User reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 like Bob Hope a lot better than I like Doris Day. This is a Doris-Day style 60s sex comedy, except that the central character's a man with better lines.

Unusually, Bob Hope is a pretty successful lover, but otherwise he plays the normal Bob Hope character in the normal way.

It's mostly a gently enjoyable piece of innocent fluff, played pretty well on the whole. Watch out for a lovely cameo by Agnes Moorehead as the judge.

But for 1961, this was a pretty progressive film. The strong characters are the women, and their story is of fighting the stultifying boredom of housewifery and being respected as people.

Nothing spectacular, but carried out competently. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you like.

A best-selling author with I.R.S. problems moves into California's suburbia sect under an alias. Bob Hope doesn't seem to like playing opposite women very much. He just can't wait for them to stop talking so he can one-up them with his banter. Hope has an erratic sense of rhythm which pushes some lines too far and some not far enough. Still, "Bachelor" needs his hamminess to work because Lana Turner is spotty and uncomfortable as the suburban queen he falls for (even her surprise dance in a Hawaiian restaurant feels forced, though that's her best moment). Paula Prentiss is around as Bob's neighbor, and she amuses with her deep, off-center voice and unpredictable manner, but Jim Hutton as her husband is a complete dullard. I like this era for film comedies: the pastel colors, the plush interiors, and of course Henry Mancini's tinkly background score (always reassuring), but this movie just doesn't deliver many laughs, and the legal stuff in the second-half is positively desperate. ** from ****

For those of us who were around in the late fifties and early sixities, this walk down memory lane movie evokes a longing to be living back in those times again.

The plot deals with Hope and Turner meeting in a new tract housing development in California. Who can forget these housing developments that sprang up, not only in California but near every major city in the United States.

The new fashion was sprawling ranch style houses replete with built-in appliances, wall phones, pecky Cypress paneling and walls of sliding glass doors--to "bring the outdoors in".

This "California" style housing became popular around the country in the early sixties and I lived in one. Few today can imagine the excitement that came, back then, moving into one of these wonder homes with double front doors and all the modern conveniences. In the early sixties such time saving high-brow devices, as the garbage disposal and the dishwasher, were years away from becoming the norm for middle class America. Having them raised you up one notch on the social ladder.

For those not fortunate to have lived in the early sixties, this movie is a delightful and uncanningly accurate reflection of the times.

It's not a great movie, but then again, it's not trying to cure cancer. It is what it is meant to be, a pleasant and enjoyable battle of the sexes comedy. Doris Day could easily have been interchanged with Lana Turner in this middle class farce.

Bob hopes delightful quipping is ever present. No one else can deliver snappy asides like Hope. The meaning behind his subtle wise-crack remarks are largely lost on todays younger viewers.

As other reviewers have stated, watching this film leaves us who lived in the sixties greatly longing for these days past.

Color television was new and exciting, as were modern built in appliances, and spacious rambling ranch homes with California architecture were the dream homes of the middle class.

You can just see the family gathering in the living room of one of these homes, around the new color TV, to watch the most recent space launching from Cape Canaveral.

And that is exactly what we did.

If you lived in the sixties, definitely get a copy of this film. Be prepared for waves of long forgotten memories to come flooding back. Waves of nostalgia will make you wish for those simpler, happy days again.

If you never lived in the sixties, then by all means, you need to watch Bachelor in Paradise for a time travel trip to the past to watch and experience a unique time in our history.

This light comedy is all formula - see other reviews for the general plot. The most interesting aspects of it now are the locations, sets, props and general early 60's culture - lonely suburban housewives, swinging but somehow buttoned down bachelor, etc. Everyone drinking hard - built in bars, tiki lounge cocktails, gibsons, etc.

The cars, in particular, are great. Check out the hair styles! Lana Turner has a helmet of blond surf. Hope's hair is like a raked zen garden.

Hope reportedly was quite a swordsman in his day, and he tries hard to be a rake in this farce, but his sarcastic "jokes" are real duds and he clearly was too old for the emerging "cool".

He also made a fortune in LA real estate putting up subdivisions like "Paradise Village". I wonder if these locations were shot on his development - more cash to Bob.

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.

The film induces a nice feeling of nostalgia. 1961 was a time of great optimism. Kennedy was in the White House, the space program was on the move, and the country was experiencing a wave of postwar prosperity. The possibilities seemed endless. Southern California was the stuff of dreams back then, a place where one could buy a brightly colored, spacious, modern home for a paltry $20K. It was the epitome of suburban living. Women wanted to be feminine. It was a great time to be alive. The film doesn't hide the fact that things were NOT perfect, but no such place exists or ever existed. Certainly not in New York, the center of East Coast provincialism, where "intellectuals" think the height of living is an apartment in an urban canyon. And certainly not in Europe, which had nowhere near the level of prosperity, freedom, and opportunity available to Americans.

"Bachelor in Paradise" is a very good comedy romance. It's a little bit of social commentary on the times with ever so little satire. Lest someone think it's all about sex, which the studios liked to imply in the trailers and promotions, the Paradise in the title is the name of a suburban family community just developed in southern California. These tract communities were common in the growth of housing during the two decades following World War II.

Bob Hope plays a confirmed bachelor, Adam J. Niles, who has a reputation as a ladies man and womanizer. That comes from his authorship of a number of books about the love lives of women of various countries. He had been outside the U. S. for 14 years, living in Europe where he has been researching and writing his books. While it's implied that his life is filled with amour, he actually does do research for his books. They are considered risqué by some, titillating by others.

When his publisher calls him back to the U. S to face the IRS, he finds that his business manager never filed a tax return for the 14 years he has been abroad, and he absconded with Hope's assets. So, he now owes the IRS a whopping $625,000 tax debt. They understand the fraud by the manager and he's given time to pay the debt, but he can 't leave the country. John McGiver plays his publisher, Austin Palfrey, who arranges for him to go incognito, as Jack Adams, to rent a home in a new tract community in southern California and write his next book about the modern American housewife.

A very good cast includes a number of actors of the day who played in very good comedies. Lana Turner is the leading actress, Rosemary Howard. A bevy of actresses play the housewives and mothers of Paradise, California, who want to rekindle the flame in their husband's hearts. Janis Paige, Paula Prentiss, and Virginia Grey contribute nicely to the comedy. John McGiver is very good as Palfrey and other actors who add to the humor are Don Porter, Jim Hutton, and Clinton Sundberg. Reta Shaw plays the Paradise snoop and snitch, Mrs. Brown. And Agnes Moorehead is a hoot toward the end as the judge in a court trial filed by three of the husbands.

While there are some antics and a little slapstick in places, the best comedy is in a script that has some very funny dialog. Early on, the looks that Lana Turner's Rosemary gives Hope's Niles, are hilarious in themselves. And that leads one to wonder if some of his lines weren't ad-libbed and kept in because they are so outlandish and funny. The film received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination. Here are some favorite lines.

Adam Niles (aka, Jack Adams), "I'll need a secretary." Austin Palfrey, his publisher, "One ugly secretary." Niles, "One that can type, huh?"

Rosemary Howard, "But most women in Paradise have husbands and children." Jack Adams (anonymous Adam Niles), "A lot of families get started that way."

Jack/Niles, after they arrive at the house he has rented, "It would be pink." Rosemary Howard, "That's not pink. That's California Coral." Jack, "Who thinks up all the names for colors in this country - Tennessee Williams?"

Jack/Niles, "It's very attractive. Even the termites seem to like it." Rosemary, "That's pecky Cypress. It's quite the rage."

Jack/Niles, looking over the house interior, "Oh, it's very charming. What do you call this style - Early Disneyland?"

Jack/Niles, debating over the last fryer available in the grocery story, "What's the matter - don't you think I'm worth half a chicken?" Rosemary, "Well, frankly, I haven't thought of you in terms of chicken. In fact, I haven't thought of you period. Good day!"

Jack and Rosemary are sitting at the bar in a South Pacific islands restaurant. Rosemary, "Is he a bartender or a landscape architect?" Jack, "He's an artist. Would you care for a Scorpion's Kiss?" Rosemary, "Oh, is that what they call 'em,?" Jack, "And this is a Bikini." Rosemary, "That's an odd name for a drink - Bikini." Jack, "That's because there's not much to it but it hits the right spots."

Rosemary, "I'm no longer an employee of Paradise Village Inc." Jack, "You quit!" Rosemary, "I did. I won't work for any man after he fires me." Jack, "Well, I admire your spirit, among other things."

Jack/Niles, "Now, let me see. You'll be my landlady and secretary, and I'll be your tenant and your boss." Rosemary, "A very involved relationship." Jack, "Yeah. You raise my rent, I'll lower your salary." Rosemary, "You lower my salary and I'll raise my voice."

