How to Commit Marriage

The daughter of Bob Hope and Jane Wyman and the son of Jackie Gleason are in love and ready to wed. What they don't know is Hope and Wyman are considering divorce. Gleason has some rather negative view on marriage in the first place. They find out and it shatters some illusions.

Since it's the Sixties, what to do but go live together. Of course with a blessed event arriving that does complicate things.

Now the young folks, Tim Matheson and JoAnna Cameron are presented as fairly intelligent people. So why anyone would listen to religious faker Irwin Corey and give the kid up for adoption is beyond me. But that's what the film asks you to believe.

Two of the funniest men of the last century were Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason. So why they got stuck with a mediocre story idea like this is beyond me. I can't believe that the two of them had they looked could have found a better story idea.

When a golf playing Marquis Chimp steals the film you know you've got trouble.

In the intended generation gap comedy, Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason play bickering not-quite-in-laws. I say "not-quite" because Gleason's son and Hope's daughter are cohabiting without benefit of matrimony.

Living in sin.

Shacking up, don't you know.

The kids have a baby out of wedlock and put it up for adoption so they can concentrate on performing in their Top Ten psychedelic rock group, The Comfortable Chair (Cue Cardinal Fang: "The COMFY CHAIR!?!") Hope and estranged wife Jane Wyman (whose real-life ex-husband was governor of California when this film was made) adopt the tot using fake identities and, after a round of 3 a.m. feedings, grudgingly reconcile.

Jackie discovers that Hope & Wyman have the grandchild, revealing the info during a golf match between Hope and a chimp. (You're ahead of me. Bob loses.) But Ol' Ski Nose solves everything by impersonating the youngsters' guru, a Maharishi-like religious leader, at a huge concert. In disguise, Bob tells the kids to forget nirvana and perfect happiness and get married instead. By the time everyone figures out who's who, the rock stars have their baby AND wedding rings, Bob and Jane are back together and the new house Bob just sold Jackie gets destroyed in a mudslide.

Even for a wacky 1960s comedy, the events in this movie defy logic: What adoption agency would instantly hand over a newborn to a decidedly over-the-hill couple? Wouldn't Hope and Wyman face prison sentences for using phony names to get the baby? And how could Jackie Gleason attract Tina "I Trained at the Actors Studio, But They're Going to Put 'She was Ginger on Gilligan's Island' On My Tombstone" Louise?

Hope's probably the LAST guy in Hollywood to have been defending monogamy, given his notorious unfaithfulness to wife Dolores over a seven-decade marriage, and it's doubly offensive that he spoofed an Eastern religious figure to do so. Imagine the justifiable outcry had he impersonated a priest or a rabbi.

Gleason's in decent form but is given little to do. HOW TO COMMIT MARRIAGE isn't as utterly bizarre as another Gleason '60s vehicle, SKIDOO (1968), but simply one of Hope's worst starring films -- a pity, because for around 25 years Hope WAS a legitimately great movie comedian. At least it's interesting to see Leslie Nielsen play the straight man in this film, and the young lovers are JoAnna Cameron (who set the hearts of seven-year-old boys aflutter as ISIS in the 1970s) and Tim Matheson (who, FIFTEEN years after this movie, would still be playing a collegian in UP THE CREEK).

When you see the names Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason, you pretty much expect and instant classic. Well this film was just the opposite, an instant dud. This film was obviously somebody's idea of trying to poke fun at the hippie culture of the 1960's and the whole idea of free love. Unfortunately, by the time this film was made, everything was out of date, even the music and the fashions. You could pretty much tell by this film that Bob Hope's film career was pretty much at an end and that he was ready to concentrate on television. Also, Jane Wyman is pretty much a waste in this film as well as Tim Matheson (its hard to believe he would survive this film and make one of the great comedies of the 70's, Animal House). Also, you pretty much can tell that everyone was just in it for a paycheck. This is one film that definitely hasn't aged well.

Also, WHO THE HELL WERE THE COMFORTABLE CHAIR?

Amusingly salty farce brings Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason into the swinging 1960s--and just in time! Hope and Jane Wyman agree to end their stale marriage after 19 years, just as their daughter decides to drop out of college and join a rock group with her boyfriend. Turns out she's also pregnant, and has been persuaded to put her baby up for adoption by a (bribed) Indian guru, so Hope and Wyman conspire to adopt the child under the guise of an Irish couple (don't ask). Gleason is Hope's would-be in-law, a rock music promoter who holds a grudge against Bob for a years-old real estate transaction that ended up in the mud. Tatty-looking comedy (with unflattering hairstyles) stays afloat on some funny one-liners, but loses momentum during two pointless sequences: a golf match involving a chimpanzee and the slapstick finale, an endless dig at the Maharishi. Despite this, Hope, Gleason and Wyman (and Tina Louise as Gleason's main squeeze) manage bright performances, and director Norman Panama excels with a romantic fantasy scene and also the opening montage, a cynical jab at married life. **1/2 from ****

Well, one of my curiosities was settled when I watched this movie starring for the only time Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, and Jane Wyman together. This one turned out to be Ms. Wyman's last theatrical feature and Hope's penultimate one as leading man. Hope has some pretty funny lines in the beginning and has some good rapport with Ms. Wyman up to the scene when they both dress in the '60s fashion style at a club their daughter (JoAnna Cameron) performs in with her partner Tim Matheson who's the son of Gleason here. Gleason himself also seems pretty funny when performing with Hope in trading insults but after a while, the plot goes in nonsense places like having a monkey play golf with Hope that really gets lame. And don't get me started with Professor Irwin Corey as an Indian-style wise man who Hope later imitates. I did like Hope when he faked a stereotypical Scottish man in another plot point though I don't feel like wasting time recounting that one here. There's also a mixture of film styles like the undercranking of some scenes and the split screen usually presented in these '60s movies that didn't work comically. Still, it was interesting enough for me to see other players like Tina Louise, formerly of "Gilligan's Island", and Matheson-years from his iconic teaming with John Belushi in Animal House, not to mention Leslie Nielson way before his legendary teaming with Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker for Airplane! and the "Police Squad" TV shows/Naked Gun movies. So on that note, How to Commit Marriage is worth a look for those curious of all of the above.