Soltero en el paraíso

Bob Hope plays a worldly writer whose specialty is the sexual mores of European women. He is called back to the U.S. from his home on the French Riviera after his business manager takes off with his money, leaving him with back taxes to pay. His editor (played by the delightfully droll John McGiver) assigns him to write a book about the sexual mores of American suburbanites and places him in a tract house in a new Southern California subdivision. There, Hope meets the glamorous Realtor Lana Turner, who has given up on men, and the wacky pre-feminist wives and mothers who are his neighbors. Romance and troubles follow to a predictable ending.

This is escapist humor at its purest, produced at a time when Americans faced a world seemingly on the brink of nuclear war. Filmed on location, it also provides a fascinating look at the culture of the time, making you wish you were living then amid the Atomic Age architecture. Dig those compact tract homes painted in California coral and aqua, that far-out supermarket with the giant windows in front, that snappy diner with the carhops, that chic barbecue restaurant where they serve shrimp cocktails, ribs and gibsons al fresco! (I wish I knew where it was filmed).

The first hour is great, with quirky comic turns by Paula Prentiss as the excitable young housewife next door, Janis Paige as the sexy soon-to-be divorcée on the make and Reta Shaw as the overbearing neighborhood snoop. Unfortunately, the second half drags a bit as the farce grows thin, Hope grows more grating and most of the action moves inside to studio sets.

Still, it's a nice trip back to 1961.

Bob Hope was 58 and Lana Turner was 40 when they made this movie. They have no chemistry whatsoever so a romance is not believable. Perhaps with softened makeup and hair she would have been appealing. Anyway the story is beside the point now, 45 years later.

The movie is all about the huge, spacious, tract developments in undeveloped parts of California in 1961. I lived in one, so this movie takes me back there. Watching it takes me back to those days when Kennedy was the new president, when there were brand new houses in pale pink, light green, and yellow; each house divided from its neighbour by a row of cacti. Families moved to them from the older, two-story traditional houses. It was supposed to be a great thing to have no stairs; to live in a sprawling "rancher." Just looking at the houses with the huge kitchens and wall phones brings nostalgia, as only the very rich can afford space now; back then it was taken for granted.

A major "comedic" event in this film is Bob putting too much detergent in the washer, and the ensuing crisis when soap suds flood the entire house.

The houses were spacious and everything was inexpensive - such houses were $20,000 new. Nowadays any surviving houses from that era have been remodeled and no longer have the orange built-in bars, the gold appliances, or wood grained walls.

This is my parents' world, post-war - 16 years after the end of WW II. This is an era where everything is available, where the kitchen is the size of a restaurant, but there is no happiness whatsoever.

A scene in the supermarket is jarring when a little girl who had been left in the car by her mother is talking to Bob Hope and her mother comes along and just leaves her with him as she goes about her shopping. That would never happen now and reminds us of a more innocent and trusting time.

The development is called Paradise. It's more like Paradise Lost, or Discarded. There's a dark subplot of an unhappy marriage, a couple that is "practically divorced" and the wife (Janis Paige) is throwing herself at Bob Hope. But he's secretly a gentleman who only has eyes for the stiff, unmarried Lana Turner, and when he finally gets her, there is the obligatory panning across the floor showing their discarded clothing and then we hear her giggles. Just like a Rock Hudson/Doris Day ending.

Then the movie ends and I guess maybe we are meant to think they will have a real life together. They're too old to start having kids to populate the housing tract and be ignored and spoiled, so maybe they will write and think and discuss real things and have a happy life together.

The sixties are gone - but here in this movie we have the remnants of what it started out to be, if people could only have held on to it and preserved something for the future.

Who knew a fluff piece like this would be so thought provoking 40 years later.

I thank Turner Classics for realizing these are valuable period pieces that give us insight on a bygone age. An age where people lost the values they had in the 30s and 40s. After the war, people wanted comfort and ease, and wanted their kids to enjoy a carefree life without the privation of the depression and the war. Unfortunately it only shows that comfort and ease do not bring happiness.

