BACHELOR IN PARADISE: Blu-ray (MGM, 1961) Warner Archive
Bob Hope’s film career has to be one of the most extraordinary
cases of a single-premise stretched to span virtually the entire golden age of Hollywood
itself: the ‘premise’ – to take a comedian of undeniable box office appeal and
talent, and, merely insert him into a rudimentary ‘plug n’ play’ of any number
of half-baked and cookie-cutter scenarios, collectively – and retrospectively –
to be considered ‘franchise’ film-making of the most longevous kind. The
branding of Hope as a beloved in Hollywood began much earlier than his celluloid
appearances opposite Bing Crosby. Indeed, Hope was a veteran of radio and
Vaudeville before he became a film star. And despite his enduring mastery of
the pithy retort in all mediums, and the good-humored and highly enjoyable nature
of his appearances on celluloid, there really is not a whole lot to this fluff
and nonsense to which the studios quickly relegated him – a guaranteed rainmaker,
given short shrift in scripts and budget, but still certified to sell tickets.
Such is the case with director, Jack Arnold’s Bachelor in Paradise
(1961), scripted by Valentine ‘Miracle on 34th Street’
Davies and Hal Kanter, and based on a 70-page treatment by Vera Caspary, forever
to be venerated as the author of that cool and sublime thriller, Laura
(1944). Alas, Bachelor in Paradise miserably fails to live up to either
of these aforementioned classic offerings. Nor is it particularly top-tier Bob
Hope film fodder either, and this, despite the appearance of luscious Lana
Turner in her first rom/com in almost 5 years.
It ought to have worked. Pop-producer, Sol Siegel made
this one – a thick-headed and lumbering trifle about a slick author of lurid
best sellers going undercover in an as slickly packaged ‘paradise’ where a bevy
of married beauties seemingly throw themselves at his head, much to the chagrin
of their husbands. Instead, Bachelor in Paradise is indicative of the creative
malaise affecting MGM, the studio to have funded it. Where once, Metro – under L.B.
Mayer’s governance – would have considered Bachelor in Paradise as a B-programmer,
to be marketed as such and neatly sandwiched between its ‘prestige’ pictures
and output of uber-glossy musicals, the imploding empire, now under the unwieldy
command of maverick, Joseph Vogel, takes its modest plot and plumps it out in
Metrocolor and Cinemascope. The results, alas, to do not expand upon Bachelor
in Paradise’s entertainment value. If anything, the expansive screen and color
cinematography expose the slenderness in its anemic story. And Bob Hope, given
all the accoutrements that, a decade before, might have allowed him to coast
along on charm alone, herein never seems entirely comfortable with the
arrangement of playing a presumed – if slightly aging – Casanova, whose
reputation as ‘the leading authority on love’ is mistaken for a sort of
unabashed sexual proficiency with the opposite sex. Hope is hilarious. How can he not be? And
Turner, despite having past her prime as the ‘sweater girl’ is an amiable
counterpart. She suits Hope. The two have genuine on-screen chemistry. But the
undeniable joy of this picture is shapely Janis Paige as the sex-crazed Dolores
Jynson and, at 98-yrs.-young today, still very much with us. Aside: I simply
adore her.
Born Donna Mae Tjaden, Paige was discovered by a
Warner Bros. talent scout while schlepping it for G.I.’s at The Hollywood
Canteen and, after an internment in mediocre musicals, made her first big
splash opposite Doris Day in Romance on the High Seas (1948). I shed a
few tears for Paige, as her Hollywood career, like that of Dolores Gray, never
quite took off the way it ought, given not only Paige’s strikingly handsome good
looks, but also her intuitive gift for comedy, as well as her undeniable sex
appeal, intermittently exhibited in films like Two Gals and a Guy (1951).