Rosemary, "Have you been a bachelor all your life?" Jack, "I was engaged once, at the age of seven, but what I thought were the pangs of love turned out to be measles."

Rosemary, "Then there's still a chance that some poor girl may marry you?" Jack, "A rich girl would have a better chance."

Rosemary, "Mrs. Brown saw you and Dolores leaving together." Jack, "We could have used her at Pearl Harbor."

Judge Peterson, "Mr. Niles, when you are finished debating with yourself, will you please answer the question."

Austin Palfrey," after Niles testifies in court to his love for Rosemary, "You idiot - you've ruined everything. Now you're just another guy." Niles, "Yeah, and it's about time.

This was one of three films, I believe, that paired Timothy Hutton and Paula Prentiss. They didn't pair up all that great, but Paula is worth watching anytime ("Man's Favorite Sport" is her best). And Bob Hope has an easygoing and easy to watch manner that always underplays (compare this to the braindead current generation's idea of humor). As for the notion that women didn't possess strong personalities before Gloria Steinem, it only exists in a fantasy world (a.k.a. the movies) of yesteryear that never existed. And they never met my aunt or sister. "Strong personality" NEVER had anything to do with gender. This is a good example of a movie that pleases, yet didn't cost the national debt to produce.

Bob Hope is oddly cast as the playboy writer, Adam Niles. He has been living in France for many years...having a great time with the ladies and writing books about love, sex and romance. But when he learns he owes the IRS $600,000, he's got to change his wild ways and economize while he works on his next book. So, instead of a gay life in Paris, he's forced to move to suburbia where he is an oddity indeed. It seems that in the planned community of Paradise he's the only bachelor.

This film is very much like most of Hope's later films. Instead of doing, he spends the story throwing out one liners--mostly very sexist and unfunny ones. In many ways, it's like he's making a guest appearance in the films instead of being the more active funny many of his earlier film career. It isn't helped by having Lana Turner playing his straight man, so to speak as this just isn't Turner's forte. Nor does it help that the 58 year-old Hope is hopelessly miscast as a man who is like catnip! Because of this, it's definitely a movie more for his die-hard fans than the casual viewer. Now am I saying this is a bad film? No. It's pleasant and enjoyable at times and is a decent time-passer.

Other than Bob Hope's wisecracks (which aren't all that funny), this movie is a lost cause. It involves a writer of "Bachelor" books, forced to live in a suburban, fifties community because his accountant ran off with his fortune. He has come to study the natives and then write about them. In the process he falls in love with Lana Turner. The screenplay is insipid, the acting stiff and bloodless, there is utterly no charm. The best characters in the book are two little kids who only appear for about three minutes. This is the stuff that was put in the theaters in the sixties. It titillates but the censors had their bony fingers on the button at every turn. The result a tiresome, endless non-comedy that bores everyone. Watch the ridiculous courtroom scene at the end if you want an example of the worst of cinema.

I saw this motion picture in 1961, and it stuck with me for a few reasons. I was raised in a tract neighborhood nearly identical to 'Paradise Village', so it's like 'going home'. Hope was never funnier along with Lana Turner, but Janis Paige was superb in her role as a 'seductress'. I'm told that Miss Turner had never been in a supermarket prior to the scenes of this picture...but she had so much fun after that, her daughter took her almost weekly to one. The music is spectacular, especially the Henry Mancini-penned theme at the beginning and end - it's the first piece of 'sophisticated scandalous' music I can remember hearing. Many shots of some great now-classic autos, as well(Dodge, Chrysler 300, etc.). Al in all, it's a 'dated' motion picture, but still funny and enjoyable to watch.

Bob Hope is A.J. Niles. a Kinsey-esque writer of books about the sexual mores of Europeans. In keeping with the times, the books are coyly titled: "How the French Live" is understood by all to be shorthand for "How the French have lots of sex"; the first scene underscores this, as Hope is seen reclining on a chaise with a beautiful woman. He dictates salaciously into a tape recorder: "Kissing a mature French woman provides the average male with an experience that is..."

Unfortunately, Hope was a little old to be playing the part. As he gets frisky with the young French mademoiselle, you get the squicky feeling that you might want to call the authorities.

But the great part about "Bachelor in Paradise" is that Hope, along with his costar Lana Turner, seems to be in on the joke. They know they are too old to be playing the parts they are playing. They know the jokes are tired. They know that the movie-going public was five steps ahead of the film at all times. But it didn't matter, because the suburbs were beautiful and everyone had a dishwasher and we all knew what to expect from Bob Hope and Lana Turner.

