Designing Woman

Mike Hagen, a sportswriter, and Marilla Brown, a fashion designer, marry soon after meeting, only to find how little they have in common. His world of boxing and poker sits badly with her circle of fashion colleagues, and the cramped arrangements of sharing her elegant apartment add to the strain. Each also carries a past that stirs jealousy in the other. When Mike, investigating fixed fights, publishes a hard-hitting article on the boxing business, he goes into hiding to avoid the fallout, and Marilla is left believing he has walked out on her.

Designing Woman is a 1957 American comedy romance directed by Vincente Minnelli, the eleventh of the fourteen films he directed in chronological order, arriving between Lust for Life and Gigi. George Wells wrote the screenplay, Dore Schary produced, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released it. Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall head a credited cast of thirty as Mike and Marilla, with Dolores Gray, Sam Levene, Tom Helmore and Mickey Shaughnessy in supporting roles. The film runs 118 minutes.

Audience response has been moderate and steady: on IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10 from around 6,100 votes, while on TMDB it also sits at 6.7 out of 10, from a much smaller base of roughly 83 votes. A critics' rating of 6.9 out of 10 from 11 reviews places it slightly above those viewer scores, suggesting a fairly even reception rather than a sharply divided one.