Coffee, Tea or Me? (1973)

Curiosità

Coffee, Tea or Me? is an American made-for-television film that first aired as the season premiere of The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies on CBS on September 11, 1973. Starring Karen Valentine, John Davidson, Michael Anderson Jr., and Louise Lasser, it is a romantic comedy about a good-natured airline stewardess who has two husbands—one in Los Angeles and one in London. When she learns that she is pregnant but does not know who the father is, her two lives converge with comic results. The film is inspired by the best-selling 1967 book Coffee, Tea or Me?: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses, purportedly by Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones but actually by the ghostwriter Donald Bain.

Production

Coffee, Tea or Me? is inspired by the 1967 book Coffee, Tea or Me?: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses, purportedly by Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones. Both women, however, are the fictional creations of the true author, Donald Bain. At the time, he was a public relations employee for American Airlines.

In 1968, Frank McCarthy at 20th Century-Fox optioned the film rights to the book, but he allowed the option to lapse. Subsequently, Robert Aldrich picked up the option for his independent production company, Associates & Aldrich. Aldrich was a renowned director whose recent films up to that time included What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and The Dirty Dozen. ABC Films agreed to produce the film he envisioned.

In January 1972, Bain and his agent met with the producer Mark Carliner, who proposed to produce the film with CBS Television. Carliner knew Bain from a short promotional film he made about a couple from the Midwest who fly to New York for a vacation when Bain was working at American Airlines, which financed the film. He agreed to hire Bain to write the screenplay, and the deal moved forward.

Carliner liked the idea, and Ross proceeded to write the script in collaboration with the film's director, Norman Panama, who had directed a string of successful comedic films, and Albert E. Lewin, who had written for numerous hit sitcoms.

CBS approved the script, and the film went into production. Bain asserts that CBS had proceeded without his knowledge on the basis of an oral agreement with his agent. While he considered taking legal action against the network, he ultimately decided to end the dispute by accepting the $12,500 fee his agent had negotiated, which he shared with the agent, Blaisdell, and Hicks.

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