Bedtime Story

Between this and Guys and Dolls and the Godfather parody w/ Mathew Broderick, Marlon showed that he could be very funny. Sort of like Errol Flynn, I wish he had been given more opportunities.

I have looked in vain for this on DVD it was supposed to have been released a couple of years ago, I'm not sure what happened.

As noted many will be familiar with the remake (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), though I prefer the original. There is a priceless scene where Marlon (as Freddy)is caught with his pants off after seducing the burgomeister's daughter in a German town. He explains that he is part of the new Exercise instruction program and he begins doing calisthenics as he makes his exit.

I also liked when David Niven and Brando first meet and realize that they are competing in the same line of work albeit at different levels.

Highly recommended.

'shoes

This was one of those movies whose presence on TV would guarantee my entire family's viewing, even if it came on in the middle of the night. David Niven is a suave fleecer of gullible women, who tries to teach novice Marlon Brando a thing or two. Ultimately, both set their sights on soap heiress Shirley Jones, and the games begin.

Brando's brief impersonation of Niven is worth the price of admission (or rental, or whatever). Superior to the pretty-good remake, "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."

I saw it in the late '60's on TV when I was home from school. Years later I became a screenwriter and got a call from David Bowie's production company. He and Mick jagger wanted to do a movie together and hoped I would write it. I suggested doing a remake of Bedtime Story with Bowie as Lawrence Jamison and Mick as Freddy.

They were both interested, the studio (UA) was interested, but the movie had been made at Universal and there was no way they could get the rights. A number of other studios were interested, but couldn't wrestle the right away from Universal.

Turns out no had bothered to do a copyright search. I did. Turns out the rights had reverted back to the original writer/producer Stanley Shapiro. We met at the Pink Turtle (a coffee shop at what was the Beverly Wilshire) and did a deal on a napkin.

The original title was King of Hill. Since Stanley was the man behind the Doris Day/Rock Hudson/Cary Grant movies - he decided to write (with Maurice Richlin - who went on to pen the original Pink Panther) a movie where Cary Grant and Rock Hudson would compete for Doris Day.

Apparently, Cary had asked Rock to do a movie with him, but Rock had turned him down. So Cary didn't want to do a movie with Rock. And Doris wouldn't do the movie without the both of them. Hence it was re-cast with Niven, Brando and Shirley Jones.

Stanely said this movie didn't do all that well in its original run. He felt that the movie fell flat in the south because of Brando championing civil rights.

Thought I do prefer my ending, but this is nevertheless a very charming movie. Which is why I tried to preserve as much as the original as possible. Hey, if ain't broke, don't fix it. And certainly don't change it.

For David Niven, Bedtime Story was the kind of part he could play in his sleep although he's quite wide awake here. But for Marlon Brando this was his second foray into comedy, he would not do another until the Nineties when he was accepting roles for money to pay his son's lawyers. Brando does quite well in Bedtime Story as the sleazy GI conman.

We meet both of them separately at the beginning, Niven in his guise as a prince living in a palace on the French Riviera, fleecing money from rich tourists trying to free his country from the rebels, presumably Communists. And Brando manages to con his commanding officer Parley Baer more worried about getting his promotion to general than in dealing out justice to the guy who disgraced his daughter into an early discharge with a private separation package.

Brando as civilian meets with Niven on board a train heading to the Riviera and brags about his exploits and talks about trying his luck on the rich babes there. Niven not wanting any competition arranges a small frame up with the cooperation of the police chief Aram Stephen. Of course when Brando gets wise to it, they're forced into a partnership of sorts.

Niven sort of glides right into a part that he's done on many occasions, in this case not even having to rely solely on his considerable charm to carry a weak film. Brando had done comedy on screen before in Teahouse of the August Moon, but the role of Freddy Benson, GI Conman extraordinary fits him far better than Sakini in Teahouse.

If Paul Henning and Stanley Shapiro on hiatus from their rural franchise at CBS had really wanted to make this a better film, they would have invested a surprise in Shirley Jones traditional good girl character. Remember she won an Oscar for playing against type in Elmer Gantry as a prostitute. Think of the ending in the John Wayne film The Train Robbers and think how it would have really fit here.

Still Bedtime Story is not a bad film and it even got remade as the Steve Martin classic, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And hats off everyone to Dody Goodman, the legendary Fanny of Omaha.

I think the reason I found Bedtime Story so entertaining was because it was surreal to hear the lines from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels delivered by different people in a different movie. I never would have imagined Marlon Brando as Ruprecht and David Niven fits the role of Lawrence Jameson perfectly. This movie features enough similarities to keep me entertained, and enough differences to keep me interested.