Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell

Gina Lollobrigida died at the beginning of 2023, and a few months later TCM had a tribute to her with a night of her movies. With Veterans' Day coming up, I decided I'd finally get around to watching Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell and doing a post on it here.

As the opening credits play out over scenes of Mrs. Carla Campbell (Gina Lollobrigida) riding through the Italian countrysides in one of those snazzy convertible sports cars that seemed to be a thing in the 1960s. That, and a horrendously dated song sung by one of those sub-par singers I'd never heard of. Eventually, Carla drives into her home town of San Forino where she sees a banner reading in English, "Welcome Back". The joke is that she thinks the sign is for her, until a second banner under it is unfurled, welcoming the 293rd squadron of the US Air Force.

The squadron was stationed in San Forino when the Americans occupied Italy presumably just after the end of World War II, although the dates don't really work out. It's a big anniversary of their time in the country, and instead of having a reunion every year like other groups did, they decided to have one big bash and use the money to aid the locals in San Fornio with a chapel. Indeed, the movie cuts to a shot of a plane landing in Rome and introducing us to three of the Americans returning for the reunion:

Phil Silvers plays Cpl. Newman, who has a wife Shirley (Shelley Winters) and three children of the bratty, precocious type that is a standard if very annoying character type in movies like this. Lt. Justin Young (Peter Lawford) seems to have hit a difficult patch in his marriage to Lauren (Marian Moses), and then there's Sgt. Walter Braddock (Telly Savalas), who jokes that he begged his wife Fritzie (Lee Grant) not to come along. The fact that each of them has a family is a problem, as we really learn fairly quickly in the movie.

Carla has a daughter Gia (Janet Margolin), who was conceived while the Americans were occupying San Farino. And Carla slept around a lot, specifically with the three members of the squadron I mentioned above. The only thing is, she has no idea which one was the father, and she slept with them just before the squadron left, so by the time she found out she was pregnant, they had moved on and were unavailable to marry her, which is why they wound up with families in the States.

But Carla made lemonade out of lemons, telling each of the three men that she was pregnant, implying of course that they were the father, since none of the men knows the others slept with Carla. All three offered to provide child support, although you have to wonder how none of the wives knew their husbands were sending checks to Italy for 20 years or so. So all of the men also have to keep their wives from finding out the truth while trying to make amends with Carla.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I found Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell to be fairly dated and not nearly as funny as the premise might lead you to believe. Instead, pretty much everybody winds up a bit shrill and when the material tries hard to be funny, it's just too wacky instead of funny in a good way. Come September, which I reviewed earlier out of the films in the Lollobrigida tribute, is a much better romantic comedy and you should probably watch that one given the chance instead of Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell.