If you love midcentury modern style and you’re feeling down, few things are better than screening 1961’s Bachelor in Paradise, with Bob Hope and Lana Turner.
This is not a witty movie; it is not important or classic at all. But it is a film that oozes delightful MCM-ness from every crack and pore. In fact, so powerful is the MCM in this movie that it even has the ability to vaccinate you against Bob Hope.
Paula Prentiss shines as the neighbor Linda Delavane. At age 40, former sexpot Lana Turner was already being cast in dowdier roles. Here, she plays Hope’s mature love interest. Yes, Turner had been ridden hard and put away wet by this point, partially due to her penchant for bad-boy lovers, including small-time gangster Johnny Stompanato, who had been stabbed by Turner’s daughter only three years prior.
But she was still a very attractive woman who deserved better than the baggy dresses and unexciting part she was saddled with in this movie. Woodland Hills, CA acts as the movie’s subdivision Paradise Valley.
