I'll Take Sweden

I'll Take Sweden
June 18, 1965
United Artists
Comedy, Musical, Romance
VHS
B-

If it's Tuesday, this must be Sweden.  Or maybe Big Bear.  In Hope & Weld's answer to Take Her, She's Mine, we have to take the mountains of California for the mountains of Sweden.  Somehow that seems appropriate in this movie that is on the surface much less topical than THSM, yet underneath shows the tensions of the growing generation gap.  Sandra Dee as a college student was interested in protest, but Weld (as Jojo) just cares about the Watusi and her unemployed musician boyfriend Kenny (Frankie Avalon).  Hope (as Bob Holcomb, a very Danza name) lies and schemes to separate the two of them when marriage is a possibility, but he later decides that a wholesome American boy like Kenny is a better bet than the "Scandinavian Svengali" who tries to seduce Jojo.  Although the movie is as L7 as Bob H., it does address the double standard, especially when Bob falls for a Swede of his own (Dina Merrill, not Swedish).  There are at least three lines that show that the worry is not only that Jojo will lose her virginity out of wedlock, but that she'll become an unwed mother.  The irony of this will be great when we get to Hope's How to Commit Marriage, but that will be four years later, in a decade of change too fast for mainstream movies like this to keep up with.

The movie is sometimes intentionally funny, if in a corny way.  ("I can't sleep at night."  "You should talk to my doctor.  He can't sleep either.")  There's a third-rate, secondhand Marx Brothers connection, since director Nat Perrin wrote The Big Store.  And Bob Fisher and Arthur (son of Groucho) Marx would also cowrite Hope's Cancel My Reservation.  (Seven years from this movie, and definitely showing weariness with changing times.)

I'll note that Frankie sings three songs in this one, but doesn't seem to be breaking completely free of his AIP image.  (Bob calls him "a poor Beatle.")  Frankie's work here did have an impact on our next movie, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, but I'll get to that in its place.

John Qualen, who's Olaf here, was Berger in Casablanca.  This is the last of my movies with Bert Stevens (he died the previous December); here he's a bistro patron, and he was in Citizen Kane among many others.  Hotel guest Jack Shea was a police officer in Palm Springs Weekend.  Rosemarie Frankland, here Marti, was a showgirl in A Hard Day's Night.  Christopher Riordan, a student here, would join the AIP Beach Party crowd shortly.  Beverly Hills (yes, you read that right) plays Electra here and would be Mary Ann in Speedway.