King of the Mountain

source: King of the Mountain

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.

1964's 'Bedtime Story' is not to be confused with the 1941 film of the same name with Fredric March and Loretta Young, an enjoyable film in its own right despite March's uneven performance. Inevitable comparisons have been made with this film and its remake 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels', haven't seen that film in years but do remember enjoying it and intend to re-watch it when possible. Have liked all three leads in other things, with Marlon Brando especially having some iconic performances in his career. Found 'Bedtime Story' to be a very enjoyable film, lots of fun with the leads on top form. Don't be fooled by the film's pretty cutesy and child friendly-like title ('Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' even would have been a much more apt title) that makes you think that it is going to be another film entirely. It is a long way from cutesy and very much adult-oriented, much funnier and wittier than one might think looking at that title which does the film no favours, and quite a bit better than its mixed critical reception at the time suggests. 'Bedtime Story's' script is not perfect, it could have done with some tightening up here and there as not everything felt necessary here and as a consequence the script is not as lean as ought. Meaning that the film sometimes drags and can get on the repetitive side. While the slang was interesting, it is very of the time and dates the film a bit. Was a little more mixed on Brando, leaning towards liked but had problems with his character. Brando has great charisma, great energy and some nice comic timing, extracting as much as he can out of the material and giving it juice, often amusingly oily. He does suffer from his character being too coarse and too much of a bully, so a near-irredeemable character that is difficult to get behind, and he can play the role too heavily and broadly at times. So a mostly fun if at times uneven performance in an unlikeable and quite odd role. David Niven, coming onto the numerous good things, has a character tailor-made for him, a character with characteristics that he was no stranger to and he is typically lively, sophisticated and charming. He and Brando have dynamite conflicting chemistry together that really gives 'Bedtime Story' sparkle, his smoothness contrasting beautifully with the broader acting style of Brando. Shirley Jones' character is not near as interesting but she is radiant, has a natural charm and appeals. The script isn't perfect, but has a wonderfully biting wit frequently and the broadness that it has doesn't get too nasty in my view. The story is not probable and the pace isn't perfect, but is enlivened by some genuinely funny set pieces and the dynamite character interactions. It wholly succeeds as lightweight fun and is generally crisp in pace. It is a lavish looking film, especially the colourful art direction beautifully photographed, love the attention to detail that some of the camera angles have. The music score is colourful and has a lot of personality and Ralph Levy's direction avoids being too wild, not always exciting but always expertly and never bland. All in all, uneven but good fun. 7/10

I was ten when the movie came out, my dad encouraged me to watch it years later when it played on television. I was hooked... Brando is uproarious as the American GI in Europe, an egotist, sometimes crude, a hustler, preying on gorgeous woman through sympathy, his good looks and his almost pathetic hilarious charm....David Niven is the slick, cool, rich charming Englishman and yes, he's also as conniving as Brando. Though Niven is a bit smarter than "Freddy" (Brando) - It makes for a weird but funny and brief partnership between Niven and Brando, to seduce & fleece some very rich, sometimes beautiful, but always naive, trusting & very willing women. And thus begins an even funnier competition between Brando and Niven, as the movie really gets rolling along...as each character underestimates the other in cons and setups, then untimely outwits the other...all the way until the final twist of an ironic and funny ending to the film. Yes, there are indeed a couple of silly and corny scenes...but overall the movie is a very funny farce, as enjoyable & well written comedy to come out of that early 60's era, (1964) or any era for that matter....Brando is truly terrific - Accept no substitutes, i.e., "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"!

