Bedtime for Bonzo

Bedtime for Bonzo
Original 1951 film poster
Directed by	Fred de Cordova
Produced by	Michael Kraike
Written by	screenplay by Lou Breslow & Val Burton story by Ted Berkman & Raphael Blau
Starring	Ronald Reagan Diana Lynn Walter Slezak Jesse White Ann Tyrrell Brad Johnson Peggy as "Bonzo" Lucille Barkley
Music by	Frank Skinner
Cinematography	Carl E. Guthrie
Edited by	Ted Kent
Distributed by	Universal-International
Release date	April 5, 1951
Running time	83 min
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1,225,000 (US rentals)

Bedtime for Bonzo is a 1951 comedy film directed by Fred de Cordova, starring Ronald Reagan, Diana Lynn, and Peggy as Bonzo. It revolves around the attempts of the central character, psychology professor Peter Boyd (Ronald Reagan), to teach human morals to a chimpanzee, hoping to solve the "nature versus nurture" question. He hires a woman, Jane Linden (Diana Lynn), to pose as the chimp's mother while he plays father to it, and uses 1950s-era child rearing techniques.

This movie is one of the most remembered of Reagan's acting career and renewed his popularity as a movie star for a while. Reagan, however, never even saw the film until 1984.

A sequel was released entitled Bonzo Goes to College (1952), but featured none of the three lead performers from the original. Peggy died in a zoo fire two weeks after the premier of Bedtime for Bonzo; another chimp was hired for the second film whose name really was "Bonzo". Reagan did not want to work on the second film; he thought the premise was silly.

The film was later referenced in connection with Reagan in the 1986 Ramones song "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)", in the Dead Kennedys' 1986 song "Rambozo the Clown", and in a track on a 1984 Jerry Harrison record, sampling Reagan and credited to "Bonzo Goes to Washington". A song unflattering to Reagan entitled "Bad Time for Bonzo" is featured on The Damned's fourth studio album, Strawberries. It was also referenced in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip,Bloom County comic strip (October 11, 1981), as well as in the Strontium Dog comic story "Bitch", published in 2000 AD, which featured President Ronald Reagan being kidnapped out of his own era and taken into the far flung future setting of the comic. Other notable references include the 1966 Stan Freberg comedy album Freberg Underground, and the 1986 video of the British band Genesis's song "Land of Confusion". In the 1980s satirical British TV show Spitting Image, Reagan was shown as having appointed a dead taxidermied Bonzo as vice president.