Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a 1969 comedy-drama film directed by Paul Mazursky. It stars Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon.
The screenplay was written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker (who also produced the film). The original music score was composed by Quincy Jones. The original soundtrack album was released on Bell Records and featured Jackie DeShannon performing a cover of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and Sarah Vaughan performing "I know that my Redeemer liveth" from Part III of Handel's Messiah. The cinematography for the film was by Charles Lang.
It received four Academy Award nominations, including ones for Gould and Cannon.
The film was marketed with the tag line "Consider the possibilities."


Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice became the signature film for Paul Mazursky and was a critical and commercial success. It was the fifth highest grossing film of 1969. After this film's release, it led to other movies dealing with wife swapping, infidelity, and other types of experimentation with interpersonal relationships inside American society. Mazursky himself would do a few more stories set in California, including Alex in Wonderland and Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
Writing in The New Yorker the film critic Pauline Kael praised both the film and director Mazursky, calling it "a slick, whorey movie, and the liveliest American comedy so far this year. Mazursky, directing his first picture, has developed a style from satiric improvisational revue theatre—he and Tucker [co-writer] were part of the Second City troupe—and from TV situation comedy, and, with skill and wit, has made this mixture work—though it looks conventional, it isn't ".[2]
Natalie Wood decided to gamble her $750,000 salary on a percentage of the gross, earning $5 million over the course of three years. She had deeply regretted declining a similar offer with the box office smash West Side Story