Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Encyclopedia
Comedy-drama
Comedy-drama is a genre of theatre, film and television programs which combines humorous and serious content.-Theatre:Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy...
film directed by Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
. It stars Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
, Robert Culp
Robert Culp
Robert Martin Culp was an American actor, scriptwriter, voice actor and director, widely known for his work in television. Culp first earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy , the espionage series in which he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents...
, Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould is an American actor. He began acting in Hollywood films during the 1960s, and has remained prolific ever since. Some of his most notable films include M*A*S*H and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, for which he received an Oscar nomination...
and Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon is an American film and television actress, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer.-Early life:...
.
The screenplay was written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker (who also produced the film). The original music score was composed by Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
. The original soundtrack album was released on Bell Records and featured Merrilee Rush
Merrilee Rush
-Career:As a girl, Merrilee studied classical piano for 10 years. In 1960, Rush auditioned for a band, directed by her first husband, that played sock hops. Next, she was part of Merrilee and Her Men, doing covers of male pop hits. Then she joined a Seattle rhythm and blues group called Tiny Tony...
performing a cover of the Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach
Burt F. Bacharach is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick...
and Hal David
Hal David
Harold Lane "Hal" David is an American lyricist. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. David is best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach.-Career:...
's "What the World Needs Now Is Love
What the World Needs Now Is Love
"What the World Needs Now Is Love" is a 1965 popular song with lyrics by Hal David and music composed by Burt Bacharach. First recorded and made popular by Jackie DeShannon, it was released on April 15, 1965, on the Imperial label after a release on sister label Liberty records the previous month...
" and Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
performing "I know that my Redeemer liveth" from Part III of Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
. The cinematography for the film was by Charles Lang
Charles Lang
Charles Bryant Lang, Jr., A.S.C. was an American cinematographer.Early in his career he worked with the Akeley camera, a gyroscope-mounted "pancake" camera designed by Carl Akeley for outdoor action shots...
.
It received four Academy Award nominations, including ones for Gould and Cannon.
The film was marketed with the tag line "Consider the possibilities."
Plot
After a weekend of emotional honesty at an EsalenEsalen Institute
Esalen Institute is a residential community and retreat in Big Sur, California, which focuses upon humanistic alternative education. Esalen is a nonprofit organization devoted to activites such as meditation, massage, Gestalt, yoga, psychology, ecology, and spirituality...
-style retreat, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
sophisticates Bob and Carol Sanders (played by Robert Culp
Robert Culp
Robert Martin Culp was an American actor, scriptwriter, voice actor and director, widely known for his work in television. Culp first earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy , the espionage series in which he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents...
and Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
) return to their life determined to embrace free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
and complete openness. Bob and Carol happily reveal their ensuing love affairs to everyone, sparking both the curiosity and repulsion of their more conservative close friends Ted and Alice Henderson (Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould is an American actor. He began acting in Hollywood films during the 1960s, and has remained prolific ever since. Some of his most notable films include M*A*S*H and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, for which he received an Oscar nomination...
and Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon is an American film and television actress, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer.-Early life:...
).
When the two couples travel together to Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
, Ted admits to an affair of his own. An outraged Alice demands that this new ethos be taken to its obvious conclusion: a mate-sharing foursome. But when they are actually ready to begin the deed, something within all four of them prevents it; the film never explains what that something is or may be. In the last scene of the movie, they are in the elevator coming down from their “trip”. They are shell shocked. All of them have woken up (in the evening) to their collective morning after. The music swells “...what the world needs now is love sweet love..."
Reaction
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice became the signature film for Paul Mazursky and was a critical success. After this film's release, it led to other movies dealing with wife swapping, infidelity, and other types of amorality inside American society. Mazursky himself would do a few more stories set in California, including Alex in WonderlandAlex in Wonderland
Alex in Wonderland is a 1970 feature-length film directed by Paul Mazursky, written with his partner Larry Tucker and starring Donald Sutherland and Ellen Burstyn. Sutherland plays Alex Morrison, a director who has made one feature and spends his time in Hollywood pondering what his next will be...
and Down and Out in Beverly Hills
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
Down and Out in Beverly Hills is a 1986 American comedy film based on the French play Boudu sauvé des eaux, which had previously been adapted on film in 1932 by Jean Renoir. Down and Out in Beverly Hills was directed by Paul Mazursky, and starred Nick Nolte, Bette Midler and Richard Dreyfuss...
.
TV version
A sitcom based on the film appeared on ABCAmerican Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
during the 1973–74 season, starring Anita Gillette
Anita Gillette
Anita Gillette is an American actress, most notable for her work on Broadway and as a celebrity guest on various game shows....
, Robert Urich
Robert Urich
Robert Urich was an American actor. He played the starring roles in the television series Vega$ and Spenser: For Hire...
, David Spielberg, and Anne Archer
Anne Archer
Anne Archer is an American actress who has performed in feature films, television, and stage and was named Miss Golden Globe in 1971. Among her best known roles is that of Beth Gallagher in the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction, for which she received a nomination for an Academy Award.-Career:Archer's...
. A 10-year-old Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
also appeared as Ted and Alice's daughter (this differed from the film version, wherein Ted and Alice had a son).
Because of the overt sexual nature of the film (when it was released it was rated R), much of the humor could not be translated into a network TV project. Thus the characters needed to be substantially "toned down", losing much of the film's edge. The series did poorly and was canceled after only one season.
Spoof
It was spoofed in the September 1970 issue of MAD Magazine, where the cover shows the four main characters in bed, all looking in shock at Alfred E. NeumanAlfred E. Neuman
Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot and cover boy of Mad magazine. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed and named by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman...
peering out of the covers at the foot of the bed, holding a sign reading, "OCCUPANCY BY MORE THAN 2 PERSONS IS A NO-NO!".