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Bedtime for Bonzo is a 1951 American comedy film directed by Fred de Cordova, starring Ronald Reagan, Diana Lynn, and Peggy as Bonzo.[4] 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 chimpanzee's mother while he plays father to it, and uses 1950s-era child rearing techniques.[5]

Bedtime for Bonzo
Original 1951 film poster
Directed by	Fred de Cordova
Screenplay by	Val Burton Lou Breslow
Story by	Ted Berkman Raphael David Blau
Produced by	Michael Kraike
Starring	Ronald Reagan Diana Lynn
Cinematography	Carl E. Guthrie
Edited by	Ted Kent
Music by	Frank Skinner
Color process	Black and white
Production company	Universal International Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	February 15, 1951 (1951-02-15) (Circle Theatre, Indianapolis)[1] April 5, 1951 (1951-04-05) (United States) [2]
Running time	83 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1,225,000 (US rentals)[3]

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;[4] another chimpanzee 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 unbelievable.[6]

Plot

A college dean’s daughter Valerie gets engaged to one of his colleagues Peter, a psychology professor. When the dean discovers that Peter is the son of a one-time criminal, he forbids the union, declaring Peter’s blood to be tainted, in line with his strong belief in heredity as an influence on character. As Peter believes equally strongly in the opposite theory (environment), he sets out to prove that he can bring up a chimpanzee like a human child in a law-abiding household.

Acquiring a chimpanzee, Bonzo, from an animal handler, and recruiting a nanny, Jane, the two of them play mummies and daddies, teaching Bonzo good habits, like returning a necklace that he’s just ‘borrowed’ from round her neck. The experiment is interrupted when Bonzo inadvertently turns-on the vacuum cleaner and leaps out of the window in alarm, climbing a tree, where Jane follows him, while he jumps back into the house, dialing the emergency services, as he’s been shown, but goes out again and pulls away the ladder, leaving Jane stranded until Peter goes to her aid. Valerie arrives on the scene, just as the firemen are helping them down, and misreads the situation, angrily returning Peter’s ring.

The dean then warns them that Bonzo is being sold to Yale University for medical research, and Jane overhears Peter and the animal handler discussing the imminent end of the experiment. As she has developed romantic feelings for Peter, she is so shocked that she allows Bonzo to escape on his tricycle. Peter follows him to a jewelers, where Bonzo grabs another necklace, which he refuses to hand back, so Peter tries to return it himself, only to be arrested by the cops. When Jane instructs Bonzo to hand the necklace back, as he’s been taught, he obediently returns to the store and replaces it where he found it in the window. The experiment is judged a success, the dean decides not to sell Bonzo after all, and gives his blessing to the young couple (and Bonzo!).

Cast

• 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 (as Ed Gargan)
• Edward Gargan as Policeman (as Ed Gargan)
• Joel Friedkin as Mr. De Witt
• Brad Browne as Chief of Police
• Elizabeth Flournoy as Miss Swithen (as Elizabeth Flourney)
• Howard Banks as Policeman
• Perc Launders as Fireman
• Brad Johnson as Student
• Billy Mauch as Student (as Billy Mauch)
• Ann Tyrrell as Telephone Operator
• Bonzo as Bonzo

Reception

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."[7] 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."[8] 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."[9]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 67%, based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 5.83/10.[10]

As President, Reagan screened the film for staff and guests at Camp David.[11]

In popular culture

This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2018)

In music

• A song unflattering to Reagan entitled "Bad Time for Bonzo" is featured on the Damned's fourth studio album, Strawberries (1982).
• A track on a 1984 Jerry Harrison record samples Reagan and is credited to "Bonzo Goes to Washington"
• The film was later referenced in connection with Reagan in the 1986 Ramones song "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)".
• The film is referenced by the Dead Kennedys' 1986 song "Rambozo the Clown" on the titularly inspired album Bedtime for Democracy.
• 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".[12]

In other media

It was also referenced in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip,[13] 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 [nuclear] bombs. Reagan misinterprets this to mean the "Bonzo" film.

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 he "made a movie with a monkey, it wouldn't be dignified".[14]

In the 2017 film War for the Planet of the Apes, some human soldiers have phrases written on their helmets, including "Bedtime for Bonzo".[15][16]

In the final scene of the final episode of season 3 of 12 Monkeys, James Cole's father tells the young James, "bed time for Bonzo".

Throughout director Fred de Cordova's career as producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Carson and guests would make frequent jokes and references to Bedtime for Bonzo as well as tie-ins in regards to Ronald Reagan becoming President of the United States.

In the 1970s Universal Television series The Night Stalker, the show's episode number 11, Horror In the Heights, features INS editor Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) screaming to reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) about a Kolchak story he refuses to publish: "As far as I'm concerned, it's Bedtime for Bonzo!!"

References

External links

• Bedtime for Bonzo at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Bedtime for Bonzo at IMDb
• Bedtime for Bonzo at the TCM Movie Database
• Bedtime for Bonzo at AllMovie

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