That same year, Paige left Hollywood for Broadway, in a sizable hit – Remains
to Be Seen. Stardom finally hit in 1954, Paige playing ‘Babe’ in
Broadway’s The Pajama Game. Alas, she was overlooked for the movie reprise,
and did not come back to Hollywood until 1957’s Silk Stockings, playing the
wonderfully ditzy aquatic film star, Peggy Dayton, opposite Fred Astaire’s uber
suave movie producer, Steven Canfield, and, Cyd Charisse’s hysterically somber
Russian commissar, Nina Yurshenko. Paige then reunited with Doris Day in Please
Don't Eat the Daisies (1960) before beginning work on Bachelor in Paradise.
The picture also features Paula Prentiss
and Dana James Hutton (billed as Jim Hutton here) as marrieds, Linda and Larry Delavane;
MGM’s enfeebled attempt to will another William Powell and Myrna Loy screen
team from the desperate ashes of that retired – but otherwise irreplaceable
coupling. Having already marked their territory in 1960’s Where The Boys Are,
almost immediately, Prentiss and Hutton were re-teamed for three more tries at
the same apple – 1961’s The Honeymoon Machine, 1962’s The Horizontal
Lieutenant, and, 1964’s Looking for Love, as, or even more forgettable
nonsense, never to achieve the staying power as a screen team Metro had hoped to
establish.
Bachelor in Paradise was originally assigned to
director, George Marshall. But with
Marshall’s departure, the project fell to Jack Arnold, the Russian emigre to
have specialized in B and C-grade horror/sci-fi movies throughout the 1950’s.
Indeed, John Baxter paid homage to Arnold, adding, “No imprint lingers so
indelibly on the face of modern fantasy film as that of this obscure, yet
brilliant artist. All his films, no matter how tawdry, were marked with a
brilliant personal vision. He exists as an éminence grise on the horizon of
fantasy film, inscrutable, mysterious, almost impossible both to analyze and to
ignore.” That may be, and likely is. But romantic comedy is
decidedly not Arnold’s forte. Much of Bachelor in Paradise is photographed
as though Cinemascope (actually, Panavision billed as Cinemascope) had only
just been invented the year before, with Arnold holding his camera to
interminably locked long shots, maneuvering his actors in and out of static
scenes, albeit, with some minorly interesting set-ups and diverting dialogue to
showcase action taking place in the ‘fore’, middle and backgrounds. It’s an awkward approach at best, and it does
much to diffuse the romantic sparks bouncing off Hope’s goony scribe, Adam J.
Niles and the various gal-pals, who indiscriminately try to get in his ‘good
graces’ as well as his shorts.
As the story goes, A.J. Niles, a provocative
best-selling author, unearths his accountant, Herman Wapinger’s creative book-keeping
has left him in the rears with the IRS. To avoid incarceration, Niles goes
undercover as Jack Adams and sets himself up in a California suburb - Paradise
Village, determined to research a new book about housewives and their intimate
lives. Almost immediately, Niles encounters the notorious – and quite married –
flirt, Dolores Jynson. And while Dolores makes no apologies for pursuing Niles,
he begins to harbor affections for Rosemary Howard (Lana Turner), who has rented
her house to him. Not much else here folks, the bulk of 109-minutes devoted to one
gentle mishap laid upon the next, in fact, too many to delay the connective
tissue on the other side of this bookended plot – the discovery of Wapinger’s fraud,
Niles’ exoneration from the crime of tax evasion, and, his personal wealth
restored. Able to ‘come clean’ about his research, Niles appears on national
television to make a complete confession. The husbands of Paradise Village,
including Thomas Jynson (Don Porter), Rodney Jones (Clinton Sunberg), Austin
Palfrey (John McGiver) and Larry Delevane, file for divorce, believing their
wives have all been having illicit affairs with Niles. In divorce court, Niles
appeals to Judge Peterson (Agnes Moorehead). He’s not bad. He’s just misunderstood.
