How to Commit Marriage ** (1969, Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, Jane Wyman, Leslie Nielsen) – Classic Movie Review 11,583

Director Norman Panama’s 1969 comedy How to Commit Marriage is a pleasant enough, though faded Sixties Bob Hope vehicle in which his real estate broker character Frank Benson agrees to keep secret his impending divorce from his wife Elaine (Jane Wyman) when his 19-year-old music student daughter Nancy (JoAnna Cameron) brings home her fellow music student fiancé David (Tim Matheson).

Frank is involved with divorcee Lois Grey (Maureen Arthur), Elaine is interested in recently divorced Phil Fletcher (Leslie Nielsen) and Poe is seeing live-in girl friend LaVerne Baker (Tina Louise). Well, it was the Swinging Sixties.

Ben Starr and Michael Kanin’s script and Panama’s direction are clumsy at times, but Hope and Jackie Gleason as the boy’s record producer dad Oliver Poe are skilled enough comics to keep the comedy of misunderstanding going through its bumpy passages, and the plot allows Hope to display his skill as impersonations. The support cast is enlivened by Tina Louise as Gleason’s love interest LaVerne Baker, Leslie Nielsen as the straight man Phil Fletcher, and Professor Irwin Corey as a Persian mystic called the Baba Zeba.

Strange how Sixties films loved telling us how to do things: murder your wife, steal a million, succeed in business etc.

It is notable as Hope and Gleason’s only movie together, for Matheson’s early role and as Wyman’s final film.

The rock band The Comfortable Chair appears as the film’s rock group performing their song ‘A Child’s Garden.’

It was filmed in Cinerama and distributed by Cinerama Releasing Corporation.

Bob & Bing: Road to Bali.

The cast are Bob Hope as Frank Benson, Jackie Gleason as Oliver Poe, Jane Wyman as Elaine Benson, Leslie Nielsen as Phil Fletcher, Maureen Arthur as Lois Grey, Tina Louise as LaVerne Baker, Tim Matheson as David, Paul Stewart as Willoughby, Irwin Corey as the Baba Zeba and JoAnna Cameron as Nancy.

It premiered on 28 May 1969 in Miami Beach, Florida.

How to Murder your Wife, How to Steal a Million, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,583

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/