User reviews

This surprising film was shown on TCM recently. Not having seen it, and not having other choice, we decided to take a look, and quite frankly, it was a surprise. The film, directed by Melvin Frank and co-written with his partner, Norman Panama, shows two stars that endeared themselves to the American public at their best.

The story is just a pretext and a vehicle for the stars. The plot kept reminding us of "A Guide for the Married Man", but that's all the comparison, because one has nothing to do with the other. In fact, this is a film made in 1960 when nothing too risky would be tackled for the screen, yet, it presents two straying adults who suddenly find an attraction where dislike existed before.

Bob Hope was the surprise in the movie. He doesn't have a chance for uttering his one liners, as the script doesn't allow it. It was one of the best films in which he appeared, in our humble opinion. Lucille Ball was an excellent comedienne, and she shows it on this film.

The interesting supporting cast makes the best with the material they were given to play. The excellent Ruth Hussey is seen as Bob Hope's wife. Don DeFore, plays Lucille's husband. Louis Nye is also seen in the film.

The film is light and will charm anyone wanting to spend some time in the company of some of America's best comic talent of the past.

This is a pretty good movie, as far as situation comedies go. Very typical of the movies Hope was making at that time. Pepole who have only seen the Hope and Crosby Road shows think Hops did only one-liner jokes, actually more of his movies were in the vein of this one. I watched all these movies when they came out in the theaters. I started watching Ball and Hope in movies when I was 8 years old, and they were young people. Mostly, I get a kick out of reading the reader comments. Mature for it's time, Advanced for movies made in that era etc. This was NOT considered a racy movie for the times. There were many with a much more " like today's movies" story line and script. The bedroom farce movies were being made and shown to general public audiences i the 40, and take a look at some of the movies made in the late 20s and 30s, before censorship stepped in. They didn't use swear words and the language they use today in movies in the 30s, but those people made some really "broad minded?" movies then. This was just a run of the mill, cutest movie of the times. If you liked Hope in this, you will also like, That Certain Feeling-- 1956-- Bob Hope and Eva Maire Saint The Iron Pettycoat---- 1956-- Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn I'll Take Sweden------ 1965-- Bob Hope, Dina merrill You don't want to over look Bob Hope in Beau James--- 1957. Tis is the story of the flamboyant mayor of New York City.

Lucy and Bob in a 1960 romantic, satiric comedy. What more could you want?

This is very aware for its time and has some wonderful period scenes. Hope and Ball seem to have very complementary comedy styles which play extremely well off each other.

This movie came out way back in 1960, yet Bob Hope mentions problems raising kids in the electronic age. How forward looking.

The black and white format takes nothing away from this movie, including the scenes of Acapulco when they're alone together.

All in all, an extremely enjoyable movie. I like Lucy much better in this style than her slapstick routine, although she's great in that too. Give this one a look sometime, it's worth it.

One of their later screen teamings, THE FACTS OF LIFE was a 1960 comedy, rather adult for its time, where Bob and Lucy play two friends, married to others, who usually participate in a group vacation together and through some freak circumstances , end up on the vacation alone this year and grow so close they actually drift into an affair and consider leaving their spouses. I have to admit that this movie was surprising to me when I first saw it a few months ago, so I'm sure it raised a few eyebrows in the 1960's...infidelity was most likely a bold subject for a movie comedy and I doubt if it was something Bob or Lucy had done prior to this. but for this day and age, this was a very adult movie comedy that probably didn't do the business it deserved in 1960 because of its "contorversial" storyline. Though it would hardly be considered controversial today, this film was probably quite the departure for its stars and as a curio of cinema history, it is definitely worth a look.

I was surprised by this film and the quality of work by its two stars. We always think of Lucy as goofy or screwy and Hope either swinging a golf club or playing wingman for Bing Crosby. Billed as a romantic comedy, Hope and Ball aim for the funny bone. But there are some serious adult issues raised. This tasty confection, made in 1960, I think is a lot of fun (though it could have been better paced and the contrivances are a bit much) and it has two terrific old pros at work in roles that you just wouldn't expect them to be in. Lucy looked pretty good when she got all dolled up. And Hope is ageless as ever. I thought they had some chemistry between them. Also includes Ruth Hussey, Louie Nye and Dom DeFore (Ozzie and Harriet's neighbor).

I watched this movie primarily because it was nominated for Best Screenplay, and in that regard, I was not disappointed. There are several funny scenes and some pretty witty dialogue, but overall this movie rates about 6/10. It's a little too long and some of the plot points are pretty contrived, but Bob and Lucy have good chemistry, which makes up for the few weak points in this film.

Bob Hope and Lucille Ball team up very nicely here as each steps away from their well-known screen personas to play a suburban everyman and everywoman who unexpectedly fall for each other, despite the complication of being married to other people. The comedy includes some surprisingly tart satire on the claustrophobic lifestyles of the 50's suburban/country club/den mother families that we all know so well from "Leave it to Beaver," etc. But the big laughs come as the two sneak around town to try to be alone together.

I have seen a bunch of Bob Hope films, though few from the later part of his movie career. This is because all the Hope films from the 60s that I have seen (especially "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number") have been disappointments. Despite this, I decided to try "The Facts of Life"...and was very much surprised. The big surprise is that the film really wasn't a comedy!!

Larry (Hope) and Kitty (Lucille Ball) both hang in the same social circle but are hardly friends. She thinks he's a bit of a blowhard. Despite this, neither one realizes that they DO have something in common...inattentive spouses who take them for granted. This becomes obvious when these couples are headed to Mexico for a grand vacation. This is because Kitty and Larry's spouses both have something seemingly better to do and instruct their partners to go without them. In essence Larry and Kitty are pushed together and nature takes its course...and they slowly find themselves falling in love.

Well, this made for a lovely vacation for the two but they both realize that it just cannot be and plan on returning home to their old dull lives. The problem is that when they return home, their spouses continue to find lots of things which are more important than nurturing them. So, the pair decide to pick up where they left off...though complications naturally ensue.

If this doesn't sound like a comedy, well, it really isn't...at least the first half of the film. There are a few mildly funny bits here and there but it's obvious these folks weren't trying to make a comedy but more a romantic drama about marriage and straying spouses. However, when the pair finally get off together once again, the romance becomes far less romantic and the emphasis is on laughs AND reality...the reality that it was just a vacation infatuation after all and an affair ain't so easy after all.

In many ways, this film would be great for couples to watch...particularly folks who have been together for many years. It's a great object lesson about what NOT to do in your marriage as well as to encourage you to keep that love alive.

Directed by Melvin Frank and written by Frank with Norman Panama, "The Facts of Life" is an adult love story that will surprise you. Frank & Panama are Bob Hope experts, multiple Oscar nominees and the creators of such classic comedies as "The Court Jester" and "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House".

Kitty Weaver and Larry Gilbert are two perfectly nice suburbanites. If Kitty's husband (Don DeFore) seems a little preoccupied with work and his gambling habit, and Larry's wife (Ruth Hussey) a little too caught up with the kids - well, that's life. They have no thought of straying. They certainly have no thought of straying toward each other. However, Fate (in that way of hers) forces these two perfectly nice people to spend time together. Kitty discovers that "the jerk who tells the lousy jokes at the country club" is a genuinely warm and funny fellow. Larry sees a softer side to that stuck up Kitty. Love blossoms with the added complications of vows and conscience.

How Larry and Kitty deal with their feelings, their need to be together and the realities of their lives is played out in a frank, touching and very funny manner. It is wonderful to see two actors who happen to be bona fide comic geniuses working together in such perfect sympathy. The humour of character and situation also involves some gut grabbing slapstick, and some quiet moments that will make you smile or sigh a sentimental sigh for two perfectly nice people.

In some ways, this is like an "I Love Lucy" show with cursing, lots of drinking, and centering on adultery. Ball and Hope work well together.

The plot begins inauspiciously: We see Hope doing a comedy gig as MC at a local event. We hear Ball's thoughts about how crass and unfunny he is. (And he -- this character, not Hope himself -- is.) Because of circumstances that throw them together, however, they are very soon sexually and romantically involved with each other.

If one can get past this, which I could, the movie is sophisticated (well, for its time) and often funny. It was probably a courageous move for both of them to step into such a risqué plot.

