The Horizontal Lieutenant * (1962, Jim Hutton, Paula Prentiss, Jack Carter, Jim Backus) – Classic Movie Review 12,503

MGM’s 1962 romantic comedy war film The Horizontal Lieutenant pairs likeable Jim Hutton and Paula Prentiss for the fourth and last time.

Director Richard Thorpe’s 1962 American romantic comedy war film The Horizontal Lieutenant stars Jim Hutton, Paula Prentiss, Jack Carter, and Jim Backus. It is the last of four Hutton and Prentiss teamings, coming after Where the Boys Are, The Honeymoon Machine and Bachelor in Paradise.

Hutton and Prentiss are re-teamed after The Honeymoon Machine and Bachelor in Paradise for this less amusing armed forces comedy about a World War Two wartime operation on an island in the Pacific.

Hutton plays a clumsy, lovestruck US Army Intelligence officer, Second Lieutenant Merle Wye, who is stationed in Hawaii and put horizontal playing for his unit’s baseball team after his head is hit by a foul ball. His superior orders him to the Pacific island of Rotohan, where he seizes a harmless enemy guerrilla, while chasing after the lovely nurse Lieutenant Molly Blue (Prentiss) he once knew in college and met again in the Army post’s hospital.

Hutton and Prentiss are appealing, but the silly, lowbrow script largely cramps the best efforts of the amiable cast in what is a pretty annoying romantic comedy war film, based on the 1961 novel The Bottletop Affair by Gordon Cotler, a Japanese interpreter for US Army Intelligence in World War Two.

It was released on April 18, 1962 (US).

It earned $1.850,000 globally and lost $380,000.

The cast are Jim Hutton as Second Lieutenant Merle Wye, Paula Prentiss as Lieutenant Molly Blue, Jack Carter as Lt. Billy Monk, Jim Backus as Commander Jeremiah Hammerslag, Charles McGraw as Col. Charles Korotny, Miyoshi Umeki as Akiko, Marty Ingels as Buckles, Lloyd Kino as Sgt Jess Yomura, Linda Wong as Michido, Yoshio Yoda as Sgt Roy Tada, and Yuki Shimoda as Kobayashi.

MGM signed Prentiss and Hutton to a studio contract after their success in Where the Boys Are, starring them in three films: The Honeymoon Machine, Bachelor in Paradise and The Horizontal Lieutenant.

Paula Prentiss (born Paula Ragusa on March 4, 1938).

Jim Hutton (May 31, 1934 – June 2, 1979).

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,503

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