The Bachelor Party

Synopsis

Charlie Samson is a hard-working married bookkeeper in Manhattan, struggling to advance himself by attending night school to become an accountant. He has just learned his wife is pregnant with their first child, and worries whether he is ready for fatherhood. He and four co-workers throw a bachelor party for a fellow bookkeeper, Arnold Craig, who is about to get married. After watching explicit, short stag films at one member’s apartment, they decide to go bar-hopping. Charlie is to be Arnold’s best man.

Colleagues attending the party include the older married man, Walter, who has recently been diagnosed with asthma, and Eddie, a happy-go-lucky bachelor. The night becomes a turning point for all five men.

Charlie finds his loyalty to his wife tested during the evening, and he almost has an affair with a young woman he meets on the street heading to a Greenwich Village party. Charlie’s young wife at home is also shocked to hear her visiting sister reveal her own husband’s extra-marital affairs. Walter, in despair about his situation, wanders off during the evening.

Arnold becomes drunk and ambivalent about getting married, and he breaks off the wedding, only to change his mind after he sobers up and Charlie gives him a lecture about the benefits of married life. This, in spite of the fact that in the beginning of the story, Charlie had been regretting his marriage and had gone to the party with a serious intention of committing adultery.

We last see Eddie at a bar, striking up a conversation with an older unattractive woman. In the end, Charlie decides that married life is the way to go, and that his struggle to build a home with his wife is worthwhile, and better than the empty and lonely existence of his friend Eddie, whom he used to envy.