This is the most sophisticated of the later Bob Hope comedies, which may seem like faint praise. But "Bachelor in Paradise" is a mildly enjoyable satire of suburban mores in the late 50's-early 60's. Hope is well cast as author A. J. Niles, who is doing undercover research in an upscale tract community for his book on sex in suburbia. The husbands mistakenly think that Hope is romancing their wives while they're away at work, and soon all hell breaks loose. The movie starts smartly before degenerating into a more typical sex farce. But there are rewards to be had along the way: Lana Turner, as Hope's real love interest, looks especially glamorous; Paula Prentiss shows her marvelous comedic flair in a supporting role; the 60's suburban sets are terrific; Agnes Moorehead does a funny cameo as a flaming red-headed judge who makes Judy seem demure; and there's a nice Henry Mancini score -- especially the catchy title tune (which made Ann-Margret a star when she sang it at the Oscars). This is defnitely not a first rate comedy, but it is now fun to watch as a period piece. Unfortunately, the video released by MGM wreaks havoc with the Cinemascope compositions. Letterboxing was definitely called for, or at least some judicious panning-and-scanning.

I don't know why I love this movie so much but I do. It's certainly no cinematic masterpiece, but if you're of a certain age it's an awfully pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

***FYI: Catch this one on Turner Classic Movies if you can, they air it in its correct wide-screen format.

I cannot imagine any other actor who could play A.J. Niles as effectively as Bob Hope. Mr. Niles, an internationally traveled author of Kensey-type books on the sex lives of the inhabitants of various European nations, finds himself confined to the United States as a condition of his quasi-probation for unintentional tax evasion that was actually committed by his now missing accountant. "I just can't believe that Herman Whoppinger is dishonest!" The plot line is amusing and clever, if predictable, but its predictability really only enforces the comforting effect this film will have on the average baby boomer who once lived in that clean fresh little white-bread world and misses it. Mr. Niles is then sent to 1961 suburbia by his manager to write a similar book about the sex lives of Middle America, and here he runs across real estate broker Rosemary Howard, played by impeccably groomed Lana Turner. Ms. Turner, easily one of the five most beautiful women of the American cinema, is still stunning at 40.

Once Rosemary puts A.J. into her gigantic airplane-shaped Plymouth and drives him into the real estate development of Paradise Village, the baby boomer viewer will be transported back to a much happier time in our history. With the exception of the mountainous terrain visible in the background, Paradise Village could be Anywhere USA. Those houses. Those stores. Those clothes! If your mom wore little white gloves and teetered around on pencil heels, you know what I'm talking about. You can almost smell the clean suburban night air, the flowers in the back yard, and the burgers cooking on a neighbor's grill, and you never want to leave.

Aside from this, the cast, including Paula Prentiss, Janis Paige, Virginia Grey, and the priceless Reta Shaw turn in a capable performance with a witty script packed with all the anticipated nudge'n'wink humor of the early sixties sexless bedroom comedies. Replete with the tired old saws of an over-sudsing washing machine, the judgmental neighborhood busybody, colossal misunderstandings, and people getting drunk and acting stupid, you will probably smile a good deal more than you'll laugh out loud, but the story still manages to put these ingredients into a somewhat original arrangement and there is enough genuine chemistry between Hope and Turner to keep you interested and concerned for the outcome of the characters.

Perhaps the best compliment I can give this pleasing film is that in our home, where we have enormous love and respect for old films, this one stands up to repeated viewings and gets watched over and over again. It's a delightful way to spend a rainy evening.

I watch this every time it's on cable, mainly because it is a graphic memento of "Camelot" - a time in America of sheer optimism and middle class power. This movie revels in the 60s suburban life style and the fact even the middle class was shrugging off stuffy Victorian sexuality. But within a setting of Bob Hope's dry humor, lots of hot 60s women, the BIG cars, the ranch style canyon subdivision houses - and the consumptive 60s lifestyle. Gotta love it on nostalgia value alone but as one of the better Hope 60s comedies, peppered with his slick double entendre one-liners bounced off a bevy of Hollywood hotties, it's a winner as well.