morris Hammond 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.

barry-woods 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.

kirksworks As a movie "Bachelor in Paradise" is not great. Perhaps it's better than most Bob Hope movies of the period, but as an historical document of a time and place, that is, the tract home developments of Southern California of the early 1960s, this film is nostalgic joy for baby boomers who grew up in the valley. The film captures what it was like better than a more serious film could. And though it's not great, it's not a bad movie either, particularly if you can appreciate Hope's physical grace Woody Allen found so appealing (and tried to copy), and enjoy Hope's distinctive verbal delivery. If that's the case and you're a child of the 60s, you'll likely have a good time. The story is simple. Writer, A. J. Niles (Hope), who has been writing about the the sex lives of bachelors around the world, finds himself stuck back in the U.S. because his accountant ran off with his money and he's in hock big time to the IRS. In order to make a quick buck, he's forced to move into a small community of tract homes called 'Paradise Village' and write a book about how the Americans make love. Of course his name is Adam. He lives in Paradise Village. He meets a single woman there played by Lana Turner. Why her name is Rosemary instead of Eve, I don't know, but romance ensues.I grew up in Canoga Park, and am very familiar with the type of neighborhoods, super markets and people that inhabited that world back in 1962. Canoga isn't exactly like the town Paradise Village is supposed to be located in, but it's close enough. Seeing those rows of brand new pastel-painted painted homes with identical lawns and freshly planted trees puts me in a time machine blasted back decades. Yet, it's more than just the location that documents this place in time. It's the way people dress, the attitudes they have about sex and steamy European movies, the places people considered 'romantic' - a Polynesian restaurant, for example - and the way supermarkets were filled almost entirely with housewives, that give context to this period of Southern Californian history. What people considered funny back then, may not be funny as originally intended, but the gags are so much of their time the statement they make about the developing middle class certainly is amusing. When Jim Hutton (very funny in this movie) comes home, he notices his wife (Paula Prentiss) has put a birdcage over his youngest kid's head so he won't eat anything dangerous. Hutton is not shocked at all. It's a strategy they apparently both agree on. Another example is when Hope tries out his new washing machine and overloads it with soap. The entire house becomes engulfed in soap foam. A dog gets lost in the suds. Hope calls the fire dept. When they arrive they ask, "Where's the fire?" and Hope says, "Would you have come if I yelled 'soap'?" You get the idea.The music score by Henry Mancini backs up the period nicely. The score never was released at the time, but is available now through FilmScore Monthly, and for Mancini lovers, this is a good one. The film even uses the first three notes of the main theme for the doorbell of Hope's house. MILD SPOILERS START NEXT PARAGRAPH FOR THIS FILM AND "PUNCH DRUNK LOVE"--Coincidentally, I saw "Bachelor in Paradise" and then watched Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch Drunk Love," a day later. I'm a big fan of Anderson and love "Punch Drunk." Parallels between the two films stood out. Both take place in the So Cal valley (also where director Anderson grew up). Both stories are about men who are overwhelmed by women. Adam Sandler has 7 sisters who overwhelm him in PDL. Hope deals with a neighborhood of females who overwhelm him in BIP. The main characters in both are victims of theft, and the theft is what gets them in trouble and motivates the plots. Both are considered sexual perverts by others in the story. Both are pretending to be someone they are not, finding themselves in love while initially trying to avoid getting involved. Hope & Lana Turner and Sandler & Emily Watson fall in love in a Polynesian setting about mid-point through the film. And both have key scenes that take place in super markets. END SPOILERS"Bachelor in Paradise" was directed by Jack Arnold, best known for the science fiction films he made in the 50s - "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Incredible Shrinking Man" among them. But Arnold had a way with comedy as well. His "The Mouse That Roared" is probably the best movie satire on living with the 'bomb' other than Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove." "Bachelor in Paradise" is a wonderful showcase of a time and place long gone. If baby boomers watch it from that perspective, they might have a fine time reliving their childhood. Hope fans won't be disappointed either.

suze-4 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.