Here, as so often elsewhere, Hawks pits the egghead against the people of nature. Rock Hudson is a salesman at high-end sports retail Abercrombie and Fitch, which is the L. L. Bean of millionaires. Hudson is a famous fisherman. He's written a best selling book on just how to do it. The problem is that he's never been fishing in his life; the book, and the advice he gives to customers, is just gossip picked up from various sources. In other words, Hudson is a fraud, only no one knows about it, not even his boss, Mr. Cadwalader. (Hawks has a feeling for the proper names: Peabody is an elite name in Boston, while Cadwalader, like Rittenhouse, is an elite name from Philadelphia.
At any rate, Cadwalader sends Hudson to join a fishing tournament at a remote lake, expecting him to win fame for Abercrombie and Fitch. He's accompanied by two of the corporation's public relations people, Paula Prentiss (nee Ragusa in San Antonio) and Maria Perschy (from Austria). They discover Hudson's secret, that he's an ignoramus when it comes to praxis, and decide to help him. He and Prentiss fall in love and all is resolved.
It's one of Hawks' most relaxed comedies and it's not entirely successful. The dopey musical score doesn't help. Many of the jokes are iterative -- repetitious or borrowed from Hawks' earlier work. There's even a direct quote from "Bringing Up Baby" (1936): "The love impulse in man frequently expresses itself in terms of conflict." The jokes tend to be flat. An Indian guide with his arms folded across his chest grunts out answers to tourists' questions until money comes up, then he relaxes into smooth, modern American speech. Boy, is that old.
Yet, if the movie isn't a success, it's not a failure either. There are some very funny moments. Even some of the borrowed jokes are still funny. And both Paula Prentiss and Maria Perschy are -- umm, how can I put this delicately and without sounding sexist? -- babalicious? Prentiss falls easily into the pattern of the Hawks woman. She has the proper ditzy quality, turning all of Rock Hudson's grumbled objections into nonsense. Perschy can't quite get with Hawks' demands. There are times when Hudson is quite good as the humiliated and incompetent male, although he is no Cary Grant, who would have walked successfully through the part with his eyes closed.
Hawks was an odd character, superficially dull, laconic, slow moving. But he was thoroughly heterosexual and seduced as many of his leading ladies as he could, according to his biographer. The invitation was phrased something like, "Would you like to spend a weekend at the ranch?" Sometimes he was aced out by his male actors -- John Ireland got to Joanne Dru in "Red River" and Bogart co-opted Lauren Bacall in their first movie together. When that happened, the actor didn't work with Hawks again.
The director preferred to make one of two types of movies: those about solidarity among a team of male professionals (eg., "Air Force"), and productions like this one, exposing inexperienced eggheads for the poseurs and impractical idealists that they are (eg., "The Thing From Another World"). This belongs in the second category.
At any rate, Cadwalader sends Hudson to join a fishing tournament at a remote lake, expecting him to win fame for Abercrombie and Fitch. He's accompanied by two of the corporation's public relations people, Paula Prentiss (nee Ragusa in San Antonio) and Maria Perschy (from Austria). They discover Hudson's secret, that he's an ignoramus when it comes to praxis, and decide to help him. He and Prentiss fall in love and all is resolved.
It's one of Hawks' most relaxed comedies and it's not entirely successful. The dopey musical score doesn't help. Many of the jokes are iterative -- repetitious or borrowed from Hawks' earlier work. There's even a direct quote from "Bringing Up Baby" (1936): "The love impulse in man frequently expresses itself in terms of conflict." The jokes tend to be flat. An Indian guide with his arms folded across his chest grunts out answers to tourists' questions until money comes up, then he relaxes into smooth, modern American speech. Boy, is that old.
Yet, if the movie isn't a success, it's not a failure either. There are some very funny moments. Even some of the borrowed jokes are still funny. And both Paula Prentiss and Maria Perschy are -- umm, how can I put this delicately and without sounding sexist? -- babalicious? Prentiss falls easily into the pattern of the Hawks woman. She has the proper ditzy quality, turning all of Rock Hudson's grumbled objections into nonsense. Perschy can't quite get with Hawks' demands. There are times when Hudson is quite good as the humiliated and incompetent male, although he is no Cary Grant, who would have walked successfully through the part with his eyes closed.
Hawks was an odd character, superficially dull, laconic, slow moving. But he was thoroughly heterosexual and seduced as many of his leading ladies as he could, according to his biographer. The invitation was phrased something like, "Would you like to spend a weekend at the ranch?" Sometimes he was aced out by his male actors -- John Ireland got to Joanne Dru in "Red River" and Bogart co-opted Lauren Bacall in their first movie together. When that happened, the actor didn't work with Hawks again.
The director preferred to make one of two types of movies: those about solidarity among a team of male professionals (eg., "Air Force"), and productions like this one, exposing inexperienced eggheads for the poseurs and impractical idealists that they are (eg., "The Thing From Another World"). This belongs in the second category.