Don't shoot, it's only me...and my team of writers

The writer and director Mel Shavelson died yesterday.

As this obituary notes, among his credits was the 1958 romantic comedy Houseboat, with Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. I remember watching that movie one summer, and liking it, but...well, an imdb user (also named Ben) describes it as a "family-friendly comedy." With all due respect to my fellow Ben-brother, no movie starring Sophia Loren is family-friendly. Not if you're in the throes of puberty while watching it, anyway.

Shavelson also directed and co-wrote The Seven Little Foys, with Bob Hope. I've yet to see this one, but it's frequently mentioned as a high point in Hope's career-and one of the few in which he actually tried to act.

With those two Oscar-nominated screenplays under his belt, this hardly seems mentioning, but I also thought Shavelson wrote "with" Hope the best of his many cobbled-together "autobiographies," Don't shoot, it's only me : Bob Hope's comedy history of the United States.



Shavelson came up as a gag writer for Hope's radio show (where I actually think he was funniest), so probably it's no wonder he could write most believably in Hope's voice-he only helped create it...