Product Details

• Actors: Bob Hope, Joan Fontaine, Audrey Dalton, Basil Rathbone, Hugh Marlowe
• Directors: Norman Z. McLeod
• Writers: Aubrey Wisberg, Edmund L. Hartmann, Hal Kanter
• Producers: Paul Jones
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Paramount
• VHS Release Date: February 26, 1992
• Run Time: 86 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300215547
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,569 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Bob "Orson Welles" Hope is at the top of his game in this 1954 Technicolor laugh-fest co-starring Joan Fontaine and Basil Rathbone. Hope plays Pippo Popolino, Casanova's tailor, who finds himself standing in for the great lover after the real Casanova (played by Vincent Price) leaves town to avoid paying his debts. Enlisted by an overzealous mother-in-law to test the true love of her daughter-in-law-to-be, Hope must capture the prized petticoat and help avert a civil war to boot. Years before he wore out his welcome in countless TV specials, Hope is a marvel here, perfecting his neurotic and vain coward persona while enganging in some pretty inspired slapstick. It's easy to forget that in 1954 this was pretty edgy stuff. It's no wonder a young Woody Allen idolized him. --Kristian St. Clair

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Farfel, farfel, pipick", May 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Casanova's Big Night [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A Hope comedy classic, ranking right up there with "Ghost Breakers". Bob's performance as Pipo Poppolino, "a miserable tailor's miserable apprentice", is almost flawless, and the supporting cast (Vicent Price as Casanova, the great Basil Rathbone as Luccio, Joan Fountain as the Widow Bruni, Hugh Marlow as the brother of the bride, Arnold Moss as the evil Doge of Venice, and brief appearances by Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine and Raymond Burr), is excellent. Hope is at his bumbling, cowardly best as the commoner impersonating Casanova, until he finds the courage to overcome the Doge and turn the tables on the devious Luccio. The sword fight scene and the finale (with Hope in hilarious drag) are side-splitters.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic Bob Hope Comedy romp, November 6, 2001

By 

Don Brynelsen, Lost Victorian "Lord D" (Schaumburg, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Casanova's Big Night [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In this Bob Hope comedy classic, he portrays a lowly tailors aprentice who gets a chance to impersonate the worlds greatest lover, Casanova. Hope plays Peepo, who toils away in his masters tailor shop and dreams of romance with the lovely grocery lady across the street played by Joan Fontaine. When the real Casanova skips town in order to escape his creditors, Peepo is pressed into service by Fontaine and the others to pretend to be the famous swordsman and lover when a Countess offers $10,000 ducets to test the fidelity of her future daughter in law. Peepo throws himself into the role and is soon entering Venice in grand style singing the song "Tic a Tic A tic a" and enthralling every woman within earshot, (including one who dives fully clothed into the canal to swim out to his gondola), everyone thinking that he is indeed the famous Casanova. However Peepo soon discovers the downside of being a notorious lover as several outraged husbands, brothers, and boyfreinds come looking for him swords in hand, looking to avenge the dishonor of their womenfolk. At first Peepo wants only to fullfill his part of the deal (Obtaining an embroidered peticoat in order to prove he "Seduced" the girl he was supposed to), and obtain his money, he soon is helping to save her from the plottings of the Doge who seeks to use both her and Casanova to touch off a war.
This movie is a classic costume comedy from the days when movies didn't need four letter words and potty humor to get a laugh. Hope is in top form as he capers about the screen from one narrow escape to another, all the time mugging for the camera. I highly reccomend it for all Hope fans.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, pre-"Chrysler Theater" Bob Hope!, February 21, 2007

By 

Photoscribe "semi-renaissance man" (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Casanova's Big Night (DVD)

This was a movie Bob did while he was still hungry, using his reliable wise-cracking coward character as Pipo Popolino, a tailor's assistant in 18th century Venice. Enamored of a baker played by Joan Fontaine, Pipo masquerades as the legendary Casanova to steal a kiss, when it turns out that Casanova is being pursued by creditors and has skipped Venice completely to escape them. To appease the creditors, everybody Casanova owes money to, Fontaine included, force Pipo to continue his masquerade as the storied rake to get enough money to pay the creditors through marriage. What follows is a crazy quilt of dumb luck and one liners as Pipo actually manages to win a few sword fights and woo a duchess in the bargain.

This is primo, late-period Bob Hope, with an uncredited Vincent Price playing Casanova, Basil Rathbone playing his relunctant valet, Arnold Moss doing his usual Mephistophelian thing as the Doge of Venice amd Audrey Dalton looking just like Linda Darnell in her part as the new object of Pipo-Casanova's affections.

The reception scenes where Pipo challenges a rival for the duchess' affections are sidesplitting, especially when he and Fontaine both have to cross-dress to get in there to begin with. The usual anachronistic Hope oneliners are spewed like apple pits all through the movie and Hope once again proves why Paramount held onto him for something like 25 years! Also why Universal paid Paramount to market some of his movies with a double studio imprint...

The man was a legend!! "Farfle, farfle...pipick!"