Cancel My Reservation (1972)

A New York television talk show host (Bob Hope), under orders from his physician, flies out to his Arizona vacation home for rest from stress, some of it partly induced due to a strained marriage with an unhappy wife (Eva Marie Saint). When he arrives at the Arizona house, he finds the body of a murdered girl in his bedroom. When he attempts to report the murder, the sheriff (Keenan Wynn) arrests him for the girl's murder. Outside of a couple of guest appearances, this was Hope's last feature film as a leading man, a sad swan song. He looks tired and as if sensing the stale quips given him to toss of, his timing is off. Curiously, it's based on a novel THE BROKEN GUN by the Western writer Louis L'Amour which was not a comic novel. The fusion of a murder mystery in the American Southwest with a broad comic twist might have worked but the screenplay is pretty dire. It has that ugly TV look that so many films of the late 60s and early 70s had so it came as a shock to see the credited cinematographer was the great Russell Metty (TOUCH OF EVIL). With Ralph Bellamy, Anne Archer, Forrest Tucker, Pat Morita, Herb Vigran and Chief Dan George and in a dream sequence, John Wayne, Bing Crosby and Johnny Carson.