That is the seductive nature of films like this. They are fluff, you know they are fluff, the players know they are fluff, and everyone is fully aware that life was never really like that except in our misty memories. It's just that watching Bob Hope and Lana Turner frolic through the California Coral, you get to thinking maybe life really WAS that pretty in early 1961. I mean, as long as you were white and lived in the suburbs.

The plot is formulaic: A.J. Niles has to come back to the U.S. to face charges of tax evasion, brought on by his dishonest bookkeeper, Herman Wappinger ("I just can't believe Herman Wappinger is dishonest! That man wears piping on his vest!" I always loved that line, although it never made any sense to me at all.) His publisher, Austin Palfrey (the stuffily fabulous John McGiver) has an idea for a way that Niles can pay off the government while producing a new bestseller: he will subsidize Niles' move to an American suburb to write about "How the Americans Live". When Niles demurs, Palfrey tells him that he's already lined up a home in Paradise Village. The catch is that, given the nature of his fame, no one in the community can know that he is A.J. Niles. He must go undercover, as it were, to gather information about American mores. As expected,wackiness ensues.

What follows is a travelogue of late 50's kitsch: the "California Coral" house, the pecky cypress siding in the living room, the disappearing bar, the matriarchal sway of the American suburb, the dissatisfied housewives, headed by the statuesque and lovely Linda Delavane (Paula Prentiss) who adore this strange bachelor for listening to them and treating them like human beings ("I'm sure," Paula says dryly, "that the good lord did not intend me to use my Phi Beta Kappa key to puncture the top of a grated cheese can"). What no one knows, of course, is that Niles is using them as lab rats.

When glamorous Dolores (Janis Paige)--the estranged wife of the stuffy development owner--falls for Niles, she introduces herself with my very favorite line in the whole movie: having followed him home from the supermarket one morning, Dolores tells Niles she wants a cocktail ("Can you make a very dry Gibson?"). Niles gives her the drink, and she asks if he's having one.

"No," he says. "It's a little early for me."

"Early?" she says. "It's April!"

The movie reinforces every sexist stereotype about the time period: Lana Turner starts out as a single-minded career woman and ends up realizing that what she really needed all along was a man to take care of. Paula Prentiss waxes nostalgic about her days as a college student--studying romance languages--but cheerfully endorses her life as a 'hausfrau' (in a nod to Prentiss' extraordinary height, when Linda tells Niles she went to college on scholarship, he eyes her up and down and says "Basketball?" Come to think of it, they must have filmed Prentiss, Hope, and Prentiss' 6'5" co-star Jim Hutton from interesting angles; either that or Bob Hope was taller than I thought). When the denouement comes, all of the wives desperately want their husbands to find them worthy of continued matrimonial interest and pledge to go home and be good.

Lana Turner is gorgeous as Rosemary Howard, although her acting is wooden and awful--her monologue in the Tahitian restaurant ("I can refinish furniture, skindive for abalone, and play the piano..." comes off like she is reading it from the napkin on the table in front of her--but she looks fabulous. Both Hope and Turner come off oddly stilted, although that might be due to the contrast with accomplished character actors like McGiver ("You must tell no one who you are! Use an alias! Your mother's maiden name! Or...was 'Niles' your mother's maiden name?") and Reta Shaw as the neighborhood busybody, Mrs. Brown ("Certain passages of ALL of Mr. Niles books are filthy. That's what makes them so popular!")

This is not a deep movie. If you dissect it by the rules of critical thought, it is not even a very good movie. But it's a time capsule of a life that a lot of people think about with fierce nostalgia. A time when you could entrust your child to a stranger at the grocery store, have a Gibson at 10AM without raising an eyebrow, a time when pecky cypress was all the rage. I was born the year this movie came out, and I don't miss that time, but it's pretty to look at once in awhile.

I just saw this for the first time, and I am just a bit too young to have ever seen Hope in his heyday. I don't quite understand how something written this weakly, and assembled this quickly (some of the shots have muffed words but are used anyway just to keep from retaking, I guess) could pass for national distribution. I love the settings and the cars and and the colors, and it does provide a good time machine for that. But the characters behave so sadly and everyone seems pretty unlikable except Bob. I recommend instead "Pillow Talk", which has more absurdity in the story, and the script demands more comedic action from the main actors, which makes it more satisfying as a comedy. It too has some great costumes and interiors, but in the New York of the sixties vein, not the California mode.