That Certain Feeling

Bob Hope has never been milder than in his portrayal of a hypochondriacal cartoonist--he makes Jack Lemmon look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over 50, he's a bit embarrassing as a nervous failure and a contender to reclaim his ex-wife. But, surprisingly, he takes the acting honors--Eva Marie Saint looks and acts like a prim librarian's boring sister and George Sanders's suave personality doesn't fit the gauche and corny lines he is given. However, he does have (I think) the best line in the movie, one that in ordinary circumstances would have been given to Hope: "If I weren't in makeup I'd strike you." It was Hope who, in real life, responded to a heckler with "You wouldn't dare say that if I had my writers with me."

The boy actor who the following year played the name part in Leave it to Beaver is an orphan who, again untypically, shows Hope to be a splendid father figure. He is bearable. But no child deserves the really nasty way that Sanders talks to him, a disturbing note in what is supposed to be a comedy.

A few musical numbers are very extraneous but they certainly liven things up--Pearl Bailey purring a couple of songs and Hope and Saint cutting loose with the title tune. The shabbiness of the material, however, is clear when she says that, back in their hometown, she admired him in the high-school play. She wouldn't have been born yet.