This is a 1964 flim starring Debbie Reynolds, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, and Pat Boone, among others. It is based on the 1959 play Goodbye Charlie. The movie proved more successful than the play.
As with the play, Charles Sorel (Harry Madden) is murdered by jealous husband Leo Sartori (Walter Matthau) on the Sartori yacht. He was shot while escaping through a port hole, and the body was lost at sea. Charlie's best friend George Tracy (Tony Curtis) arrives to give the eulogy at Charlie's memorial service, held at Charlie's beach house. After the service, everyone leaves, but then Bruce Minton III (Pat Boone) shows up with a dazed naked woman (Debbie Reynolds) cloaked in Bruce's overcoat. Bruce dumps the woman on George and leaves him with the girl, who apparently has amnesia. She sleeps the night then wakes up screaming. George then learns that she is the reincarnated Charles Sorel. The rest of the movie expands on the play and adds a romance with Bruce, an attempted rape by Leo, gunplay by Rusty, and ends with yet another reincarnation.
The movie's ending is less kind to Charlie than the play's was. Some of the names were also changed.
Goodbye Charlie provides examples of:
- Best Friend: George is Charlie's best friend. With Charlie's new sex, George is tempted, but rejects the romantic possibilities. Charlie, on the other hand is open to them.
- Gender Bender: Harry Madden's character is shot by a jealous husband and falls out a porthole. He's lost at sea only to find himself returned as an attractive blonde woman portrayed by Debbie Reynolds.
- Karmic Transformation: Charlie is a notorious womanizer who doesn't like women much and is reincarnated as a woman.
- Laser-Guided Karma: As a man, Charlie was a notorious womanizer. He is resurrected as a woman.
- Reincarnated as a Non-Humanoid: At the end of the movie George meets a woman who looks exactly like female Charlie, but she assures him she is very much a separate individual, however she does own a dog called Charlie who knows exactly where Charlie's hiding spot is for his best vodka and howls pitifully as the credits roll.
- Reincarnated as the Opposite Sex: Charlie Sorel dies, and comes back as a woman. Later as a dog, too.
