I've seen this movie several times over the years. There are a lot of good, dependable familiar-face comic actors in this. I never heard of the lead, Reni Santori, before or after, but he was quite OK. Shelley Winters plays his mother. Mr. Santori wants to become a Great Actor and attends a joke of an acting school headed by Jose Ferrer and his not-quite-young daughter, Elaine May, and they provide the funniest parts. Poor Former Great Actor Jose Ferrer is a cynical, washed up, bitter drunken individual who, faced with his paying client, looks on aghast while he auditions (under the name of 'Don Coleman'). And he sips from a straw from a pocket flask and mutters, 'AND THEY WONDER WHY I DRINK!'. Supposedly set in the 30's (in no way that I can detect) because it is based on Carl Reiner's memoirs from that time. The opening night performance is equally hilarious. Otherwise, the in-between parts, the mundane romance bits, kind of drag on, but when it's funny, it is FUNNY. Well worth a look.
"Hello......you."
"Hello......you."