Lawrence Jameson (David Niven) lives in a castle in France, and may be best described as the quintessential rotten womanizer. He systematically seduces wealthy women to his wealthy home, whereupon the victims are persuaded, in one way or another, to give him large amounts of their fortunes. While Jameson is certainly an unsympathetic fellow when it comes down to it, he is very able to fool nearly anyone with his apparent charm. It turns out that he has a rival, however; Freddy Benson (Marlon Brando) lives by the same sort of principles. The two swindlers eventually meet, and as the result of an argument they agree to engage in a bet. The first of them to successfully get 25 000 dollars out of the pocket of Janet Walker (Shirley Jones), the gentle and pretty daughter of a wealthy business man, should be declared as the true king of womanizers. While Freddy pretends to be paralyzed due to a sad love story, in order to evoke empathy from Mrs. Walker, Jameson--unpredicted by Freddy--turns up in the role as his rival's supposed psychiatrist! Initially intended as another vehicle for Rock Hudson and Doris Day (as well as Cary Grant), BEDTIME STORY instead turned out to provide David Niven with yet another opportunity to perform the kind of role for which he is probably best-remembered today. He is essentially rather similar here to "The Phantom" in the first PINK PANTHER-movie, to just name one example. Even so, he is definitely hilarious; his facial expressions alone are sometimes able to make me laugh out loud. The film does also offer a quite convincing demonstration of Marlon Brando's talent as a comic performer, and furthermore that his capabilities as such has been unjustly under-appreciated. While often praised as the greatest dramatic actor ever seen on the screen, the humorous performances of Brando are rarely given more than passing mention. It may be true that all of Brando's most memorable performances are of the dramatic kind; Stanley Kowalski in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and Terry Malloy in ON THE WATERFRONT being two obvious examples. However, I do not accept this as a valid reason to entirely neglect his attempts at other kinds of roles. Brando himself may have felt that he couldn't do comedy well; but he did admit, in his autobiography 30 years later, that he found making BEDTIME STORY a delight, possibly the only time he truly enjoyed working in a film. He claimed to have laughed so hard during certain scenes that he often had to leave the room, but even then it was hard for the performers to ignore his howls of laughter. BEDTIME STORY is an entirely undemanding piece of entertainment, a very light comedy indeed, but also a very enjoyable one, if you are in that kind of mood and just wants to laugh after a stressful day.

Forget "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"! That is a mere imitation and a poor one at that. This is the original and by far one of the most outstanding comedies on film. There is no foul language, violence, gratuitous sex or any other artifice. Bedtime Story really relies on nothing more than a great script and outstanding actors. I have seen the movie many times since my childhood and I am happy to say that my children (both adults now) also share my views. Just buy the DVD (freely available from the UK - why not the USA????? Shame, shame).

Before tackling the film proper, I'd like to point out some fascinating trivia first: originally, this was planned with Cary Grant and Rock Hudson in mind who were to compete for Doris Day and, allegedly, it was almost revived as a starring vehicle for (brace yourselves) David Bowie and Mick Jagger (!!)…before saner minds prevailed and we got DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (1988) – with Michael Caine and Steve Martin replacing David Niven and Marlon Brando respectively – instead. Anyway, the premise was quite original at the time – rival con-men decide to collaborate but clash over fleecing a woman who turns out to be poor – and the film itself was actually better than I was expecting: in any case, "The most vulgar and embarrassing film of the year" – as The Daily Express had deemed the film on its release – it certainly wasn't! Given that BEDTIME STORY was one of Brando's efforts from his lean period (and, uncharacteristically, a comedy at that), I didn't have high hopes for it initially – especially since some of the other "comedies" I had seen Brando in had been pretty desperate attempts: A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG (1967) and CANDY (1968; see above). Still, that the Method actor was capable of handling lighter material than the brooding dramas he was best-known for, was already evident early on in his career with GUYS AND DOLLS (1955) and THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON (1956), but this is perhaps his most engaging performance in this field; that said, it's rather disquieting to see him mugging like a Jerry Lewis wannabe (when posing as Niven's half-wit brother)! His co-star isn't particularly taxed by his role – having often played the roué, it's one he could have done in his sleep – but he's always good value in this type of light entertainment; ditto Shirley Jones, who plays it more or less straight. The delightful opening, lending fairy-tale connotations to the narrative (hence the title) and the various schemes by which the two male stars attempt to outwit one another in order to obtain Jones' favors (and, in the process, her money) constitute the film's highlights; these include the famous scene in which Brando poses as a paraplegic – recalling his celebrated debut performance in Fred Zinnemann's powerful social drama THE MEN (1950) – as a result of which Jones arranges for him to be "cured" by renowned shrink Niven! I watched the film via the R2 DVD from Orbit Media, presenting the Universal film in a full-screen format; I haven't been able to ascertain what the original aspect ratio was, but I didn't find the compositions overly compromised; for the record, BEDTIME STORY is still unavailable on R1 DVD and one wonders what held it from being included in Universal's four-film 2-Disc Set of "The Marlon Brando Franchise Collection"...

