Story of movie Bedtime For Bonzo : Bedtime for Bonzo is a 1951 American comedy film directed by Fred de Cordova, starring Ronald Reagan, Diana Lynn, and Peggy as Bonzo. It revolves around the attempts of the central character, psychology professor Peter Boyd (Reagan), to teach human morals to a chimpanzee, hoping to solve the "nature versus nurture" question. He hires a woman, Jane Linden (Lynn), to pose as the chimp's mother while he plays father to it, and uses 1950s-era child rearing techniques.
| Bedtime for Bonzo | |
|---|---|
Original 1951 film poster | |
| Directed by | Fred de Cordova |
| Produced by | Michael Kraike |
| Written by | screenplay by Lou Breslow & Val Burton story by Ted Berkman & Raphael Blau |
| Starring | Ronald Reagan Diana Lynn Walter Slezak Jesse White Ann Tyrrell Brad Johnson Peggy as "Bonzo" Lucille Barkley |
| Music by | Frank Skinner |
| Cinematography | Carl E. Guthrie |
| Edited by | Ted Kent |
| Distributed by | Universal-International |
Release date |
|
Running time | 83 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1,225,000 (US rentals) |
This film is one of the most remembered of Reagan's acting career and renewed his popularity as a movie star for a while. Reagan, however, never even watched the film until 1984, when he had already served his first term as 40th President of the United States.
A sequel was released called Bonzo Goes to College (1952), but featured none of the three lead performers from the original. Peggy died in a zoo fire two weeks after the premiere of Bedtime for Bonzo; another chimp was hired for the second film whose name really was "Bonzo". Reagan did not want to work on the second film, as he thought the premise was silly.
Screenplay
- Ronald Reagan as Professor Peter Boyd
- Diana Lynn as Jane
- Walter Slezak as Professor Hans Neumann
- Lucille Barkley as Valerie Tillinghast
- Jesse White as Babcock
- Herbert Heyes as Dean Tillinghast
- Herb Vigran as Lt. Daggett
- Harry Tyler as Knucksy
- Ed Clark as Foskick
- Ed Gargan as Policeman
- Brad Johnson as Student
- Ann Tyrrell as Telephone Operator
A. H. Weiler of The New York Times called the film "a minor bit of fun yielding a respectable amount of laughs but nothing, actually, over which to wax ecstatic." Variety described it as "a lot of beguiling nonsense with enough broad situations to gloss over plot holes ... Cameras wisely linger on the chimp's sequences and his natural antics are good for plenty of laughter." Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post wrote, "If you can stomach all this, you'll find some giggles in this farce, which is okay when paying attention to the recently deceased chimp, but is perfectly terrible when trying to tell its story. Ronald Reagan, as the naive professor of things mental, must have felt like the world's sappiest straight man playing this silly role, and the others aren't much better off."
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 67%, based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10.
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The film was later referenced in connection with Reagan in the 1986 Ramones song "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)", in the Dead Kennedys' 1986 song "Rambozo the Clown", and in a track on a 1984 Jerry Harrison record, sampling Reagan and credited to "Bonzo Goes to Washington". A song unflattering to Reagan entitled "Bad Time for Bonzo" is featured on The Damned's fourth studio album, Strawberries. It was also referenced in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Bloom County comic strip (October 11, 1981), as well as in the Strontium Dog comic story "Bitch", published in 2000 AD, which featured President Ronald Reagan being kidnapped out of his own era and taken into the far flung future setting of the comic. Other notable references include the 1966 Stan Freberg comedy album Freberg Underground, and the 1986 video of the British band Genesis's song "Land of Confusion". In the 1980s satirical British TV show Spitting Image, Reagan was shown as having appointed a dead taxidermied Bonzo as Vice President. In the ALF episode "Pennsylvania 6-5000" ALF is concerned about nuclear war, calls Air Force One over a shortwave radio and tells the president he wants to talk to him about his bombs. Reagan misinterprets this to mean the "Bonzo" films.
The movie is referenced in the MMORPG video game DC Universe Online. Following the two-player duo "Gorilla Grodd's Lab", the Flash quips at Gorilla Grodd "It's bedtime for Bonzo".
A song released by Nickelodeon for the 2004 presidential elections had a line mentioning that Reagan "acted with a chimp when he was a movie star".
The film was also referenced in the second season of the FX television series Fargo, when the character Karl Weathers (played by Nick Offerman) says he will not shake Ronald Reagan's hand, because "the man made a movie with a monkey, it wouldn't be dignified".
In the 2017 film, War for the Planet of the Apes, a human soldier's helmet has the title of the film written on it.
In the final scene of the final episode of 12 Monkeys, Season 3, 'Witness', James Cole's Father tells the young James, 'Bed Time for Bonzo'.
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