The supporting cast is good. Ruth Hussey plays Hope's wife. As always, she is good. But seeing her is sad: Though she looks fine, her voice had aged badly. Irene Dunne's did too. Though I am crazy about Dunne, her last couple movies are painful for this reason. Hussey sounds like an elderly woman, which she really was not. Ball's voice had gone the opposite direction: She speaks almost in the basso profondo of her later television series.

If this turns up, give it a try. It's surpassingly good.

A sort of Southern California version of Brief Encounter, but for Bob Hope and Lucille Ball. They play Pasadena country club types who find themselves on an Acapulco vacation without their spouses - and fall in love.

Lucille Ball plays Kitty very well and without undue sentiment. This is a type of character you may not have seen her play before. It's her performance that draws you into the story and makes you care. Bob Hope, as Larry, isn't really in Ball's league as an emotional actor. But filmmakers Norman Panama and Melvin Frank do something very smart. They make his character a frustrated amateur comic. So in a sense, he doesn't have to stray very far from his usual characterization.

If you like Lucy or Bob you will have to see this, but frankly, though it's good, it doesn't hit any comic or romantic bulls-eyes. There are some missed opportunities for a really sharp comedy such as Billy Wilder might have made. There are also some misses when it comes to honesty or pathos. It's all a little slick, though the film attempts to go a little deeper than a typical romcom of the era, and occasionally it succeeds.

Panama and Frank were experts at writing funny yet entirely natural dialogue, and creating realistic characters and situations, for the most part (some of the slapstick at the cabin seems forced, but the drive-in movie scenes are well done).

The black and white film also features Philip Ober (Vivian Vance's husband, at the time), and in the smallish but important roles of the spouses, Ruth Hussey and Don DeFore.

Maybe it's because I've left her alone for a while, and absence makes the heart grow fonder. Whatever the reason, I definitely enjoyed this movie much more than the first couple of times I watched it. Wow, I mean it invigorated me, I feel so refreshed after watching it!

I've come to the conclusion that I actually prefer watching old favorites over and over again more than I do watching something I've never seen before. I think it's because after a while, we are set in our ways as people. Everything we actually really love, we fall into that as children and teenagers. After that, everything pals in comparison to What we Loved before. I'm definitely finding that to be true, revisiting movies that I loved growing up.

I'm so blessed that I was raised on old movies, and they were even old back then. I was raised on TCM and AMC and Nick at Nite, and I think it's giving me a better outlook on the world. Those movies and shows were less cynical, more sincere, gentler, just plain old nicer. Take this film for instance - a movie about adultery. But it's made in such a way that you love everyone involved, and you can feel empathy for each character.

This movie is all at once sexy, sweet, sad, wholesome, and scandalous! It may be wrong, but I found myself rooting for the characters that Lucy and Bob were playing! They were so romantic, and I felt their Joy. But I also felt the reservations. This was made so well! Definitely one of the best from the sex comedy era that I think was unofficially kicked off by Doris Day and Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk. And that's a great one - and they're a great pair, but I prefer Lucy and Bob! :-)

Love this movie. One of my favorites.

Circumstances put two middle-aged people married to others into a romantic situation and an affair blossoms. The script by veteran writer Panama has some laughs, but this is not an all-out comedy. It has sentimental moments, and the comedy and the drama are integrated fairly well. This is one of four films teaming Hope and Ball and they work well together. When it comes to the dramatic scenes, however, it is difficult to buy Hope as a romantic leading man. He has all the sex appeal of a cucumber. Ball, on the other hand, shows herself to be a capable dramatic actress, giving a touching performance as a woman looking to spice up her life a bit.

I only saw the last half hour of this on TV and I can't wait to watch it from the beginning. This movie is hilarious and touching. Its a brilliant script and Bob Hope and Lucille Ball both show off their comedic talents. It had me both laughing and crying by the end, and what more can you ask from romantic comedy? Moral of the movie; respect your marriage. A winner.

If you ever wanted an example of just how significantly movie censorship could date a film, check out The Facts Of Life (TFOL) from1960. Incorporating plot aspects that were put to much better creative use earlier by David Lean in Brief Encounter and during the same year by Billy Wilder in The Apartment, TFOL also ventured (not always successfully) into one of the most difficult of film genres---dramatic comedy. Had the strictures of censorship not worked against this light tale of how love may not always conquer all when the principals are middle aged and married to other spouses, TFOL might have reached a higher achievement. See, e.g. Jonathan Demme's more acclaimed attempt at dramatic comedy in Something Wild. As it is, the plot of TFOL lurches from one improbable situation to another, because existing censorship restrictions made it difficult to permit a dimension of reality to intrude upon the story and make it more believable. Too bad, because TFOL presented us with a potentially interesting opportunity to better satirize a social class and it would have lent itself easily to such treatment.

