Cinema: A Mickey for the Muse

Bedtime Story is a witless, one-joke soporific concocted by a pair of usually wide-awake Hollywood pitchmen. This time out, Producer-Writer Stanley Shapiro (Lover Come Back, That Touch of Mink) and Co-Author Paul Henning have pitched a Mickey to the comic muse. Story unfolds against rear-projection views of the Riviera, where a bogus Highness (David Niven) and an ex-U.S. Army corporal (Marlon Brando) pool their resources to squeeze a living out of wealthy women such as Dody Goodman, an Omaha madcap just born to be trimmed. The thieves fall out, of course, when they begin vying for the love and money of pretty Shirley Jones, whom they understandably mistake for a soap heiress.

Niven alone survives disaster by coasting through the film ever so lightly. Early on, before the first fissures appear, he issues a nimble challenge to his costar: “Are you proposing to pit your crude animal instincts against intelligence, culture and breeding?” Unfortunately Brando answers yes, then lumbers on to demonstrate how a potentially great talent can petrify through miscasting and misuse. In one scene he attempts to seduce the mayor’s daughter by performing a squalid striptease. Later, posing as a mentally defective prince, he gibbers like a traumatized gorilla and has to be spoon-fed. Then, pretending to be a crippled, self-pitying veteran, he exploits the comic possibilities of a wheelchair. Funny as a crutch. A few more stiffs like this one and Brando fan clubs will be flying their torn and faded T shirts at half-mast.