You're Kidding Me

TCM recently played the rarely-seen Bob Hope/Katharine Hepburn (yes, that's right) comedy The Iron Petticoat (1956).  It was a flop then and has since been held back by Bob Hope, who owned the rights.

The public got it right.  The story, a lot like Ninotchka without the wit, features a romance between a Russian (Hepburn) and an American (Hope).  She's a hardcore Soviet who eventually melts after seeing Western ways.  Hepburn, with her heavy accent, is embarrassing.  And Hope seems outside his comfort zone in this silly satire, even if his writers punched up most of his lines. It almost goes without saying the two have little chemistry.

But there was one moment I found fascinating.  Early on, Hepburn is trying to convince Hope of capitalism's failings, and she quotes a bunch of fake statistics about the U.S. she learned in the Soviet Union.  One of them is America has an illegitimacy rate of 27%.  Now remember, the point of this is to have a number so outrageously bad that it's laughable.  And yet today, we'd be happy to get the rate back down to 27%.