Private Benjamin

Private Benjamin is a 1980 American comedy film directed by Howard Zieff, written by Nancy Meyers, Charles Shyer, and Harvey Miller, and starring Goldie Hawn, Eileen Brennan, and Armand Assante. The film was one of the biggest box office hits of 1980, and also spawned a short-lived television series starring Lorna Patterson as Judy Benjamin, with Brennan reprising her role as Captain Lewis. Private Benjamin ranked No. 82 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs list, and No. 59 on Bravo's list of "100 Funniest Movies". Plot Judy Benjamin, a 28-year-old Jewish woman from a sheltered wealthy upbringing whose lifelong dream is to "marry a professional man", is devastated after Yale Goodman, her new husband, dies on their wedding night during sex. Emotionally adrift, Judy tells her story on a radio call-in show and meets another caller, Army recruiter SFC James Ballard, who leads her to believe military life will provide the "family" she seeks. He also pitches the service as a getaway, comparing it to a spa vacation, but Judy has a rude awakening upon arriving at basic training, realizing the recruiter conned her. She wants to quit almost immediately, but is astonished to find out, contrary to the assertions of her recruiting sergeant, that she cannot leave. Army regulations and the continual disapproval of both Captain Doreen Lewis and SFC L. C. Ross, the drill sergeant, frustrate Judy—but when her parents arrive at Fort Biloxi to take her home, berating her for "punishing" them with her decisions, she decides to stay and finish basic training. Judy does complete her training after a war games exercise in which her squad exposes an affair between a member of her training platoon and a rival company officer (with whom Lewis was also having an affair), and takes the leaders of both sides hostage. Upon completion of basic training, Judy and her friends spend the weekend on leave in New Orleans, where she meets Henri Tremont, a French doctor there for a medical conference. After a brief romance, Henri returns to Paris and Judy begins training with an elite paratrooper unit, the Thornbirds.