The Last of Sheila

On a one-week Mediterranean pleasure cruise aboard the yacht of movie producer Clinton Greene, the guests include actress Alice Wood, her talent-manager husband Anthony, secretary turned talent agent Christine, screenwriter Tom Parkman and his wife Lee, and film director Philip Dexter. The trip is in fact a reunion; with the exception of Lee, all were together at Clinton's home one year before, on the night a hit-and-run accident resulted in the death of Clinton's wife, gossip columnist Sheila Greene.

Once the cruise is under way, Greene, a parlor game enthusiast, informs everyone that the week's entertainment will consist of "The Sheila Greene Memorial Gossip Game." The six guests are each assigned an index card containing a secret that must be kept hidden from the others. The object of the game is to discover everyone else's secret while protecting one's own. Each night, the yacht anchors at a different Mediterranean port city, where one of the six secrets is disclosed to the entire group. The guests are given a clue, then sent ashore to find the proof of who holds the card bearing that secret. The game for that night ends when the actual holder discovers the proof. Following the first day's game, suspicion begins that the "pretend" secrets are in fact true. This is confirmed when Alice is talking to a man off camera, whose identity is hidden. She says that ´YOU are a SHOPLIFTER’ applied to her and that she was caught shoplifting before she became famous. She downplays the incident, telling the mysterious man (while they share a cigarette) that she has his secret and shows him the ´YOU are a HOMOSEXUAL’ card. She says she will keep his secret, though there are hints of an affair. She is eager to know what the other secrets are and a bit scared of the whole game.

On the second day, Christine is nearly killed when someone turns the boat's propellers on while she is swimming near them, Christine becomes hysterical with shock when the rest of the guests come to her rescue. The second game secret is revealed to be "YOU are a HOMOSEXUAL." In the evening the same process of Greene going ahead to the designated island prepares for the ‘game’ ahead of the guests in a monastery. Some guest get it wrong others talk to Greene who is dressed up as Alice in a wig and makeup all present wearing monk hooded robes. Viewers see Greene fall out of the confessional box possibly dead with bloody inflictions to his face. When the guests gather together on the yacht that evening discussing the game that night with no admittance as to who the homosexual it is noticed Greene has not returned but no one worries. When Greene isn’t around by the next day, the guests return ashore to the monastery and discover his corpse. Although the group initially assumes that Clinton perished when a stone column collapsed during the storm, Parkman points out several clues that suggest otherwise.

Parkman reveals that Greene has been murdered by one of them. Playing detective he points to clues which him and Dexter found at the crime scene and in the body of Greene. He suggests that everyone should reveal their cards on the table excusing the pun. The cards reveal YOU are a SHOPLIFTER; HOMOSEXUAL; EX-CONVICT; INFORMER; LITTLE CHILD MOLESTER Parkman delays revealing his card. As the clues are coming in fast and strong Alice reveals she was the shoplifter and Parkman confessed him being the ‘YOU are a HOMOSEXUAL’he has a brief fling with Greene long time ago (confessing to Lee who starts drinking excessively and nervous), before he was married to Lee and all these secrets are from the past Anthony reveal he has been in prison twice ‘Ex-CONVICT’shocked how Green has come to know so much about them hinting at Shelia being a gossip columnist people confiding in her as well as common industry gossip. Dexter getting nervous ´LITTLE CHILD MOLESTER’ as accusations point to him being a child molester regardless of jokes it indicating truth Dexter mumbles nonsense trying to cover it up. Christine ´INFORMER’ reveals she being secretary in the film industry ensured by gossiping and losing jobs for left wing McCarthyism actors to further her career to become talent agent out of guilt she reveals she tried to help them now to find work. Finally Parkman reveals he had the "YOU are a HIT-AND-RUN KILLER" card. After getting everyone else to reveal their secrets. It is implied that the hit-and-run killer murdered Clinton to conceal his or her guilt in Sheila's death. Lee tearfully confesses to having killed Sheila while driving drunk the previous year and having killed Clinton the previous night after he provoked her by blaming her for Sheila's death. She locks herself in her cabin and Parkman is unsuccessful in reaching her. Shortly thereafter, she is found dead with her wrists slit in Greene’s cabin bath tub and the case seems to be closed.

On the final night of the cruise, the crew and most of the guests go to a party on the shore, but Dexter, who brought no money, remains on the ship. Parkman returns to find him thinking over loose ends of the earlier events. Dexter suspects that Lee had "killed" a dead body and that the real murderer had rearranged the scene to implicate her. Dexter realizes that the six "secrets" spell out "SHEILA", and that a picture taken the first day has each of them standing under a letter of Sheila's name that corresponds to their clue, except for the final letter "A", which breaks the pattern.

