MovieChat Forums > The Facts of Life (1960) Discussion > Watched it last night--July, 2006...

Watched it last night--July, 2006...


...and have to admit i was hooked. i wanted to turn to something else, but i just couldn't.

i'm not a big fan of bob hope movies, but i do enjoy those that he made with lucille ball. this film included some wonderful examples of early 60s clothing, sites & sounds, autos, architecture, etc. and the dialog was well written, if sometimes a little too contrived.

i think the only negative i'd pin to this film is something that i also find true of their other films together...they are portarying characters that are about 10 years younger than both actors obviously are. i mean, c'mon... if the characters were written as late 40s to early 50s it would have been believable. that bob hope and the actress playing his wife are the parents of grade school aged sons is a huge stretch. and lucy is photographed through a whole lotta filters, even though her character has young children. they even reference that they have been married for 13 years... sorry, these folks have been married at least 25 years.

and how the hell many cigarettes did lucille ball smoke in this film? eww gawd. oh, and her lighting was a little harsh at times, too.

i did, however, completely believe that they could have been interested in each other romantically and (brace yourselves) physically. though how anyone could get excited about bob hope when he had his pants pulled up midway between his navel and his arm pits is beyond me.

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BeafyBear says > i'm not a big fan of bob hope movies, but i do enjoy those that he made with lucille ball.
I feel the same way. I've never been a Bob Hope fan but I noticed Lucy was in a couple of his movies that were on TCM so I recorded them to DVR. I saw 'Critic's Choice' first.

It was okay but I didn't like very much. I wondered if I'd like 'The Facts of Life'. It turns out I loved this movie. It was entertaining and funny. Like you, I could see Bob and Lucy as the characters they portrayed.

i think the only negative i'd pin to this film is something that i also find true of their other films together...they are portarying characters that are about 10 years younger than both actors obviously are. i mean, c'mon... if the characters were written as late 40s to early 50s it would have been believable. that bob hope and the actress playing his wife are the parents of grade school aged sons is a huge stretch. and lucy is photographed through a whole lotta filters, even though her character has young children.
Filters or not I thought Lucy looked great. She was like an older version of her younger self; especially in the boat with her hair less coiffed. I don't think their ages really mattered in the scheme of things. I didn't see it as an issue because their characters weren't meant to be very young. The ages of their children in the movie don't matter either.

In real life, Lucy had her first child when she was about forty. That means at the time this movie was released, her real life kids were only seven and nine; much younger than her kids in the movie. Bob was close to sixty and his wife over fifty but their four kids were all much younger than one might expect for a couple their age.

they even reference that they have been married for 13 years... sorry, these folks have been married at least 25 years.
LOL I think you're probably looking for issues that aren't there. I didn't hear them say how long they had been married but let's say you're right. You have, I assume, heard of people marrying later in life, right? Saying they should have been married longer means you assume they got married in their twenties. Even if they had been together since then, they could have put off getting married and having children; or, like Bob and his real wife, Dolores, they could have adopted.


Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]

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