SYNOPSIS: Self-styled "genius" is reduced to working for room and board as a live-in babysitter.
COMMENT: An extraordinarily popular film in its day, Sitting Pretty had the good fortune to incorporate a tailor-made role for the waspishly caustic Clifton Webb - who was even nominated for a prestigious Hollywood award for Best Actor. He had previously been twice nominated for Best Supporting Actor (for Laura and The Razor's Edge) but once again he was to miss out - this time due to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet! Nevertheless, Sitting Pretty left Shakespeare for dead in the boxoffice stakes and sired two sequels: Mr Belvedere Goes to College and Mr Belvedere Rings the Bell. The comedy holds up rather well, although I said at the time and I say again; Richard Haydn makes a major contribution to the merriment. Webb actually comes on rather late in the piece. It is Haydn and Ed Begley who hold the audience's interest to that point. Young and O'Hara are pretty dull - though they make effective stooges - and their kids are the usual Hollywood brats. It is one of the film's joys that Webb uses them for target practice! Lang's direction is routinely competent but lacks any finesse of style or sophistication. (It always beats me why 20th Century-Fox was known as "the director's studio" - they had such an undistinguished lot of capable but boring hacks under contract: people like Walter Lang, Henry Koster, Henry King, John M. Stahl, Lloyd Bacon, George Seaton, Jean Negulesco. Perhaps King doesn't belong on this list for there are a few others, notably Gregory Ratoff and Edmund Goulding, whose work is equally variable, but how do they compare with Cukor, Wyler, Wellman, Curtiz, Farrow, Wood, Auer, Capra, Minnelli, Wilder, Huston, Walsh or Hitchcock?)
OTHER VIEWS: A slick domestic comedy with a truly "original" character in Lyn Belvedere (there is only one "n" in his Christian name, though in the sequels two are adopted). Webb plays him to the "T", aided by a solid support cast headed by Richard Haydn as the snoopiest neighbor ever to hit suburbia. Of course the idea of turning village mores into a scandalous best-seller has been used many times (see The Affairs of Martha) - it wouldn't work anyway as most people couldn't care less about the town in which they're forced to live - but even this cliché does little to lessen the impact of Belvedere himself.
COMMENT: An extraordinarily popular film in its day, Sitting Pretty had the good fortune to incorporate a tailor-made role for the waspishly caustic Clifton Webb - who was even nominated for a prestigious Hollywood award for Best Actor. He had previously been twice nominated for Best Supporting Actor (for Laura and The Razor's Edge) but once again he was to miss out - this time due to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet! Nevertheless, Sitting Pretty left Shakespeare for dead in the boxoffice stakes and sired two sequels: Mr Belvedere Goes to College and Mr Belvedere Rings the Bell. The comedy holds up rather well, although I said at the time and I say again; Richard Haydn makes a major contribution to the merriment. Webb actually comes on rather late in the piece. It is Haydn and Ed Begley who hold the audience's interest to that point. Young and O'Hara are pretty dull - though they make effective stooges - and their kids are the usual Hollywood brats. It is one of the film's joys that Webb uses them for target practice! Lang's direction is routinely competent but lacks any finesse of style or sophistication. (It always beats me why 20th Century-Fox was known as "the director's studio" - they had such an undistinguished lot of capable but boring hacks under contract: people like Walter Lang, Henry Koster, Henry King, John M. Stahl, Lloyd Bacon, George Seaton, Jean Negulesco. Perhaps King doesn't belong on this list for there are a few others, notably Gregory Ratoff and Edmund Goulding, whose work is equally variable, but how do they compare with Cukor, Wyler, Wellman, Curtiz, Farrow, Wood, Auer, Capra, Minnelli, Wilder, Huston, Walsh or Hitchcock?)
OTHER VIEWS: A slick domestic comedy with a truly "original" character in Lyn Belvedere (there is only one "n" in his Christian name, though in the sequels two are adopted). Webb plays him to the "T", aided by a solid support cast headed by Richard Haydn as the snoopiest neighbor ever to hit suburbia. Of course the idea of turning village mores into a scandalous best-seller has been used many times (see The Affairs of Martha) - it wouldn't work anyway as most people couldn't care less about the town in which they're forced to live - but even this cliché does little to lessen the impact of Belvedere himself.