Originally a Universal release, Bedtime Story is better known now as the inspiration for the 1988 con-man farce Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (also transmogrified into a Broadway musical). Kino Lorber's Blu-ray restoration does a service drawing attention to this mid-60s item, curiously overlooked in the Marlon Brando canon, which represents one of the thespian's better attempts at comedy. It would be a unique addition to any Marlon Brando retrospective or film programming in a public library or cinema.
The setting is the French Riviera (mixed with the Universal backlot), where Lawrence Jameson (David Niven), a phony pretending to be royalty-in-exile-from-his-kingdom-due-to-revolution, uses suave charm and manipulation to cheat rich women out of jewels and donations (the enterprise is so lucrative that Lawrence has conspiratorial cooperation of local police chief).
Into his hunting ground arrives Freddy (Brando), an American serviceman from Detroit's lower classes, who has himself mastered the art of seduction and bilking trinkets from assorted frauleins and Mademoiselles (decades later it would be claimed that Brando had a secret love child with one of the picture's breathtaking supporting actresses, Hogan's Heroes regular Cynthia Lynn).
Lawrence and Freddy recognize each other as rivals in crime, and they compete to see who can best defraud visiting "Soap Queen" Janet out of her fortune (Shirley Jones, such an embodiment of simpering virginal innocence); the loser has to depart the territory. Director Ralph Levy gets much droll amusement out of the civilized script. Brando impersonating a psychosomatically crippled G.I. to flim-flam Janet seems like a burlesque of his movie breakthrough, the serious shellshock drama The Men.
Still, one can't help feeling that the less restrained, more deft touch of a comedy maestro such as Frank Tashlin or Blake Edwards (who had directed Niven to perfection in The Pink Panther) could have uplifted "Bedtime Story" considerably. As it is, the picture is decent, mildly dark-humored Saturday-matinee fun.
In a commentary track, film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson, (never less than complimentary to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) tend to over-think the 1964 movie's iconoclastic and "cruel" aspects, including homo-erotic vibes between Freddy and Lawrence, and use of two amoral rogues as heroes predicting the upcoming tumult of the 1960s. They are on target when they observe how female characters are astoundingly gullible, Stepford-subservient, and beddable.
Other extras include multiple versions of Universal's original trailer, plus other contemporary comedy trailers (The Brass Bottle, Come September, etc.). Recommended for nostalgic and classic film public library shelves.