Part of the problem with TFOL is the physical disconnect between the two principal actors. When the film was released, Lucille Ball was a still glamorous 49 year old woman who could easily be believable as an object of desire by someone like the Bob Hope character. However, Hope was then a not particularly attractive 57 year old man and visually well past his prime of life. Ball shines by creating a very appealing and engaging part, while Hope seems to have some difficulty trying to keep up with her. In the end, this was just one more plot element to detract from the film's reality---much like the pairing of Humphrey Bogart with Audrey Hepburn as an exemplary romantic couple in the comedy Sabrina.

Ball proved in The Big Street just how talented and competent she was when playing a straight part in a dramatic comedy. On the other hand, Hope in the very few opportunities he was offered to do much the same thing never seemed nearly as believable. See, e.g. Beau James and The Seven Little Foys. However, both Ball and Hope excelled in creating their own unique brand of pure comedy, as evidenced by two truly remarkable show business careers.

As previously mentioned, dramatic comedy is a tough genre to pull off well. There are just too many opportunities to encounter conflicting situations and internal inconsistencies. See, e.g. Muriel's Wedding. However, TFOL is ultimately saved by the great chemistry Ball and Hope always shared with each other. It is a shame that they were not given the chance to make this film 20 years earlier.

It's an unmerry marital mix-up amongst the country club set when bored society wife Lucille Ball finds herself inexplicably drawn to Bob Hope, her neighbor and also already married. Melvin Frank comedy doesn't so much expose the funny desperation of the Marital Blahs as it does tweeze it relentlessly (Frank is not the gentle sort of writer-director--he goes for the gut, much like Neil Simon). Ball is thoroughly up to the challenge of a sharp, brittle suburban comedy, but Frank has given old pal Bob Hope the same type of groaning witticisms he supplied him with back in the 1940s (Lucy: "You're a painter??" Bob: "What do you want me to do? Cut off my ear?"). Playing to the camera, referencing Francis X. Bushman and riffing on his own stand-up routine, Hope is the wrong actor for a sophisticated comedy about infidelity. Too bad, because Lucy does very well, the black-and-white cinematography is expressive, and occasionally the writing rises above smarminess to actually reveal something substantial and amusing about marriages in a rut. ** from ****

Maybe it was because I was expecting the cowardly Bob Hope and the scatterbrained Lucy Ricardo, but somehow I couldn't get into The Facts of Life. It had nowhere near the quality comedy that characterized Fancy Pants and Sorrowful Jones.

Bob and Lucille play a couple of 40 something marrieds, a bit of a stretch for Bob to be sure, but nothing that other Hollywood leading men weren't also doing. Problem is they're not married to each other. Their respective mates are Ruth Hussey and Don DeFore. Both couples are part of a set of California neighbors who apparently do everything together, not unlike the gangster couples in Goodfellas. Not that the men are involved in anything that illegal and risky.

Anyway DeFore due to business reasons is delayed on their planned trip to Acapulco and Hussey gets sick while down there. Bob and Lucille get thrown together and one thing leads to another.

But the fates do conspire against them, they just can't seem to close the deal on the affair. I think you got the rest of the story.

There were a whole lot of opportunities for the type of comedy both Bob and Lucille do that creators Melvin Frank and Norman Panama just passed by.

Yet both of them got good reviews generally and to be sure their performances were restrained. Maybe too restrained.

As the title song of that other Facts of Life creation says, it takes a lot to get them right, and this film didn't.

Interesting pairing of Lucy and Bob Hope in what is quite an adult film for its time.

To be honest I wish Bob Hope played it more serious, like Lucy, with less of the one liners punctuating nearly every piece of dialogue. I know that is what he was famous for, but the script demanded more subtle comedy.

Lucy is just amazing. Her timing, acting and glamorous to boot, but why was she shot in soft focus for all her close ups? It was quite noticeable throughout, especially when the dialogue switched between her and Bob Hope. He was was in focus, she was in soft focus.