Bedtime for Bonzo

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Movie
Original title Bedtime for Bonzo
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1951
length 83 minutes
Rod
Director Frederick de Cordova
script Lou Breslow , Val Burton , after Ted Berkman and Raphael Blau
production Michael Kraike
music Frank Skinner
camera Carl E. Guthrie
cut Ted Kent
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Bonzo Goes to College

Bedtime for Bonzo is an American comedy film in black and white from 1951. The actors Ronald Reagan and Diana Lynn and the monkey Peggy as Bonzo were involved. The director was Frederick de Cordova . The film premiered on February 15, 1951 at the Circle Theater, Indianapolis, and grossed $ 1,225,000 in the United States.

action

The central character of the plot is the psychology professor Peter Boyd, whose reputation suffers from the fact that his father was in prison. So he tries to teach a chimpanzee human morality . He wants to prove that the environment shapes a man's personality and not heredity. To this end, he hires a woman, Jane Linden, as a mother chimpanzee. He himself takes on the role of father and uses the parenting methods of the 1950s . When the monkey is accused of stealing paintings, the professor almost has to go to jail.

Aftermath

Bedtime for Bonzo is one of the most iconic films starring Ronald Reagan and has revived its popularity for a while. He himself only saw the film in 1984, after serving as the 40th President of the United States .

The chimpanzee Peggy, who played Bonzo in the film, died two weeks after the film premiered.

A sequel was released under the title Bonzo Goes to College in 1952, but none of the three main characters in the first film played. The chimpanzee who played Bonzo in the second film was really called Bonzo.

Receptions

AH Weiler of the New York Times described the film as "a little bit of fun that makes a good number of laughs but doesn't ecstasy ."

Variety said it was "beguiling nonsense with enough situations to gloss over the plot holes ... The cameras linger on the chimpanzee, who makes many laughs with his antics."

Richard L. Coe of the Washington Post wrote: "Those who can endure the farce will find some laughs in it when they look at the recently deceased monkey, but the story is terribly told. Ronald Reagan, who plays the naive professor, must himself felt like the dumbest person in the world, and the others won't have been much better. "

Rotten Tomatoes has an approval rating of 67 percent for the film, based on 12 reviews with an average rating of 5.8 out of 10 points.

Trivia

The film was referenced in Ramone's 1986 song " Bonzo Goes to Bitburg, " 1986 Dead Kennedy's song "Bedtime for Democracy," and 1984 in a Jerry Harrison track entitled Bonzo Goes to Washington. An unfavorable song for Reagan called "Bad Time for Bonzo" was released on The Damned 's fourth studio album Strawberries . The film is also referred to in the comic strips Calvin and Hobbes , Bloom County (October 11, 1981) and in the Strontium Dog episode "Bitch", published in the British comic series 2000 AD . There were further references in the 1966 comedy album Freberg Underground by Stan Freberg and in the 1986 video of the Genesis song “ Land of Confusion ”. In the 1980s British satirical show Spitting Image , Reagan is shown appointing the dead and groomed monkey Bonzo as Vice President of the United States .

The following scene appears in the MMORPG video game DC Universe Online : In “Gorilla Grodd's Lab” Flash jokes with Gorilla Grodd that it is bedtime for Bonzo. A song released by Nickelodeon for the 2004 US presidential election said that Reagan played with a monkey while he was a movie star. In the second season of the FX television series Fargo , Kal Weathers, played by Nick Offerman , says he won't shake Reagan's hand because he did it with a monkey in the film and it was undignified. In the 2017 film Planet of the Apes: Survival, the film title was written on a soldier's helmet. In the final episode of Season 3 of 12 Monkeys , entitled Witness , James Cole's father tells the young James from Bedtime for Bonzo .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A 5-year-old chimp named Peggy made a monkey out of her human co-star Ronald Reagan . Retrieved June 4, 2015.
  2. ↑ http://ia800502.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/23/items/motionpicturedai69unse/motionpicturedai69unse_jp2.zip&file=motionpicturedai69unse_jp2/motionpicturedai69unse&rotate = = .jp2
  3. ↑ 'The Top Box Office Hits of 1951', Variety , Jan. 2, 1952
  4. ↑ Rickey, Carrie. "Reagan's film persona: Cheerful, humble, kind." The Philadelphia Inquirer . June 6, 2004. National A22
  5. ^ The Unlikely Life of Ronald Reagan . 1994 ABC TV special.
  6. ↑ AH Weiler: The Screen: Two Films Have Premieres . In: The New York Times . April 6, 1951, p. 31.
  7. ^ Bedtime for Bonzo . In: Variety . January 17, 1951, p. 11.
  8. ^ Richard L. Coe: The Chimp's A Lot Cuter Than Raegan [sic] . In: The Washington Post . March 15, 1951, p. B11.
  9. ^ Bedtime for Bonzo (1951) . In: Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved October 4, 2018.
  10. ↑ Calvin and Hobbes Comic Strip, December 3, 1986 on . Gocomics.com. Retrieved November 6, 2012.
  11. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh6-3IehOZ4

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