Le sport favori de l'homme

Howard Hawks legendary Director fell like most Men for gorgeous Paula Prentiss. Prentiss was an MGM star having made 4 comedies with her co star Jim Hutton. Hawks had a deal with Paramount for this film but that studio did not want Prentiss in the picture so Howard Hawks took the project to Universal and assigned its greatest star Rock Hudson as co star. MGM loaned Prentiss to Universal for this movie. Paula Prentiss was given above the title billing next to Hudson on this film and raised Prentiss to worldwide star.

Rock Hudson who was #1 at Universal and a top male star in Hollywood gives a great performance as a expert on fishing who in actuality knows nothing about fishing. Hudson in his great career was co star to Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Jane Wyman, Jennifer Jones, and most famously Doris Day.

Paula Prentiss when discussing this movie said when she met Hudson she was stunned as she said Hudson was the most handsome man she ever saw. His looks were a distraction per Paula. Paula Prentiss gives a great performance in this film and someone wrote a book "Alternative Oscars" and listed Prentiss as the star who gave the best female performance. Prentiss was not nominated but I feel in reality this gorgeous talented Texas should have been nominated for Supporting Actress for Where The Boys Are and Best Actress for Man's Favorite Sport?

Rock Hudson stars as a man posing as a fishing expert who basically passes on information from one customer to another. He has written a best selling book on fishing and no one knows he's a fraud, not even his fiancée. He is shocked to learn his boss has entered him into a fishing contest and doesn't know what to do until Paula Prentiss and Maria Perschy tell him they got him involved and are going to teach him to fish. This is a pretty good comedy but it does have a little too much slapstick in it. There are some scenes that are taken from Bringing Up Baby and Howard Hawks did ask Cary Grant to be in this movie but he said no because he didn't want to be seen on screen with women who a lot younger then he was. The movie is two hours long and goes by pretty quickly.

Howard Hawks may not have invented the war between the sexes; but where comedic film-making is concerned, he was the Napoleon of the sub-genre. In such features as "I Was a Male War Bride" and "Man's Favorite Sport", he gave each side in the conflict its turn, always from the male point of view however; and in the process, as Alfred Hitchcock did with staging scenes where something was occurring other than the dialogue's exact subject, he brought a new intensity to developing and ongoing relationships, so vital to the creation of character. In "Man's Favorite Sport", a story about a man who has never fished in his life having to try to win a fishing tournament in order to save his job, he saw a fine opportunity for physical "lazzi" and active scenes; in between the three active scenes of angling and several hilarious misadventures with physical equipment including chairs, inflatable waders and a car-park locale misunderstanding, he also found time to have his writers write some equally memorable dialogue confrontations of many sorts. The cast in this well-liked and well-remembered comedy include veterans John Mcgyver as the boss, Roscoe Karnes and others as grizzled veteran anglers, Pretty Maria Perschy, Charlene Holt and Paula Prentiss as the women in the hero's life, talented Norma Alden as a hip, wisecracking but lovable Indian, and Rock Hudson as Roger Willoughby, the beleaguered junior exec. In the film's storyline, however, Hawks faced one impossibility: Roger Willoughby by never fishing had separated his scheme for making clients happy--by using consultants at various sites and departmental experts to supply information and teaching expertise--from his job, being the man who made the entire scheme work. Strictly speaking, as Paula Prentiss says, Roger is a phony; but this does no alter the workability of the scheme; and the climax--the fishing tournament's outcome, Roger's confessing to his boss and what happens afterward form an exciting, dialogue-rich and memorable conclusion to the side-splitting goings on. The problem Hudson faces--the distinction between theory and practice of the theory--is a bedeviling one in a nation many of whose academic tsars are heavy with inadequate theories and whose practitioners are light on results themselves. I highly recommend this classic for a study of Hawks' techniques as well as for anyone wanting a loud laugh of fifty any time. Add flashy titles, low- key music and crisp, clean sets and a knockout comedy performance by all concerned, especially Paula Prentiss, and this film becomes an instant US classic satire.

Some reviewers have criticized the studio-bound look (Bringing Up Baby wasn't???), flat, high- key photography, the fact Rock Hudson isn't Cary Grant, that much of the comedy is slapstick (which, I guess, means physical and visual), that gags are recycled from older films......I mean, who cares? This is a total delight, probably the best comic roles Prentiss and Hudson ever had, and one of the funniest post World War 2 movies of all. Today, the 6th or 7th time I've seen it, I found when it was over I wanted to go out and buy a DVD of it.

Hawks' films may not have the pictorial qualities that Ford's, Welles', and Hitchcock's had, but when it came to involving you in a group of characters and their silly, yet somehow believable, antics, he had no superiors. It's not surprising it took the French New Wave, with their impatience for tired and predictable dramatic conventions, to finally recognize and rank Hawks at the very highest level of film artists.

In one of the funniest screwball comedies of the pre-World War II studio era, William Powell has a celebrated experience with a fish while he pretended to be a fishing expert. It was the highlight of Libeled Lady and I'm sure Howard Hawks thought that we could get a whole comedy out of that situation.

In Man's Favorite Sport he succeeds admirably. If the film had been done 20 years earlier, Cary Grant would definitely have been in the lead. The part of Roger Willoughby, who wrote a book on fishing based on hearsay from the various customers he's dealt with at Abercrombie&Fitch, would have been ideal for Cary Grant as it has just the kind of physical comedy that Grant was so adept at.

However Rock Hudson steps into the role admirably and for once he's the pursued and not the pursuer. Pursuing Hudson every step of the way is the kookie Paula Prentiss who seemed to study at the Carol Burnett school of zaniness for this part.

On a bit of advice from public relations expert Prentiss, Hudson's boss at Abercrombie&Fitch, John McGiver, has him enter a fishing tournament. When Hudson confesses he's never fished and hates the slimy things, Prentiss decides to help fake it through.

There are a lot of really great laughs in this film, but the best scene is Hudson trying out this inflatable suit for those who are fishing and fall in the water. He does and the results are hilarious.

Don't miss this film if it is ever broadcast.