The other day, I commented on MGM's smaller movies from the 1950s when I did a post on Cry Terror!. When one of the "bigger" movies is interesting, it's as much because it's a mess as anything else. A good example is Go Naked in the World.
Anthony Franciosa plays Nick Stratton, a man who's just gotten out of the military after a stint, and hasn't decided whether or not he's going to re-enlist. He's in his hometown of San Francisco, but hasn't met his family yet, instead going to a club where he meets Guilietta Cameron (Gina Lollobrigida). She's lovely, and unsurprisingly Nick falls in love with her. Guilietta, however, seems very unsure about taking the relationship anywhere even though she does like Nick.
Eventually, Nick's father Pete (Ernest Borgnine) finds him at the hotel where he's staying. Nick is a Greek immigrant, and a big deal in San Francisco's Greek-American community. He owns a construction firm, and has even offered Pete a job in the firm. Pete isn't so certain he wants it, because it comes with strings attached.
Those strings are that Dad is the head of the family, and dammit, he's going to let everybody know it. The rest of the family sees it as controlling, and they're all beginning to get fed up with it. That is why, for example, Pete might not want to take the job. Pete's younger sister Yvonne (Luana Patten) decides she's going to rebel by staying out all night with a boyfriend, which really pisses Dad off. Mom's been the Edith Bunker type of housewife, but she might finally be beginning to show some independence.
But the story is mostly about Pete, Dad, and Guilietta. Pete keeps seeing her, and gets the brilliant idea of bringing her as his guest to his parents' anniversary party. This turns out to be a big mistake, as we learn that Guilietta is a former "escort" (well, she did more, except that the studios weren't going to go into detail in the early 1960s). That would be bad enough, except that Dad points out that a lot of the people at his party have availed themselves of her services.
This causes Guilietta to break things off with Pete, but he's insistent on continuing to see her again. So he finds out what her new address is, and meets her at a hotel. But Dad finds out what Pete is up to, and sends the vice squad after Guilietta! No wonder everybody thinks he's controlling! Pete figures that the only way he can get out from under Dad's thumb is to elope with Guilietta. They go off to Acapulco, but everywhere they go Pete finds people who had been Guilietta's clients back in San Francisco....
Oh boy is Go Naked in the World a stinker. The one redeeming quality is that it's a stinker in a really fun way. The movie is clearly trying to be lurid and test the constraints of the Production Code, but it's too glossy to be anything other than phony. The dialog is roundly horrible and overripe, and Borgnine is given free rein to overract, which he unsurprisingly takes. His Fred Sanford-style heart palpitations are hilarious.
As I implied in the title of the post, nobody really goes naked either, with the closest being distance shots of Franciosa water-skiing in one of those early 60s square-cut pair of swimming trunks. OK, I think Lollobrigida might have a scene in a negligee or something too. But it's not as if you should have expected any nudity. One other interesting thing was with the set of the Stratton's house. That staircase made me think of a nother equally "lurid" and silly movie that MGM put out around the same time, All Fall Down. I wouldn't be surprised if the set pieces were reused, even though All Fall Down was released a full year after Go Naked in the World.
Go Naked in the World got a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive. But it's one I'd only watch the next time it shows up on TCM.
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