Bob Hope & Lucille Ball "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" style

   Critic’s Choice (1963, Don Weis) **  

      A favorite from my childhood with Bob Hope and Lucille Ball in their fourth and final theatrical outing together. Based on the Broadway play by Ira Levin imagining the trouble real life critic Walter Kerr and his wife Jean Kerr (Please Don’t Eat the Daises and Mary, Mary) might have had if he had reviewed one of her plays.  On Broadway the cast had Henry Fonda playing opposite Georgann Johnson.  Obviously the comedy was punched up for Bob and Lucy (I’m thinking Bob’s drunk scene). What I remember most (and enjoyed most with this viewing) was the wonderful “Mad Men” like Manhattan with all of its stereotypes. I’ve said it here before, in the 50’s and 60’s the Manhattan of the movies plays out like Disneyland for adults, posh apartments, restaurants and nightclubs and an endless supply of taxicabs. Plus everyone dressed great – women in hats and men in dark suits with white shirts. The cast includes Jim Backus (in a very Jim Backus-like role) and the venerable Jessie Royce Landis playing Lucy’s mom, Rip Torn (in a rare early comedic performance) and Bob’s main squeeze in real life Marilyn Maxwell. How did Dolores Hope never find out? Don Weis was primarily a TV director and here he does his job strictly by the numbers. Which is too bad, this is one of the few films where Hope wanted to be seen as an actor (two others are Beau James (1957) and The Facts of Life (1960) – also with Lucy).  It’s too bad they didn’t hire a better director; this could have been something really special.  TCM’s website reports that the film was a box-office dud and after sitting on the shelf it was released to coincide with Lucy’ new television sitcom (The Lucy Show). Best line, Lucy says of Bob as a critic of her play, “Unselfish? He’s an opinionated sneak. I’m not shooting I’m leaving.” Apparently that’s what the audiences thought in 1963 when the film was released. The film failed at the box-office and with the critics, The New York Daily News noted, “Most of the picture’s running time is taken up with the couple’s quarrels and these are not conductive to laughter,” while The New York Times blamed director Don Weis, “[who] has tried to upholster the shaky plot with slapstick and broad burlesque. Both stars, old hands at this sort of thing, go through their paces with benign good humor, but their subtler comic talents remain untapped.” As it is, it’s a wonderful guilty pleasure and look at the NYC in the early 1960’s. For art direction alone it’s a must for the interested viewer.