But Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love figure only as a background in this story of establishment figures : George C. Scott as Archie , a divorced physician ; Julie Christie as Petulia , a bored young socialite ; and Richard Chamberlain as Petulia 's husband -- the son of a San Francisco burgher -LRB- Joseph Cotton -RRB- -- who is driven to fits of violence by the impossibility of living with his own apparent physical perfection .