One of the truly essential counterculture films of the '60s, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! stars Peter Sellers as Harold Fine, a lawyer who leaves the "straight" world behind to become a hippie. When Harold meets Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young), his life changes dramatically.
Nancy rolls and smoke a joint, and bakes up a batch of "Alice B. Toklas" brownies. (The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, published in 1954, contains a recipe for Haschish Fudge that includes cannabis.) Unwittingly, Harold, his girlfriend Joyce (Joyce Van Patten) and his parents all get high on the space cakes.
Deciding he's in love with Nancy, Harold leaves Joyce at the altar, and invites Nancy and her "groovy" friends to crash at his pad. But headbanded Harold is too possessive for Nancy; when she calls him "unhip," he fires back, "I've got pot, I've got acid, I've got LSD cubes. It's very unhip of you to tell me I'm unhip."
Harold returns to Joyce, but can't manage to say "I do" the second time around. In cool Los Angeles locales such as Venice Beach and Laurel Canyon, he hits the streets, exclaiming, "There must be something beautiful out there. There's got to be."
I Love You, Alice B. Toklas was directed by Hy Averback, co-written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker, and released by Warner Bothers/Seven Arts in 1968. Taylor-Young received a Golden Globe nomination.It was her first movie role.
