The Only Game in Town
The Only Game in Town
PG | 21 January 1970 (USA)
The Only Game in Town Trailers

Fran walks into a piano bar for pizza. She comes back home with Joe, the piano player. Joe plans on winning $5,000 and leave Las Vegas. Fran waits for something else. Meanwhile, he moves in with her.

Reviews
Pluskylang Great Film overall
Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
JohnHowardReid A comedy/drama/romance that can't quite make up its mind as to which facets to emphasize, this stage play seems to stretch out for an inordinate length on the screen, despite Henri Decae's lush color photography and some stunning location scenery in Las Vegas. The play has been opened out a bit. The character play by Hank Henry sees to be a cinematic addition, although the role is small. However, the movie is still basically a three characters study, actioned in just the one setting. I must admit that the first two- thirds of the movie are agreeable enough – thanks mostly to the charm of the three principals – but the last third in which the movie finally comes to its foregone conclusion, seems to drag on and on and on. From a director's angle, the film is disappointing. Despite the reunion with Liz Taylor, this is not another "Place in the Sun" for director George Stevens. In fact, the old master seems to be losing his touch. The crude studio insert of Liz pretending to dance in the Las Vegas line-up will fool no-one. True, Liz is carefully groomed, made up and costumed and has obviously been taking elocution lessons as her voice is nowhere near as grating as it was in some previous blockbusters such as Cleopatra. On the other hand, despite all Liz's careful make-up, Beatty still looks about ten years her junior.
brefane Dreary, poky, talky and practically non-existent as drama, The Only Game in Town features Liz Taylor, looking like a mature Millie Perkins(see Wild in the Streets), ridiculously cast as a Vegas showgirl. Taylor's pretty, but vacuous, and she and the boring, mumbling Beatty don't compel and they are an odd, uninteresting and unconvincing pairing. Neither one could be accused of acting, and their characters were intended for less stellar types. George Stevens who directed Taylor in A Place in the Sun and Giant brings only his name to this film, his last, and Frank Gilroy, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his play The Subject Was Roses, and whose film From Noon Till Three is a gem, hasn't written anything that seems worth putting on the screen. The audience, wisely, never showed.
moonspinner55 Oddly old-fashioned chronicle of a gambling addict/pianist and a showgirl sharing an apartment in Las Vegas. From an unsuccessful play, this talky exercise with excitable characters does have interesting things to say about relationships and addictions, but it goes on too long and begins to repeat itself. Elizabeth Taylor is upstaged by her hairdo (it hides her face half the time) and her shriek grows tiresome; Warren Beatty is too young for his role (when he talks to Liz of growing old together, one can only visualize her growing much older before he), but his pent-up nervousness is palpable and his frustration is convincing. The film is claustrophobic and looks bad (it was mostly filmed in Paris, France--and one can practically sense the dislocation), with a principal set decorated in gold and avocado. Some good scenes, otherwise an interesting failure. ** from ****
TheVid Frank Gilroy's play brought to the screen by the great George Stevens; sadly, his last film. The maudlin characterizations by Liz and Warren just don't cut it, simply because they seem far too old and worldly to be victimized by the circumstances set forth for them. Old-fashioned in the worse way. Maurice Jarre provides one of his best scores, though.