Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! | |
---|---|
Directed by | George Marshall |
Screenplay by | George Kennett Albert E. Lewin Burt Styler |
Story by | George Beck |
Produced by | Edward Small |
Starring | Bob Hope Elke Sommer Phyllis Diller Cesare Danova Marjorie Lord |
Cinematography | Lionel Lindon |
Edited by | Grant Whytock |
Music by | William "By" Dunham Richard LaSalle |
Production company | Edward Small Productions |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | United States |
Box office | $4.3 million (est. US/ Canada rentals) [1] |
Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is a 1966 DeLuxe Color American comedy film starring Bob Hope and Elke Sommer. This film marked the first of three film collaborations for Hope and comedian Phyllis Diller, and was followed by Eight on the Lam in 1967 and The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell in 1968. [2]
A gorgeous French actress named Didi (Elke Sommer) has become more famous for commercials involving bubble baths than for acting. Fed up with the situation, she winds up running away for a while to Oregon, where she encounters a middle-aged married realtor (Bob Hope) who agrees to secretly assist her and thereby becomes enmeshed in various complications when the realtor and his wacky housekeeper try to hide her from being found by his wife and by the public.
The film was Bob Hope's second with Edward Small. [3] Filming started in October 1965. [4] It marked Phyllis Diller's film debut as a lead – she signed for five more pictures with Hope. [5]
With Bob Hope's film career on the downswing by the '60s, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! was critically panned and compared to a "90-minute TV sitcom". [6] The critic for The New York Times drew parallels with Up in Mabel's Room which Edward Small had made twenty years previously. [7] Reviews were poor. [8] However it performed well at the box office. Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! was listed in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time .
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Phyllis Ada Diller was an American stand-up comedian, actress, author, musician, and visual artist, best known for her eccentric stage persona, self-deprecating humor, wild hair and clothes, and exaggerated, cackling laugh.
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