With this, it becomes clear what had actually happened: after Alice (with whom Parkman had been having an affair) confessed to being a shoplifter on the first night, he changed out his own card – "YOU are an ALCOHOLIC", the missing A – for a more condemning one, "YOU are a HIT-AND-RUN KILLER", knowing both secrets applied to Lee. He arranged earlier while he was showering before the second game for Lee to see his card and think the game's purpose was to expose her for her role in Sheila's death. Then he murdered Greene on the second night and framed Lee for the deed. Then he spiked her bottle of bourbon with sleeping pills and, after she drank it, carried her body into the bathtub and slit her wrists, making it seem like a suicide. Her estate, worth $5 million, therefore went to him and freed him to pursue other romantic interests. Dexter also attempted to kill Clinton with the boat's propellers to prevent his secret from coming out. After Parkman tries killing Dexter but is stopped when Christine comes up to the yacht while trying to have sex with a steward. Dexter then blackmails Parkman hiding his secret of being the killer into financing a film with the money from Lee's estate.

• Richard Benjamin as Tom Parkman
• Dyan Cannon as Christine
• James Coburn as Clinton Greene
• Joan Hackett as Lee Parkman
• James Mason as Philip Dexter
• Ian McShane as Anthony Wood
• Raquel Welch as Alice Wood
• Yvonne Romain as Sheila

The movie was inspired by an irregular series of elaborate, real-life scavenger hunts Sondheim and Perkins arranged for their show business friends (including Lee Remick and George Segal) in Manhattan in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[5] Herb Ross also took part in the treasure hunts with his wife, Nora Kaye. Ross said one of the clues was spelled out by icing on a cake which had been cut up into different pieces.[6]

The climax of one hunt was staged in the lobby of a seedy flophouse, where participants heard a skipping LP record endlessly repeating the first line of the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer standard "One for My Baby" ("It's quarter to three ... It's quarter to three ..."). The winning team eventually recognized the clue — 2:45 — and immediately headed for room 245 of the hotel, where bottles of champagne awaited them.[7][8]

Sondheim later recalled:

The idea for the movie grew out of two murder games I devised some time ago. One was for Phyllis Newman; the other for four couples just after I got out of college. A murder game? No, nobody gets murdered. With the four couples, I told each person to think of a way to kill one of the others over the weekend we would be spending together in the country. Then we passed out envelopes and inside one was an 'X'. That person was the only one who was to carry out his plan; the others were to spend the time avoiding being murdered.[9]

Herb Ross made the film for his own production company; it was distributed by Warner Bros. Ross:

If you have a group of people on a ship, the ship becomes a metaphor for existence, you can't help it. It's not a symbol one strives for, but it does happen. It's not a picture about film people, it's about people... I'll tell you what this picture is about. It's about civilisation and barbarism. You cannot make up for the absence of civilisation.[6]

The original music score was composed by Billy Goldenberg. The song "Friends", sung by Bette Midler, can be heard during the final scene of the film and the end credits.

The critical reception for the film was mostly positive. The film holds an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 15 reviews, with an average rating of 6.80/10.[18] In The New York Times Vincent Canby called the film "an old-fashioned murder mystery" that "makes murder, as well as life, more interesting."[19] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half out of 4 stars, praising the cast and script, and saying, 'It's the kind of movie that wraps you up in itself, and absorbs you at the very time you're being impressed by its cleverness. And it leaves you thinking maybe Sheila got off easy, after all.'[20] In a 2007 review for Empire, Kim Newman gave the film four stars, writing 'It remains an underrated pleasure, a rare original film mystery (most whodunits are adapted from novels – which means your target audience already knows the solution) with dialogue as precisely turned as one of Norman Bates's twitches or Sweeney Todd's razor-rhymes.'[21]

Filmmakers Edgar Wright and Larry Karaszewski have also extolled the film, doing special introductions for the film on Turner Classic Movies and Trailers from Hell, respectively.[22][23]

Perkins and Sondheim won the 1974 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture from the Mystery Writers of America.[24] They went on to try to collaborate again two more times, on The Chorus Girl Murder Case and Crime and Variations, but the projects were ultimately unrealized.

Attempts were made to remake the film, under Joel Silver. In 2012, it was announced that New Line Cinema would oversee a new version with producer Beau Flynn.[25]

• The Last of Sheila at IMDb
• The Last of Sheila at AllMovie
• The Last of Sheila at the TCM Movie Database