wife.

In her distress over her loss she moves to France where she joins an artists' commune and meets and falls in love with a struggling painter played by Paul Newman. They get married and soon they are painting together. Her love for him inspires him one day as they listened to a classical music record. Newman invents, as a result, a machine that can paint automatically as he plays his records. This contraption becomes a huge success and they are the talk of Paris and once again Maclaine becomes unhappy and longs for a simpler life as her husband becomes more and more obsessed with his success. His attempts to become more so eventually lead to his tragic death by becoming entangled in his machine and being painted to death.

Again, in distress, she decides to go back home and makes for the Paris airport only to find out she has missed the last commercial flight to New York for the day. She is depressed and is convinced that she is cursed and can never love again as she only brings success and bad luck to any man she falls in love with and marries. Fortunately, the next man she meets at the airport is a wealthy New York tycoon, played by Robert Mitchum. At first she is turned off by his success and pompous confidence, but accepts his offer to fly her to New York on his private jet. Eventually she is taken in by his unexpected humanity and decides that she can indeed fall for him because he is already successful and therefore, she could not bring him anymore success or, for that matter, bad luck. He even takes it upon himself to prove this to her by trying to drive his company into the ground. As their love grows, and he begins to spend all of his time with her neglecting his business responsibilities, we find that his company is growing uncontrollably on its own. His luck goes bad and he dies.

So, now the billionaire tycoon widow Maclaine leaves New York for her small town roots. On the way she stops at a dinner theater in St.Louis where she meets a man named Pinky, an actor, singer and dancer at this theater played by Gene Kelly. She stays for the show and chats with him afterwards and through their discussions she decides to fund his life's long dream production as a gift to him in return for his generous attention to her depressing life story.

They fall in love and she joins the production and eventually make it to Broadway where it's a hit and Hollywood comes calling and all of a sudden Pinky is a huge star. He has their mansion painted completely pink while a throng of yesmen follow at his beck and call. A bored Maclaine having seen this before awaits the inevitable which comes at the opening night for his movie where he is killed in a stampede caused by his ravenous fans. THE TITLE OF THE FILM IS "FLAMING LIPS." So, there you go.

Now that Gene Kelly is dead she goes home seeking therapy. Her therapist is lustfull for her money and body and is knocked unconscious- a stroke of more of her bad luck. She calls for help and finds the janitor who is Dean Martin's character; now a normal, blue collar laborer since Van Dyke's store's success drove him out of business. A joyful reunion leads to another romance and another marriage and we come full circle as they move in together and work a farm to be like Thoreau. But, while plowing the soil one day Martin strikes oil. More success? More bad luck? Another dead husband?

This time it's not to be as it's only someone else's oil pipeline and we've got ourselves a happy ending. Roll the credits!
But, there on the screen as big as Hollywood could make it was the title "Flaming Lips" starring Shirley Maclaine and Gene Kelly. My eyes popped out of my skull and I called every Lips fan I know to tell them this story. Of course, none of my friends, even the one who claims to have dated Wayne ever confirmed for me whether or not this is actually the source of the name of the band or a mere coincidence.