Tub Time: Here Comes the "Rain."

We've done a lot of posts over the years featuring actors in the bathtub. You can take a closer look at examples here and here. And then we sometimes focus on one instance, like here. It's been a while because there are only so many that haven't been touched upon already. But today's independently-made movie is so obscure that I couldn't even scare up a copy of its release poster! All there seems to be is this soundtrack album (and, to many folks, the music - most notably the oft-recorded bossa nova title tune - is the most memorable thing about it anyway!) 'Course round these here parts, we go for more than just music. We zero in on the important stuff like flashes of chest. Ha ha! Anyway... The Gentle Rain (1966) is a pretty sappy romance with the benefit of location filming and two attractive, familiar faces in the leading roles.

Christopher George and Lynda Day star as a former architect, now reduced to a draftsman, and a young lady, freshly annulled from her brief marriage. Both have "issues," his being rendered mute from a traumatic experience and hers being frigidity, which led to her marriage breaking apart. 

He is working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she comes to flee her recently broken marital union. After meeting cute at a party, which doesn't end well, they are reunited once more and hit it off better.

As I mentioned, the fantabulous location scenery is a considerable visual asset (though no particularly decent print of the film has seen the light of day as of this writing. The best copy can be found on the WatchTCM website.)

You can't buy a view like this (and while you can now make one, via CGI, no thanks, I'm not interested...)

Here, amid the grandeur of some breathtaking waterfalls, they even are granted a rainbow, courtesy of Mother Nature.

Speaking of... Another benefit comes by way of (the limited) shots along the beach, where gloriously-tan locals frolic in the sand, often in abbreviated swimwear.

I confess I was disappointed, though, when I realized the person behind Day on their stomach is a gal. When you think of this movie being filmed in 1965, not long after Walt Disney beseeched Annette Funicello not to wear a bikini in her Beach Party movies, of someone shown sunbathing topless, it's just a skosh daring.

One of the locals knocks his ball into Day in order to capture her attention, but she's only got eyes for George.

Our first gander at George without his customary shirt and/or suit comes when he's shaving in preparation of his first date with Day. George in real life began as an Eileen Ford male model and, in fact, was featured in a 1962 shaving ad in which he played a groom preparing for his wedding night. The very popular spot got him a lot of attention and may be why this scene is pretty lengthy. (It's also nearly unwatchable for me because it seems to spoof his alleged shaving ability by having him nick his face multiple times!)

Day had been an Eileen Ford model in real life, too, and had first met George when they were dressed as a bride and groom for an ad. This movie marked their reunion, though she was married at the time. (The two fell in love for real and in 1970, she divorced her husband of seven years and married George, thereafter being billed as Lynda Day George.) Here, the couple is grappling with the hurdles of their tenuous romance.

Ultimately, things do take a turn for the better and the wordless George is able to thaw out the frigid Miss Day.

It must be love... And now to the featured topic of our post.

The morning after their tryst, Day is in the kitchen cooking an egg while George is scrubbing up in his claw-foot bathtub. (The bathroom, surely an actual Brazilian apartment, is very rundown and ratty looking!)

This has to be one of the first examples of an "American" film (it was produced and directed by Burt Balaban, whose father ran Paramount Studios from 1936-1964) to depict a bidet! (And how' bout that blue toilet paper.)

Though we cannot see anything, there is no visible evidence of flesh-toned briefs or anything else on George's body. (And we all know from his 1974 Playgirl spread that he was not shy about being naked.)

Finally, Day enters with his breakfast.

It takes a moment before he realizes that she has entered.

Even though they're fresh out of the sack together, he starts frantically trying to find a way to cover himself, eventually using the little yellow washcloth hanging on the side of the tub.

But she aint' havin' it!

She reaches in and snatches it up.

After a moment of being startled...

...he grabs the towel from above and uses that as a shield.

She ain't havin' that, either! Ha ha! But this time he grabs her by the arm.

He drags her into the tub, right onto his lap. If ya can't beat 'em, make 'em join ya!

I cannot recommend The Gentle Rain as a stunning piece of entertainment, but if you like one of both of the stars, it might go down better. And it has the aforementioned scenery and music in its favor. The Georges were very happy from their initial romance through his premature death in 1983 at age 52 from a heart attack (he was almost never without a cigarette or, later, a cigar.) One other reason that this movie seemed to fall through the cracks is that producer-director Balaban died himself prior to its release! He was only 43 and I haven't been able to discern what happened there. Not the world's most uplifting end to this post, I suppose...! 

The End.