Man's Favorite Sport? (1964)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Howard Hawks

Writers:

Pat Frank (story)
John Fenton Murray (writer) ...

Release Date:

29 January 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Plot:

Roger Willoughby is considered to be a leading expert on sports fishing. He's written books on the subject...

Plot Keywords:

Fishing | Contest | Plaster Of Paris Bandage | Beautiful Woman | Remake

Cast

Rock Hudson	...	Roger Willoughby
Paula Prentiss	...	Abigail Page
Maria Perschy	...	Isolde 'Easy' Mueller
John McGiver	...	William Cadwalader
Charlene Holt	...	Tex Connors
Roscoe Karns	...	Major Phipps
James Westerfield	...	Policeman
Norman Alden	...	John Screaming Eagle
Forrest Lewis	...	Skaggs
Regis Toomey	...	Bagley
Tyler McVey	...	Customer Bush
Kathie Browne	...	Marcia

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

UK:U | Australia:G | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | West Germany:12

Company:

Gibraltar Productions

Trivia:

Filming began late in 1962 but the movie was not released until 1964.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Just after helping Easy gracefully exit the lodge due to her inadvertently unzipped dress, Roger attempts re-zip the back of Easy's dress. Just prior to the moment Easy turns her back to hide Roger's hands from view, it is obvious that Roger grasps the end of his tie to attach it to the zipper.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Charlie Rose Show: Quentin Tarantino" (1994)

Soundtrack:

Man's Favorite Sport

Slick, professional, but SO studio bound!

Other comments about this one are on the mark, both positive and negative. Rock and Paula play awfully well together and it's always a pleasure to see her get more than a few scenes in a film.

Howard Hawks had at his disposal not only an attractive cast but also thorough professionals behind the cameras. But I recall, when I saw this during its first-run, and again when I saw an interminably interrupted broadcast of it on American Movie "Classics" (the quotes are intentional because this cable venue now treats its library like disposable trash!), that this film had the falsest, most studio-bound look to it of almost all of the releases of that era. The lighting is bland and frequently too bright, the sets are all obviously constructed and photographed on a soundstage (including all the exterior scenes, or so it seems) and the final impression is so artificial that the script's deficiencies become all the more glaring.

Yes, I know, that pulling off some of this comedy's elaborately set up sequences, some involving some fairly complex slapstick, would be very hard to control in natural, actual location settings, but, really, one wished they would have tried to do so, or at least to make the studio and backlot sets a little more convincing to the eye. For me the whole enterprise felt like a firecracker that just fails to fizzle, pop and explode as the illustration on the box promises.