As it turns out, the suggestively surnamed Hieronymus Merkin (a pubic wig) can't quite forget the more-obviously monikered Miss Humppe, so he doesn't exactly find true happiness, either. But as the film careens toward an answer to its marathon-title question, one finds that Anthony Newley--co-author, producer, director and star--has created what will be the movies' first Priapean musical comedy. Newley plays a likable 40-year-old rake who moonlights as a Hollywood singing idol and boasts a weakness for angelic nymphets--particularly Mercy, played by Connie Kreski, our January 1968 Playmate, whom Newley literally bumped into on an elevator at the London Playboy Club and later signed for the title role. As Hieronymus, he relives and reflects upon his exuberantly amorous past via film, tape and fantasy, and the result is a zany erotobiography that looks like a Marx Brothers movie shot in a nudist camp. "Like most normal men," Newley says, explaining the genesis of the film, "I have a certain fascination with erotica. I think truthful people are interested--artistically--in how people make love. The erotic films being made by young directors nowadays, however, are blatantly sexual without being either sensuous or romantic. I wanted to make a really erotic romantic movie, because I was brought up in a period when there was still romance." For Hieronymus, romance means an endless stream of delectable female fans whose devotion can be best expressed horizontally. He divides his more enduring passions between Polyester Poontang, his long-suffering second wife--played by Newley's real-life (text concluded on page 137) spouse, Joan Collins--and Mercy, an archetypal innocent who symbolizes ideal love as well as the perfect roll in the hay. But despite his humming hormones, Hieronymus is too selfish to really fall in love. Feeling, at 40, that his life has been futile and misspent, he is haunted by The Presence of Death, a darkly senile creature--portrayed by George Jessel--who's given to telling shaggy vaudeville gags as pointless parables. The chief cause of Hieronymus' troubles, though, is Milton Berle, as Good Time Eddie Filth. Eddie materializes in a cloud of lavender smoke when Hieronymus is a randy teenager, and thereafter urges him to make a career of lechery. The wild retrospective of Merkin's youth--complete with dream sequences, a stag-film-within-the-film and a trio of critics who watch and comment on the movie-in-the-making--becomes a combination sermon/pep talk that gives him the insight and courage to change his wicked ways. "I am often asked," Newley told us, "to sum up the movie's theme in a few words, but there is no short phrase that will describe it properly. I prefer, like that great one-man band, Charles Chaplin, to say, 'Let the film speak for itself.' " And, as these pages prove, Hieronymus has plenty to say--and see.
