The Only Game in Town (film)

The Only Game in Town
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	George Stevens
Produced by	Fred Kohlmar Edgar Lansbury
Written by	Frank D. Gilroy
Starring	Elizabeth Taylor Warren Beatty
Music by	Maurice Jarre
Cinematography	Henri Decaë
Edited by	John Holmes
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	March 4, 1970 (1970-03-04)
Running time	113 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10,235,000
Box office	$1.5 million (rentals)

The Only Game in Town is a 1970 American drama film, the last directed by George Stevens. It stars Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty.

The screenplay by Frank D. Gilroy is based on his play of the same name which had a brief run on Broadway in 1968.

Aging Las Vegas chorine Fran Walker (Taylor) drifts into an affair with lounge pianist and compulsive gambler Joe Grady (Beatty) while waiting for her married lover, San Francisco businessman Thomas Lockwood, to finalize the divorce he has been promising to get for the past five years.

By the time Lockwood keeps his word and is free to marry his mistress, she finds she has fallen in love with Joe, who has finally accumulated enough money to fulfill his dream of relocating to New York City and beginning a new life there. Faced with the choice of a possible career in Manhattan or marriage to Fran, Joe opts for the latter after losing a tough poker game.

20th Century Fox paid $550,000 for the film rights before the play opened on Broadway, with Gilroy to get $150,000 to write the script. The play, starring Tammy Grimes and Barry Nelson, was not a success, running only sixteen performances.

The film was budgeted at $11 million because of Taylor's insistence it be shot in Paris, France, so she could be near her then-husband Richard Burton, who was working on the film Staircase (1969) with Rex Harrison at the time. Stevens had previously directed Taylor twice with great success, in A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956).