Childhood friend David Wayne shows up for an extended visit. Wayne, a salesman from Indiana, is married and has three children. He feels burdened and trapped by married life, and is jealous of Sinatra's remarkable success with the ladies.
Sinatra's new flame is beautiful and much younger Debbie Reynolds, a "good girl" who demands Sinatra dump all his other girlfriends, then marry her. Meanwhile, Wayne begins dating Holm, and considers leaving his wife for her. Heartbreaks ensue, but a happy ending is inevitable for all concerned.
How others will see it. Based on a short-running Broadway play, the movie version has much going for it: Sinatra, Reynolds, "A" list MGM production quality, and a hit title song with Sammy Cahn lyrics performed no less than four times during the course of the movie. Best of all, the usually insightful and occasionally amusing screenplay was by Julius J. Epstein, who had previously worked Hollywood magic on Casablanca and The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Despite these advantages, The Tender Trap is not especially popular today. At imdb.com, the user ratings are middling, highest at 7.0 among women over 45, and the vote count is only a fraction of another 1955 film, the cultural landmark Rebel Without a Cause.
From the romantic perspective, the problem is that Sinatra is old enough to be Reynolds' father. That makes Holm a better match, but Sinatra is a swinger with opportunities. Still, it isn't believable that the "man about town" would want to tie down his life with a suburban home, three children, and a wife who is always right and will always get her way.
How I felt about it. Part of the movie's problem is its credibility. Beautiful women regularly arrive at Sinatra's apartment, but he appears to have no interest in seducing them. In fact, he welcomes Wayne's arrival, despite any obstacle that this would pose to any overnight visits from his "harem." This, of course, is due to the Production Code, would disallows sex outside of marriage.
Which is what the film is really about. Here, the "tender trap" is a misnomer. Marriage is a reward, provided it is with the right partner. The right partner, naturally, is the one you end up with.
Thus, Sinatra spends a year in Europe for no reason other than to pass enough time there to show up at Holm's wedding to the Perfect Man, an even more gentlemanly and urbane imitation of Ronald Colman. There, Sinatra again meets Reynolds, who for some reason is also at the wedding, and without an escort. Indeed, Reynolds has apparently scrubbed the wedding date circle from her calendar, and done nothing except bide her time awaiting Sinatra's return.
Most implausible of all, though, is Sinatra's dog. The little mutt spends its days and nights sitting quietly in the kitchen, regardless of all apartment comings and goings, until the dog walker arrives. It is my belief that it must be stuffed.