Soltero en el paraíso

I don't know why I love this movie so much but I do. It's certainly no cinematic masterpiece, but if you're of a certain age it's an awfully pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

***FYI: Catch this one on Turner Classic Movies if you can, they air it in its correct wide-screen format.

I cannot imagine any other actor who could play A.J. Niles as effectively as Bob Hope. Mr. Niles, an internationally traveled author of Kensey-type books on the sex lives of the inhabitants of various European nations, finds himself confined to the United States as a condition of his quasi-probation for unintentional tax evasion that was actually committed by his now missing accountant. "I just can't believe that Herman Whoppinger is dishonest!" The plot line is amusing and clever, if predictable, but its predictability really only enforces the comforting effect this film will have on the average baby boomer who once lived in that clean fresh little white-bread world and misses it. Mr. Niles is then sent to 1961 suburbia by his manager to write a similar book about the sex lives of Middle America, and here he runs across real estate broker Rosemary Howard, played by impeccably groomed Lana Turner. Ms. Turner, easily one of the five most beautiful women of the American cinema, is still stunning at 40.

Once Rosemary puts A.J. into her gigantic airplane-shaped Plymouth and drives him into the real estate development of Paradise Village, the baby boomer viewer will be transported back to a much happier time in our history. With the exception of the mountainous terrain visible in the background, Paradise Village could be Anywhere USA. Those houses. Those stores. Those clothes! If your mom wore little white gloves and teetered around on pencil heels, you know what I'm talking about. You can almost smell the clean suburban night air, the flowers in the back yard, and the burgers cooking on a neighbor's grill, and you never want to leave.

Aside from this, the cast, including Paula Prentiss, Janis Paige, Virginia Grey, and the priceless Reta Shaw turn in a capable performance with a witty script packed with all the anticipated nudge'n'wink humor of the early sixties sexless bedroom comedies. Replete with the tired old saws of an over-sudsing washing machine, the judgmental neighborhood busybody, colossal misunderstandings, and people getting drunk and acting stupid, you will probably smile a good deal more than you'll laugh out loud, but the story still manages to put these ingredients into a somewhat original arrangement and there is enough genuine chemistry between Hope and Turner to keep you interested and concerned for the outcome of the characters.

Perhaps the best compliment I can give this pleasing film is that in our home, where we have enormous love and respect for old films, this one stands up to repeated viewings and gets watched over and over again. It's a delightful way to spend a rainy evening.

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.

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.

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

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.