BACHELOR IN PARADISE—definitely of its time, this 1961 fluff is an exercise in nostalgia for those who remember Bob Hope back when he was funny, recalling also the mixture of exhilaration and befuddlement that surfaced in the changing lifestyles brought about by the advent of suburbia. 

Hope plays an expatriate writer, coerced by the IRS into returning home from France to write an expose on the denizens of ‘Paradise Village, California’. This then prompts an onset of jokes around housewives, supermarkets, appliances, etc.  Kinda fun way back when, not so hot nowadays. It’s amusing to gaze at the old cars, in all their finned, boat-like splendor.

The sexy Janis Paige vamps Robert

Directed by Jack Arnold, over-staying at 109 minutes, with Lana Turner, Janis Paige (sizzle), Jim Hutton, Paula Prentiss, Don Porter, Virginia Grey, Agnes Moorehead, John McGiver and Alan Hewitt.  Henry Mancini scored, and the title tune was nominated for an Oscar.

It did ring up $5,170,000 off a layout of $1,989,000, logging it the years #32 earner, and young charmers Hutton & Prentiss, who had already scored smiles in Where The Boys Are and The Honeymoon Machine, were promptly re-teamed in The Horizontal Lieutenant.