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The Iron Petticoat
Don't know what MGM was thinking when they decided that having Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn make a movie together would be a good idea, but the idea got by someone and a ridiculous Ninotchka rip-off was greenlighted called The Iron Petticoat that was the longest 90 minutes of my life.
The four time Oscar winner plays Captain Vinka Kovalenko, a Russian pilot who defects to America because she feels that she has been discriminated against in Russia because she's a woman. Captain Chuck Lockwood (Hope) is about to take an extended leave to reunite with his snooty British fiancee when his leave gets cancelled because his superiors think he is the perfect person to convince Captain Vinka that Capitalism is the only way to live and, while trying to convince Lockwood that communism is the way to go, somehow Chuck and Vinka fall in love.
Famed Hollywood writer Ben Hecht, who wrote classics like The Front Page, Notorious, and The Man with the Golden Arm is actually one of the co-conspirators around this silly and convoluted story that finds Hepburn playing a Russian pilot with absolutely no concept of being a woman is and Hope playing another one of his wise-cracking know-it-alls, whose dialogue is still and always was about those typical Hope one-liners where you can almost hear the rim shot in the background after each one.
The film is directed with a leaden hand by Ralph Thomas, who directed all of those Dirk Bogarde "Doctor" movies, which apparently made MGM think he had the skill to pull off this comedy, but this was one of the least funny movies I have ever seen. I might have laughed out loud twice during the entire 90 minutes. The problem here was pretty simple: When it comes down it, this film was a romantic comedy and a successful romantic comedy requires chemistry between the stars and there isn't a scintilla of chemistry between Hope and Hepburn, as hard as the pair are working at it.
Hepburn's interpretation of a Russian accent, which consisted primarily of always putting the accent of every word she spoke on the second syllable got very annoying very quickly and then tension between her and Hope was prevalent throughout. English actor James Robertson Justice was fun as a Russian officer, but I never really bought Noelle Middleton as Hope's snooty fiancee. Somebody at MGM should have lost their job over this one.
Don't know what MGM was thinking when they decided that having Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn make a movie together would be a good idea, but the idea got by someone and a ridiculous Ninotchka rip-off was greenlighted called The Iron Petticoat that was the longest 90 minutes of my life.
The four time Oscar winner plays Captain Vinka Kovalenko, a Russian pilot who defects to America because she feels that she has been discriminated against in Russia because she's a woman. Captain Chuck Lockwood (Hope) is about to take an extended leave to reunite with his snooty British fiancee when his leave gets cancelled because his superiors think he is the perfect person to convince Captain Vinka that Capitalism is the only way to live and, while trying to convince Lockwood that communism is the way to go, somehow Chuck and Vinka fall in love.
Famed Hollywood writer Ben Hecht, who wrote classics like The Front Page, Notorious, and The Man with the Golden Arm is actually one of the co-conspirators around this silly and convoluted story that finds Hepburn playing a Russian pilot with absolutely no concept of being a woman is and Hope playing another one of his wise-cracking know-it-alls, whose dialogue is still and always was about those typical Hope one-liners where you can almost hear the rim shot in the background after each one.
The film is directed with a leaden hand by Ralph Thomas, who directed all of those Dirk Bogarde "Doctor" movies, which apparently made MGM think he had the skill to pull off this comedy, but this was one of the least funny movies I have ever seen. I might have laughed out loud twice during the entire 90 minutes. The problem here was pretty simple: When it comes down it, this film was a romantic comedy and a successful romantic comedy requires chemistry between the stars and there isn't a scintilla of chemistry between Hope and Hepburn, as hard as the pair are working at it.
Hepburn's interpretation of a Russian accent, which consisted primarily of always putting the accent of every word she spoke on the second syllable got very annoying very quickly and then tension between her and Hope was prevalent throughout. English actor James Robertson Justice was fun as a Russian officer, but I never really bought Noelle Middleton as Hope's snooty fiancee. Somebody at MGM should have lost their job over this one.