The Notorious Landlady

When American diplomat William Gridley arrives in London, he rents part of Carly Hardwicke's house from her and promptly begins to fall in love. Gridley doesn't know that many people think she killed her British husband, Miles Hardwick, because he has disappeared; but without a body, the police cannot do a thing.

Gridley's boss is Franklyn Ambruster, a State Department chief in the American embassy who learns about it and doesn't take this "lapse of judgment" lightly. A Scotland Yard detective arrives at the embassy and convinces Gridley, who by this time is in love with Carly, to spy on her without letting her realize she is being investigated. When a fire erupts as Carly and Gridley are grilling steaks in the backyard of her house, a scandal ensues that is played out in the papers. Since Carly is also American, she goes to the embassy to tell his boss that Gridley is a good man and not to send him out of the country. The boss takes Carly to lunch, becomes smitten with her, and proclaims her innocence.

After Carly has pawned many of her belongings to pay bills, her husband, Miles, shows up alive but then is shot and killed by Carly as Gridley is on the phone with the Scotland Yard detective. Carly is put on trial but is exonerated by the eyewitness testimony of her crippled neighbor's private nurse saying that Miles was attacking Carly. Ultimately Carly tells Gridley that she is being blackmailed by the nurse who wants the pawn ticket to a candelabra that Carly recently pawned. The pawn ticket was actually the cause of the argument between Carly and Miles, who had stuffed the candelabra with stolen jewels. When Gridley and Carly go to retrieve the candelabra, they find the pawnbroker murdered. A chase sequence ensues, and Gridley and Carly find the nurse in the act of pushing her elderly patient off a cliff to silence her story. It was, in fact, the elderly patient who witnessed Miles and Carly fighting, and the nurse merely said she was the one who saw the struggle. Gridley and Carly save the elderly lady as music from The Pirates of Penzance plays, and Gridley's chief and the Scotland Yard detective arrive to find the nurse detained.

• Kim Novak as Carlyle 'Carly' Hardwicke
• Jack Lemmon as William 'Bill' Gridley
• Fred Astaire as Franklyn Ambruster
• Lionel Jeffries as Inspector Oliphant
• Estelle Winwood as Mrs Dunhill
• Maxwell Reed as Miles Hardwicke
• Philippa Bevans as Mrs Agatha Brown
• Doris Lloyd as Lady Fallott
• Henry Daniell as the Stranger
• Ronald Long as Coroner
• Richard Peel as Sergeant Dillings
• Dick Crockett as Detective Carstairs
• Ottola Nesmith as Flower Woman
• Bess Flowers as Courtroom Spectator
• Scott Davey as Henry
• Ross Brown as Boy
• Mary O'Brady as Mrs Oliphant

Lemmon and Novak had appeared together on screen twice previously, in Phffft! (1954) and in Bell, Book and Candle (1958). In both later films, Novak portrayed a landlady.

The song "A Foggy Day (in London Town)" by George and Ira Gershwin serves as the main theme for the movie and was introduced in the Fred Astaire film A Damsel in Distress.

• Nominated for Best Written American Comedy in 1963 at the WGA Awards.[5]

• List of American films of 1962

• The Notorious Landlady at IMDb
• The Notorious Landlady at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Notorious Landlady at AllMovie
• The Notorious Landlady at the TCM Movie Database
• The Notorious Landlady at the American Film Institute Catalog