August 21, 1968
Cherokee Productions
Comedy
VHS
C+
Speaking of big-screen sitcoms....Well, OK, this Jerry-Paris-directed movie is less like a '60s sitcom than Did You Hear the One...? was, and more like a very extended episode of Love American Style (which would premiere the next year). It's a little surprising to find that the book it's based on, The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini, came out as far back as '61, but that may explain the title change, since by '68 movie titles with the word "bikini" in them sounded a bit dated. (Even It's a Bikini World was pushing it in '67, and that was made in '65.) Debbie Reynolds is the title character, and looks quite fetching in the bikini, but she is 36 at this point and playing a woman of her own age, with a 15-year-old son. Her husband, played by James Garner, thinks she looks indecently exposed, especially when she wears the bikini in a pool with a seductive Frenchman. Meanwhile, a pretty tour guide is flirting with Garner, although he doesn't fall for her as Moondoggie did in Gidget Goes to Rome. Also meanwhile, their son (who wears a peace necklace and has hair scandalously down to his chin) has his own love troubles. This leads to the whole family winding up in the middle of a whorehouse brawl.
The movie is another example of the mainstream trying to cope with changing times, so it isn't particularly sweet. You might hope for camp, and there is a bit, but the energy is off. There are lots of jokes that misfire, like one that I think is about a lesbian having a riding crop. I don't like that we're supposed to admire hot-tempered Garner, who threatens people, including his wife, with violence, and think that his sensitive son, who believes in not only peace but honesty and freedom in relationships, needs to grow up and "become a man." The main enjoyment I got out of the movie was the music, including the Mamas & Papas-like title song, and the supporting cast, including of course many TV faces.
This was co-written by Garry Marshall, who does a voiceover as a belching young man and then later appears in the brothel in a baseball uniform. Yes, that's Garry kid sister Penny, then 24 but passing for 16, as one of the girls on the tour. And, yes, the little girl who answers the pay phone in the park is 7-year-old Erin Moran, the future Joanie Cunningham.
Paul Lynde steals a few scenes as the purse-lipped purser, while Terry-Thomas steals $1000 of Reynolds's savings and then of course disappears from the movie. This time Vito Scotti plays the cook who kisses Reynolds on the stomach when she flashes her bikini. Myrna Ross, formerly one of Von Zipper's Mice in the Beach Party movies, shows up as an "Agatzi girl" (working for Gino Conforti, later of Three's Company). Another hooker, Eve Bruce, was a harem girl in John Goldfarb. Walter Brooke, who plays Garner's henpecked boss, is better known for advising on plastics in The Graduate.
Alexandra Hay, who plays the "Are you sure you're 16?"-year-old Gloria would have a more prominent role as Darlene Banks, the hippie daughter of Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing, in Skidoo. Johnny Silver, who plays "zipper man," would be Dr. Blinky and Ludicrous Lion in both the Pufnstuf show and film.
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| It is a turquoise bikini in the movie. And, no, I don't know why they changed Garner's reaction. |
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