Growing Up in Gotham

The World of Henry Orient is a precociously smart comedy that proposes juvenile innocence as an effective curb on adult delinquency. Chief delinquent is Peter Sellers, who as Concert Pianist Henry Orient attempts to seduce an undecided young matron (Paula Prentiss). Circling his prey in a lush Manhattan lair, he glances into the street, and blanches at what he sees: two diminutive furies, one as apple-cheeked and winsome as Heidi, the other an indescribable creature with sheep-dog hairdo, daredevil eyes, and a tacky mink coat that grazes her ankles. What do they want? "It's exactly the sort of thing my husband would think of," gasps Paula. "Little girl detectives!"

But the little girls are not detectives. They are an enchanting pair of screen newcomers, Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth, aged 17 and 15, who ebulliently transform what might have been a routine Gotham sex farce into a king-size sleeper. Merrie demonstrates that the child of a broken home has every advantage, while Tippy makes light of being simultaneously unwanted, filthy rich, and psychoanalyzed: "Dr. Greentree gets so mad if I don't dream."

The girls meet in an upper East Side "snob hatchery."

"You're new here," Tippy begins gaily. "You like it?"

"They say it's the finest girls' school in the country."

"I don't either."

After comparing orthodontic appliances, the two racket around Manhattan improvising absurd fantasies derived from Little Women and Fu Manchu. In Central Park they pretend to be "two beautiful white nurses" besieged by Chinese bandits. Merrie pokes a wad of bubble gum into Tippy's mouth. Poison. "When they try to ravish us, bite down," she orders. Then the nurses clamber up an escarpment and discover Sellers and Prentiss attempting a rendezvous on the rocks. From then on they bug Sellers, spoiling assignations and complicating the plot. They even scavenge his discarded cigarette butts and wrap them tenderly in a paper napkin. "No filter," notes Tippy. "He's not scared," observes Merrie.

A few dollops of sentiment and a formula ending flaw the otherwise engaging and perceptive script by Nora and Nunnally Johnson. Though droll performances are rung up by Prentiss, Sellers and Angela Lansbury (as Tippy's pampered, promiscuous mother), all are up against a force of nature as potent as Disneyland. Director George Roy Hill is obviously happy to let the camera ogle while his half-pint scene stealers do their stuff. And why not? It's grand larceny.

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