Cinema: Media AAix-Match

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"Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!" The marriage of convenience between movies and television can a'so unleash such misbegotten progeny as a sex farce with two heads. Here, one head belongs to Bob Hope, the other to Phyllis Diller, and Wrong Number demonstrates what a pair of fine stand-up comedians have to do to stretch out an idea that might comfortab'y fill four minutes of prime time. The body hustled hither and yon to take up the slack belongs to Elke Sommer, cast as a European sex queen who suffers an attack of artistic integrity midway through her umpteenth Hollywood bubble bath. Sensibly, she leaps out of the suds and heads straight for the north country to find peace.

Hope, locked into a star image that no fiction will penetrate, nominally portrays an Oregon real estate schnook who calls a wrong number and soon has Elke bathing at his remote woodland cottage. "The biggest thing in bathtubs since rings," he says, snatching every conversational gambit from a store of one-line gags that often sound like a prelude to a friendly word from his sponsor. As Hope's mop-topped maid, Phyllis cleans up the house, dirties up the jokes, and delivers her own brand of kitcheny self-deprecation. There is never the slightest doubt that her next job will be a sell-out nightclub engagement in Vegas, and any viewer who thinks that's funny may be able to swallow the whole wretched show.