Moreover, he has not been using his ‘free’ time to sew his wild oats. In fact,
Nile’s reveals that since his arrival in Paradise Village, only one woman has
actually captured his heart…and she is single and for the asking…if she’ll have
him. Blissfully, Rosemary accepts Niles’ very public proposal of marriage. The
hubbies breathe a sigh of relief and life, as they used to say, goes on.
Bachelor in Paradise was pitched to the world as a
laugh-a-minute rom/com. It has its
moments, for sure. But it falls far below expectations for the sort of rapid-fire
delivery of one-line zingers Bob Hope is usually known to lob with nonchalance
and self-deprecating good humor. Hope and Lana Turner have a few poignant
moments together. Just not enough to establish them as a couple on the road to
matrimony, leaving their ‘happily ever after’ more of a foregone conclusion
than a fait accompli. MGM thought it had stolen Hope from Paramount to launch another
franchise with their one-time biggest star now working for Leo the Lion.
Instead, Bachelor in Paradise lost money, roughly $344,000 (or $2.85
million today), at a time when Metro could scarcely afford to be so cavalier
about its record-keeping. Despite this, Vogel signed Jack Arnold to a 5-year
contract. Mercifully quashed, the idea for a sequel, set in Europe and titled, An
Armful of Girls. Given how much in the world has changed, it’s rather
impressive to note the house featured in Bachelor in Paradise still
stands today – a then, rather fashionable 2,083 sq. ft. abode, nestled on a
quarter-acre, built in 1959, today, valued at just around a million dollars. But it’s pretty sad when your movie is more renowned
for its location, also, the cars featured in it, than its cast. Especially,
with such heavy hitters populating the proscenium. Alas, Agnes Moorehead is
utterly wasted as the Judge. Interestingly, she and co-star, Reta Shaw (as
local busybody, Mrs. Brown) who had first appeared together in Disney’s
lavishly appointed, Pollyanna (1960), would find work together again,
this time on TV’s small screen in the runaway sitcom smash, Bewitched
(1964-72). Bachelor in Paradise’s
big claim to fame today is its noteworthy assemblage of vintage automobiles;
Rosemary’s bold Plymouth Fury, Niles/Adam’s Dodge Polara, and Dolores’ Chrysler
300G. All three are convertibles, then the rage in post-war chichi high living.
But only Dolores’ is a prototype – with a scant 337 ever put into production,
making it a very rare collector’s item today.
Bachelor in Paradise arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner
Archive, and, predictably, everything looks very spiffy, showing off Joseph
Ruttenberg’s lush cinematography to its best advantage. This one’s derived from
a new 4K scan of the original camera negative and the vintage Metrocolor
sparkles. A word about ‘Metrocolor’ – the studio’s unofficial rechristening of
Kodak’s Eastmancolor process. Because MGM did not employ all of Kodak’s
processes, possessing their own in-house lab to circumvent the exorbitant costs
of shooting and processing in Technicolor too, it could also not advertise the
Eastman ‘brand’ on their movies. Metro would continue with its own facilities
until 1986 when the studio was sold, lock, stock and backlot to Lorimar
Telepictures. Colors here are bold, rich
and fully saturated. Dissolves, fades and transitions are modestly troubled by
a brief desaturation of color with an ‘in tandem’ amplification of film grain.
Nothing egregious, and actually, to be expected. Contrast is mostly solid,
although a few scenes appear a tad weaker than anticipated. Fine detail is
nicely realized. The 2.0 DTS stereo sounds fairly impressive and should surely
please. Dialogue is front and center. However, there is some very nice
separation in Henry Mancini’s score. Extras are limited to a theatrical
trailer. Probably, just as well. There isn’t much else I would have wished to
know about this disposable puff pastry, indicative of MGM’s sad decline into
picture-making oblivion. Bottom line: WAC has put its best foot forward again. I
just wish the object of their labors was more worthy of their time and efforts. For Bob Hope completionists only. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
1
Comments