Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

film by Mazursky [1969]

Written by Lee Pfeiffer

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Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, American comedy film, released in 1969, that lampooned the trendy aspect of the decade’s sexual liberation.

Natalie Wood and Robert Culp played Carol and Bob, a pretentious wealthy and bored couple in southern California. After attending an enlightened New Age-type retreat, they decide to indulge in the sexual experimentation of the free-love era—in particular, swinging and wife swapping. Carol and Bob share their new philosophy with their more inhibited best friends and potential swap mates, Ted and Alice (played by Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon). The aggressive openness of Bob and Carol in regard to their extramarital affairs leads Ted to admit to an affair of his own. Incensed, Alice finally suggests what everyone has been thinking: that the two couples join each other in bed.

Though deemed quaint by contemporary standards, the film was considered racy in its day, and it serves as a time capsule of sexual mores in the late 1960s. It was highly successful and inspired a string of other films dealing with similar topics, as well as a short-lived television series. Gould and Cannon catapulted to stardom as a result of the film and earned Academy Award nominations for their performances.