Uno scapolo in paradiso

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.

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.

Long time ago I was surprised when I realized that the director of "Bachelor in Paradise", was the same person who made the masterpiece "The Incredible Shrinking Man", and the one behind cult classics as "It Came from Outer Space", "Creature from the Black Lagoon", and "Tarantula"; not to mention fillers as "Monster on the Campus", and hundreds of TV episodes from all kind of series, from "Dr. Kildare" to "The Love Boat". Arnold was not new to comedy: there are indeed comic elements on all the horror movies mentioned above, but moreover, a year before he started shooting this MGM glossy adaptation of a story by Vera Caspary (the same lady who wrote both "Laura", and "Les Girls"), director Jack Arnold --who I guess Andrew Sarris must have classified very low in his Olympus of filmmakers-- had a hit with the British comedy "The Mouse That Roared", with Peter Sellers playing different roles, including the Duchess of Fenwick, the senile ruler of the littlest country in Europe. It is a story of little people and little minds, treated with affection and a kind of humor far from what audiences laugh about today. "Bachelor in Paradise" is somehow in the same vein: it is a funny and affectionate view of how little minds react when confronted with different attitudes about sex, which --up until the days of the reign of the Hays film code-- was treated rather hypocritically in American cinema. Everybody was doing all type of positions and gender combinations, with all kinds of adornments, except "Hollywood creatures". For the early 1960s, though not as radical as it may sound, "Bachelor in Paradise" suggested sex was more fun than accepted in regular films, and this was its main attraction, not Bob Hope, Lana Turner, or the new coupling of Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton. Even I, who was 10 years old and lived in the city, far away from a suburb like Paradise, found it more daring than the comedies in which Doris Day played a virgin with tired facial tricks, as 1959's "Pillow Talk", which incredibly won the Best Screenplay Academy Award. I had not seen "Bachelor in Paradise" in decades... but when I did again I found it decidedly proto-Altmanesque, the kind of comedy that Robert Altman would have been doing in the early 1960s, probably with a more acerbic approach. Only the music industry had teased us with multiple releases of the music Henry Mancini composed for the movie. Now we can watch "Bachelor in Paradise" again, restored, in wide-screen and the flat color cinematography of those years (with few exceptions, everything was as bright and clear as the images in television sets). However it must be seen with a 1961 frame of mind. If you had not been born yet, do a little research. It does help a lot to appreciate a film about sexual life of the Americans without showing what they were doing in cars, bedrooms, and bushes, when the movie was made.

As some people who already posted reviews mentioned, the greatest value to me about this movie is being able to see a slice of what it was like in CA during the late 50s and early 60s. I love this particular era, so I guess I am biased. I also enjoy listening to the music that's heard throughout the movie, especially the slower-paced cool jazz-like tunes with xylophones.

It's too silly to be taken seriously but if you like documentaries about American society, this film is very interesting and won't disappoint. I'm pretty sure that some neighborhoods like this in CA had bad neighbors and even dangerous ones, as hard to believe as that may be. A good example is when bikers during this period would buy homes in fairly new conservative neighborhoods like the ones depicted in this film. All kinds of sordid behavior occurred, and the neighbors had to put up with it for some time until police would finally kick them out. That and other undesirable reality was swept under the rug and hardly ever reported, but it did happen and it was very scandalous and shocking at that time-more than today. Not everything was as happy during this era as it seems in this film, but life was slower and there were fewer people in CA. The neighborhoods in this film are located in Panorama City and Woodland Hills, still very nice neighborhoods today. They're both located in San Fernando Valley, an area that is still in the higher end of the real estate market. Unfortunately, most neighborhoods that looked like this at that time have been transformed to ugly ghettos or concrete jungles with endless and boring strip malls.

Even if the neighborhoods and life in the film seem to be exaggerated, it's still a contrast to today's life in CA. I'd rather live in that era than in the one today. There's a lot of negative that can be listed about that era, but there's also a lot of positive. People were held to higher standards and most people dressed a lot better than they do today. Even the colors seemed to be nicer, not just in the clothing that people wore but in the colors they chose for their cars. I also notice the artistic quality of the cursive shapes of the letters in marquees, advertisements and neon signs. The way buildings look today and their marquees look unappealing, very boring and very ugly. Of course, I'm biased because I have always liked almost everything about the particular era depicted in the film. It was like the beginning of the end of a fantasy that I unfortunately didn't get to experience because I was born in the the mid 60s. I think it was the apex of ideal happiness in CA. But I still remember some things about the late 60s that were distinct from the 70s and the ensuing decades. Unfortunately and ironically, life improved in many ways, it also degenerated after the early 60s; and that's why I think many people like me yearn for that era.

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.