Robert Preston

Blake Edwards's delightful Victor/Victoria may be one of the last of the great, old-style movie musical comedies--it is so good, it was turned into a hit Broadway stage musical years later. And both versions starred Edwards's wife Julie Andrews (the former Mary Poppins) in the title role--as Victor and Victoria. She's a down-and-out singer who hooks up with a flamboyantly gay theatrical veteran (Robert Preston), and together they become the toast of 1934 Paris by dreaming up a provocative nightclub act in which Victoria assumes the identity of a man in drag.

This comedy is based on Dan Jenkins's novel about two good-old-boy pro football players (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson). Best friends on the field and off, they're also friendly competitors in the arena of love for the same woman (Jill Clayburgh), who happens to be the daughter of their team's owner. Directed by Michael Ritchie, who was something of a poet of films about competition in the 1970s and early 1980s, this movie has a certain shaggy charm, abetted by Reynolds's knowing way with a one-liner.