L'Américaine et l'Amour

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.

A bachelor (Bob Hope) moves in a CA community called "Paradise Village" which consists mostly of married couples with children. He also (under a pen name) writes some fairly explicit books about foreign countries and women and plans to do one about this community. He falls in love with a real estate agent (Lana Turner) who wants nothing to do with him. He also starts to teach all the females in the neighborhood how to sexually excite their husbands. Soon, every one thinks he's having affairs with all the women--including their husbands!

Pretty mild sex comedy. It's not really funny (I never laughed out loud once, but I did chuckle a few times) but it's fairly amusing. It's definitely better than some of the truly awful movies Hope did in the late 60s (like "Boy Did I Get A Wrong Number" and "Cancel My Reservation"). Also it has an Oscar-nominated title song by Henry Mancini (he lost to his OTHER Oscar-nominated song 'Moon River' from "Breakfast at Tiffany's") and the movie looks great.

It is great though as a look at American styles and values in the early 1960s. Those "family communities" that existed back then; the way bachelors and unmarried women were treated and viewed; the way the houses themselves are decorated and styled; the "interesting" outfits worn and the values and mores of people back then.

The acting is just so-so. Hope is OK--but he was in his 60s when he did this--and it shows. But Turner is very good and just drop dead gorgeous and Paula Prentiss is hysterical as one of the neighbors. Also, it's interesting to see Agnes Moorehead playing a judge.

Very mild comedy but interesting.

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.

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.

..........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....