The Honeymoon Machine

"Fits either sex... and makes nothing but laughter!"

Aug 16 1961 Approved 1h 27m
Comedy, Romance

Lt. Fergie Howard teams up with Lt. Beau Gilliam and Navy scientist Jason Eldridge to turn a supercomputer with missile-tracking capabilities into a tool to predict where a roulette ball will land. They dock in Venice, Italy, and begin making a killing at the casino, but their shore-to-ship signals get misinterpreted as signs of attack by Adm. Fitch, putting a serious crimp in the officers' get-rich-quick scheme.

Plot

The crew aboard the USS Elmira are working on a project, code named Operation Honeymoon. At the operation's core is the testing of the Magnetic Analyzer Computing Synchrotron, or MACS for short, which is a smart computer designed to do among other things determine where missiles are going to land. Civilian Jason Eldridge is the scientific mastermind aboard in charge of MACS' operation. His friend aboard, Lieutenant Ferguson Howard, sees other possible uses for MACS. He wants to know if MACS, if given the proper data, can accurately predict games of chance, such as those found in casinos. After discussing the situation, Fergie and Jason decide the game which MACS can predict the most accurately is roulette. They decide to test MACS' abilities, and possibly get rich, at their next port of call where there is a casino, namely Venice. They plan on using a system of Morse Code light signals from the ship to shore to transmit the information. Although they go ahead with their plan, they are sidetracked by female distractions. Jason runs into his old girlfriend, hot dog heiress Pam Dunstan, who he left three years earlier because he felt he couldn't support her in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. He is dismayed to learn that she is in Venice to get married to the pompous Tommy Dane, who works for the State Department. And Fergie meets a beautiful young girl named Julie Fitch, for who he instantly falls. He doesn't tell her of his naval occupation since her father is a naval admiral also in town. But problems for Jason and Fergie really begin when Admiral Fitch sees the transmission of messages to and from the ship, which he believes is enemy communication.

Written by

Lorenzo Semple Jr., George Wells

Directed by

Richard Thorpe

Production Countries

United States of America

Production Companies

Avon Productions, Euterpe Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Languages

English

Awards

N/A

Scores
# of Votes
1,594
Average Rating
6.1 out of 10
Metascore
NA
Popularity
NA