The writer and director Mel Shavelson died yesterday.
As this obituary notes, among his credits was the 1958 romantic comedy Houseboat, with Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. I remember watching that movie one summer, and liking it, but...well, an imdb user (also named Ben) describes it as a "family-friendly comedy." With all due respect to my fellow Ben-brother, no movie starring Sophia Loren is family-friendly. Not if you're in the throes of puberty while watching it, anyway.
Shavelson also directed and co-wrote The Seven Little Foys, with Bob Hope. I've yet to see this one, but it's frequently mentioned as a high point in Hope's career-and one of the few in which he actually tried to act.
With those two Oscar-nominated screenplays under his belt, this hardly seems mentioning, but I also thought Shavelson wrote "with" Hope the best of his many cobbled-together "autobiographies," Don't shoot, it's only me : Bob Hope's comedy history of the United States.
Shavelson came up as a gag writer for Hope's radio show (where I actually think he was funniest), so probably it's no wonder he could write most believably in Hope's voice-he only helped create it...
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