Bachelor in Paradise

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.

..........IN HEAVEN!!!

1961........Kennedy was in the White House, the word 'Vietnam' meant little (or nothing) to the average American, and Bob Hope was close to winding down his prolific (film) career. Just getting to soak in the memorable era this film represents would normally have been entertainment enough, but this flick goes the extra mile by offering a fun little ride with Bob Hope at the wheel, in fine comedic form.

Having just watched the Warner's Archive Collection Remastered Edition DVD, I can honestly say that I can't remember having had a better time watching a movie in many, many years.

Though "The Ghost Breakers" (1940) will always be my favorite Bob Hope film, this one comes close. The script is good, Hope is Hope, and the supporting cast offers a tantalizing bevy of 'Bob' beauties, both talented AND lovely (A young Paula Prentiss showing up in form-fitting, pink short-shorts, approximately 20 minutes in, is TRULY a sight to behold!).

If you get the chance, mix yourself a pitcher of 'Gibsons', pop this one in, and let the wondrous era that once was, and will never again be, wash over you like a light sun shower....

Call this MGM glossy a Metrocolor time capsule of 1961 when Southern California tract style suburban living was as popular as the Twist and fall out shelters.

The plot gives us Bob Hope as A.J. Niles, a bon vivant author who has been jet-setting around the world for the past ten years or so writing salacious best-sellers about the various sexual mores of men and women based on culture and environment. Due to tax problems, A.J. is summoned back home by his publisher, portrayed by the avuncular yet quirky John McGiver. A.J.'s next saucy expose is to take place in a cookie cutter suburban shangri-la of Southern California real estate for young marrieds called Paradise Village. Kids are optional and cute but not precocious.

'Bachelor' Bob glides through this relaxing opus, ably assisted by adrenalin raising Janis Paige,who practically steals the show as a truly desperate housewife.

Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton are again reunited on screen to add hot and bothered sparks to the otherwise tranquil setting of palm trees, manicured lawns and oh so colorful pastel interiors. In this context, Hope aptly refers to his living room as "early Disneyland."

Lana Turner portrays Bob Hope's love interest. Miss Turner is tailored in perfectly matching fashion and temperament to the laid-back Southern California motif, graceful and elegant as the on screen TWA Boeing 707 is to the cloudless blue skies. Unfortunately, this comparison also sums up the on screen chemistry between Lana and Bob.

Don Porter is cast as the glowering housing tract manager who is also eyeing Miss Turner and accuses A.J. Niles of being no less than a "libertine." This only adds to the author's appeal within the female population of this perpetual block party as they have already read the notorious A.J's previous global escapades.

Henry Mancini's sprightly, yet soothing theme provides a suitable backdrop to the warm, sun kissed environment replete with bright supermarkets. You can almost smell the fresh produce next to the pyramid stacked canned goods waiting for an accident to happen.

While BACHELOR IN PARADISE is not exactly a hotbed of sexual scandal in the suburbs, it does exude a relaxing comfort zone simmer for the viewer.

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.

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.