The Facts of Life (1960)

Toronto Film Society presented The Facts of Life (1960) on Monday, August 19, 1985 in a double bill with The Egg and I as part of the Season 38 Summer Series, Programme 6.

Production Company: United Artists.  Producer: Norman Panama.  Assoc. Producer: Hal C. Kern.  Director: Melvin Frank.  Screenplay: Norman Panama & Melvin Frank.   Photography: Charles Lang, Jr.  Editor: Frank Bracht.  Music: Leigh Harline.  Title Song: Johnny Mercer, sung by Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence.  Sound: Joseph Edmondson.

Cast:  Bob Hope (Larry Gilbert), Lucille Ball (Kitty Weaver), Ruth Hussey (Mary Gilbert), Don DeFore (Jack Weaver), Louis Nye (Charles Busbee), Philip Ober (Doc Mason), Marianne Stewart (Connie Mason), Peter Leeds (Thompson), Hollis Irving (Myrtle Busbee), William Lanteau (United Airlines Clerk), Robert F. Simon (Motel Clerk), Louise Beavers (Maid), Mike Mazurki (Husband in Motel Room).

Bob Hope and Lucille Ball made just four films together (tonight’s is their third outing) and more’s the pity.  They work wonderfully together and Lucy is more than a match for Bob Hope with his stable of gag writers.  Their first picture was Sorrowful Jones (1949), a remake of Little Miss Marker and based on a Damon Runyon Story.  More subdued than in her subsequent I Love Lucy role, Lucille Ball still cut up beautifully onscreen with Hope and gave the audience quite a few laughs.  In fact, they worked so well together that Bob Hope asked for her for Fancy Pants (1950), a hilariously slapstick remake of Ruggles of Red Gap, and very funny.

It was ten years before the two stars again appeared together (probably due to Lucille Ball’s television commitments) and that was in tonight’s film, The Facts of Life, which is their best film.  It is a delightful spoof on extramarital frustrations confronting a middle-aged couple who discover their unconsummated affair is not worth the trouble.

Lucille Ball never became a superstar in the movies.  It seems Hollywood never really knew what to do with her.  As a Hattie Carnegie model she went to Hollywood in 1933 to appear in Broadway Through a Keyhole and Roman Scandals, unbilled for both.  A dozen films later she finally got a credit in Carnival (1935).  After fourteen films later, more uncredited parts along with a few credits, she made Stage Door (1937) which gave her her best role to date and she got excellent notices.  The future looked rosy!  Twenty films later (do you see a pattern emerging?) she made two good pictures in a row, The Big Street (1942) with Henry Fonda and Dubarry was A Lady (1943) with Red Skelton.  “Dubarry” was in technicolor and took advantage of her gorgeous natural looks.  Along the way she made a film called Too Many Girls (1940) where she met her future husband, Desi Arnez, and they were wed the same year.  Out of about 78 films there are few other highlights:  Without Love (1945) holding her own with Tracy and Hepburn; Easy to Wed (1946), a weak remake of Libeled Lady where she outacted both stars, Esther Williams and Van Johnson; Lover Come Back (1946), a weak comedy with George Brent in which she sparkled; the forementioned Sorrowful Jones and Fancy Pants; Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949) with William Holden, and the zany The Fuller Brush Girl and Red Skelton’s The Fuller Brush Man (1948) (and my sides ached from laughing.)  She made two films with Desi, the very funny The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and the less-funny but pleasant Forever Darling (1956).  Another winner was Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) with Henry Foda–she was never better, never funnier.  It made a lot of money for its producer–Lucille Ball.  The crowning achievement to her career appeared to be Mame in 1978, but such was not the case.  Lacquered and taut-faced, and far too old for the part, with heaps of gauze over the camera lens to give the illusion of glamour, Lucy got the worst personal notices of her career.  (At least with Wildcat, her Broadway stage ‘effort’ in 1960, it was the show that was lousy, not the star.)  A sad end to her film career.

Lucille Ball’s star really rose with television in the ’50s and stayed there through I Love Lucy beginning in 1951, followed by Here’s Lucy (1962) and then by The Lucy Show in 1968.  When she announced her retirement from TV in 1974 it was truly the end of an era.

Although he made movies for over 30 years, Bob Hope’s film work seems but an interval in his long career.  His best pictures were made early in his career (with the exception of tonight’s film we will draw a veil discreetly over everything made after 1959) which began with The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1937).  His duet with Shirley Ross “Thanks for the Memory”, in the film, gave Hope his signature song.  The song also won an Academy Award.  However, The Cat and The Canary (1939), his seventh film, defined Hope’s comic style, dry, allusive, and typically American, and gave him his character, faithfully maintained throughout his films, of a humorously cowardly incompetent, always cheerfully failing in his attempts to become a romantic hero.  The picture was a box-office smash.

Bob Hope found his greatest popularity with the “Road” pictures.  They were shining examples of great teamwork, and apparently embroidered with ad-libs and impromptu, uninhibited comedy.  Director Victor Schertzinger of the first one, The Road to Singapore (1940) defined his method of directing the picture by telling Hope and Crosby, “All I have to do is start the camera.  You take it from there.”  And they did!

Along with George Burns, Bob Hope is one of the last survivors of the golden age of radio.  He was a star of the TV medium for over twenty years.  During World War II he spent most of his time entertaining the troops, as he did during the Korean War.  His first Christmas TV Special emanated from Thiele, Greenland in 1954 and his last Christmas Show in 1972 was performed in Vietnam and Thailand.  He has emceed the Oscars countless times and was given special Academy Awards in 1940, 1944, 1952, 1959, and 1965 for his humanitarian action and his contribution to the motion picture industry.

Probably the wealthiest man in show business and still active at age 82, he has received every award seemingly possible to give an entertainer in a long and spectacularly successful career.

Bosley Crowther in the New York Times had this to say about The Facts of Life:

Of all things, this hilarious picture has Lucille Ball and Bob Hope as a couple of separately married people who think they have fallen in love and set out to give themselves the big kick of a left-handed honeymoon.  And, believe it or not, it develops into the most plausible and delightful spoof of the all too persistent type of drama about extramarital jaunts that we have seen…  It is a grandly good-natured picture, full of thoroughly sparkling repartee and word-gags and sight-gags that crackle with humor and sly intelligence.

Even before I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball and Bob Hope enjoyed a brief partnership that was sadly curtailed by the demands of her popular TV series.  Doubtless, they would have made more pictures together because of the success of the first two, and might possibly have become one of the really great comedy teams.  As it is, we will have to be satisfied with the films they did appear together in; and in tonight’s picture they lovingly provide new and hilarious insights into our theme of “Loving Couples.”

Notes by Barry Chapman