This film is a bedtime fairy tale, with princes, wolves and preyed-upon damsels, castles and woods. Fairy tales are often designed to be instructive, or to inculcate a moral. 'Bedtime Story' is instructive - we learn how to cheat, lie, humiliate, plot, bribe, wager, impersonate, amuse; and is cheerfully amoral. Like the traditional fairy tale, it ends in marriage, which is another word for soul-destroying prison, the final trap set by a master conman. 'Story' is one of the few genuinely funny comedies from the 1960s, and I can't understand why it hasn't been acclaimed as such, or developed even a cult following. It may not be very cinematically inventive, but there are sequences here of such audacity, cruelty and gasping hilarity that it puts even the Peter Sellers bits of 'The Pink Panther' movies to shame. Its influence, furthermore, can be seen in two of the most important films of the last five years. Like 'In the Company of Men', two men coldly wager on winning the affections of an innocent woman. Like 'The Idiots', one of the characters pretends to be disabled to 'subvert' bourgeois normality (in this case, to wring money and jewels from them). Maybe this is why comment on the film is silent, some people confusing a character as morally callous as Freddy Benson, who would impersonate the disabled for his own gain, with a general attitude of mockery towards the disabled. It is true that these scenes are very uncomfortable, which is why they are so eye-poppingly funny; maybe it IS offensive to use being disabled as character short-hand - even though it is a good metaphor for Brando's physicality being paralysed by mental grace, he still gets to walk up again. I don't know. I loved 'Me Myself and Irene' too. Maybe I'm not a nice person. The film's air of cold bonhomie extends to its structure which operates with a mathematical precision appropriate to its German setting, not only in its three act structure (introduction of characters; working together; final wager), but in the way in introduces its characters, seperately, before putting them together, like a theorem, or a chemical experiment. The chief joy of this film is the way it plays on their stars' very well-developed personae, both public and private; David Niven is the conman with perfect English elegance and etiquette, with suave, quick, alert movements figuring the practical clockwork in his head, whose sense of morality and decency conveniently gets competition out of the way. His performance plays most obviously on his 'Pink Panther' role, but there is a touch of Phileas Fogg in his Freudian doctor impersonation, which allows him to inflict clinically methodical cruelty, to uproarious results. Brando, meanwhile, is a comic revelation. Like Robert De Niro, his serious, dramatic roles are always laced with a menacing, self-aware humour, but his straight comic vehicles have been humorless mugfests. He is in his element here as the kind of brash, unprincipled, cheating, thieving, blackmailing American the real Brando despises, making fun of the solemn brilliance of his best films, especially 'The Men', with that familiar Brando whine and hurt-baby-face-in-tough-guy-body look. Because this is a film about acting, about two of cinema's greatest performers, from totally different traditions, trying to outskill each other; there is genuine admiration to be seen as each watches the other do his stuff, just as each character's bluff is outbluffed by the other. And this is what gives this marvellous film its depth, the idea of acting in life, of assuming roles, of constructing identities, as a necessary defence against the stolid domesticity to which Brando is apparently condemned. The film seems to have a moral after all - better the settled married man over the aging, 'free' bachelor, which Jameson acknowledges, while mock-sadly making off to indulge that freedom.

"Bedtime Story" is a very unusual film in that I actually much preferred the remake, "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"...and I rarely enjoy remakes. I won't bore you with a lot of details--suffice to say that it's pretty much the same plot but the character played by Marlon Brando is very sexist and crude...much more so and much more of a jerk than the character played by Steve Martin. And, therein lies the problem--he plays such an obvious pig that the film loses the audience. You just cannot believe he's a con man...and a successful one at that. Overall, an interesting idea that only is modestly interesting...at best. Stick with the 1988 film...your brain will thank you.

A young trim Brando as Freddie Benson, shows his comedic talent and versatility in this movie classic. David Niven plays the suave sophisticate role better than Michael Cane. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a good comedy, Bedtime Story (the original) was even better. BTS was so good someone thought they could do better. It's a shame that the many people I have talked to who love DRS didn't even know it was a remake of this excellent film. Brando's scheme at the beginning of the movie to seduce the beautiful peasant girl by aging a Poloroid picture of her farmhouse claiming it was the home his grandmother lived in gives some insight to his character. The fact that Brando is just in it for the sex and Niven is doing it for big money sets the plot for the rest of the movie. Niven sees this interloper as a threat and we are off to the races for the rest of the plot. Both Michael Cane and Steve Martin did a good job in the remake but the Brando/Niven combination is unforgettable. Too bad it is not available on DVD for the US market. A British PAL version was released in 2004. I hope the US-DVD is not far behind.