Goodbye, Columbus

Based on author Phillip Roth' novella, Goodbye Columbus stars Richard Benjamin as Neil, a young man of humble means who falls in love with Jewish-American-princess Brenda (Ali MacGraw). Their romance is out of the question, as far as Brenda's suburbanite parents are concerned, so Neil and Brenda go to great lengths to keep their whirlwind romance under wraps. The trendy, New Wave-influenced direction by Larry Peerce gained a great deal of critical attention in 1969, but far more memorable is Peerce's amusingly straight-on depictions of upper-class Jewish/American social functions.