Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)

(On TV, October 2019) There are movies that you must see merely because of their titles, and Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! certainly qualifies. Can anything measure up to the promises of the title? Well, maybe. In this case, we get Bob Hope as a middle-aged married man who accidentally gets his phone call connected (back in the time of operators who could mess up the cabling) to a runaway Hollywood bombshell desperate to stay away from the limelight. Many hijinks ensue, all the way to the police thinking he murdered the woman. It’s all complicated by the meddling of his maid, played as performance art by the irrepressible exploded-haired Phillis Diller. Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is not what we’d call a refined or subtle comedy: The reactions are all exaggerated as if this was an extended sitcom episode, and the film barely makes an attempt to smooth in Hope’s usual one-liners or Diller’s over-the-top antics. Both of them easily outshine Elke Sommer, playing the bombshell and filmed as provocatively (in a bubble bath) as a 1960s film could get away with. The plotting is elementary, but the film strikes a chuckle every few minutes, and it’s amiable enough to be charming in its own way. (I’ve seen the film mentioned a few times as the “worst” of this-or-that category and that seems an exaggeration—perhaps the title was too imposing for those reviewers.)  All in all, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is a happy discovery—and it does live up to its magnificently silly title.