Sitting Pretty

As the self-proclaimed genius, Mr. Belvedere, CLIFTON WEBB delivers every line of dialog with such crisp authority that you believe he IS the eccentric character who volunteers his services as a live-in babysitter for ROBERT YOUNG and MAUREEN O'HARA and their unruly brood.

Webb simply steals every scene with skillful ease, except when RICHARD HAYDN enters the film as a snobbish, adenoidal neighbor who is another kind of genius at snooping. Before you know it, Belvedere has all of these citizens under his thumb, exposing the hypocrisy of small-town gossip in his novel, much the way Grace Metalious did when she pried open the lid of PEYTON PLACE.

It's all for laughs and never fails to delight. This is the film that really established Webb's long career at Fox in roles that seemed tailor-made for his kind of pompous charm.

A very pleasant, agreeable little effort, dominated by the magnificent Clifton Webb - as sanguine and savourably sour a figure as rarely seen in Hollywood...

His character, Lynn Belvedere, is absolutely wonderful; wry, serene, roundly honest and arrogant; he is the focal point of the majority of the humour. The other actors are fine, with Maureen O'Hara, Richard Haydn and Robert Young more than capable supports. Yet... Belvedere's superiority is never in question: when asked at *what* he works, he simply and unequivocally states, "I am a genius".

Says it all really! There are so many witty one-liners, and amusing touches in comparison to many modern films on the same themes of babysitting and American suburbia. This is one of the most enjoyable films of its era; propelled to lofty heights by Clifton Webb's indomitable prescence. A touch of waspish, queer old England thrust into the picket-fence garden of American suburbia.

This was one of the most popular movies of 1948, and is still sweetly amusing. What impresses me on this latest viewing is how well actor Webb and screenwriter Herbert carry off their trick. The challenge is to keep the audience from reaching through the screen to throttle the stuffy, know-it-all, Belvedere (Webb). In short, a dislikable Belvedere would ruin the movie. So how do you, on one hand, establish his needed superiority, and, on the other, not let it ruin the comedy. After all, it's his unusual character that distinguishes the story as a whole.

As I see it, Webb and the dialog handle the challenge by making Belvedere a strictly matter-of-fact character. He says he's a genius, because as a matter of fact, he is. Crucially, he's not bragging— that would make him dislikable. Instead, he asserts his superiority much like a scientist might impartially acknowledge a fact. He's not egotistical about his accomplishments; instead, he's kind of like an impartial observer of himself. This doesn't exactly make him likable, but it does save the movie's pivotal character from being dislikable, at least as I see it. And I think it's a credit to the screenplay that they don't soften his unsociable character to maybe please the audience. All in all, I think Belvedere is a rather daring role for a comedy of its time.

Of course, it helps to have two of the screen's more likable younger actors, Young and O'Hara, as co-stars with Webb. Plus, having a fuss-budget like Haydn (the gossipy Appleton) in the same film as fuss-budget Webb sets up certain delectable possibilities. Then too, setting events in the white-collar suburbs mirrored post-war changes going on with audiences that were also getting back to family life following years of hardship and sacrifice. So, to me, it's not surprising the movie was such a hit in its day. And happily, I think it's still pretty amusing.

For a 1948 film dealing with the dawning era of suburbia, a concept that hadn't even existed 10 years earlier, this little charmer holds up remarkably well. The reason is Clifton Webb, who steals every scene he is in. And he's in just about every scene. This was Webb's first appearance as the fastidious Mr. Belvedere, an odd duck with a genius IQ -- and a hidden agenda. Here. he becomes a live-in babysitter for a suburban couple (Young and O'Hara) and their three boys. The one weak spot in the plot is that the three boys seem perfectly normal, but O'Hara apparently can't handle them. Much hilarity ensues once Mr. Belvedere arrives on the premises. In his off time, Mr. Belvedere is up to something in his attic room, but Young and O'Hara are hard-pressed to figure out what. A nosy neighbor (Haydn) causes no end of mischief, convinced that there must be hanky panky going on. The ending feels a bit rushed and the movie at times resembles a stage play more than a movie, but everything comes out just fine. And we finally find out Mr. Belvedere's secret. But you will have to watch the movie to find out what that secret is. A delight.

Clifton Webb became a major star for a while on account of this film, in which he plays an eccentric genius who comes to live in the house of a young couple as a kind of general purpose servant-maid-tutor-savant-philosopher-critic. There was no end, it seems, to what Mr. Belvedere could do, and do extremely well. Walter Lang directs this pleasant picture with much skill, if not inspiration, and as Webb's employers, Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara make an attractive couple.

Webb was a strange case. A huge star on the stage, his film career lasted less than twenty years. He was well into middle age when he started making movies, and at first he tended to play snobs and supercilious characters in general, starting with Laura, in 1944. Till Sitting Pretty came along he had appeared only in dramatic films, usually as a villain. Overnight, it seems, he was transformed, from upper class bad guy to loveable eccentric, and for a number of years he became a quite popular and unlikely star of often nostalgic films. Along with Charles Coburn, he was one of the last true Victorians of the movies, and as such a reminder of a more formal but also more individualistic time during in the postwar years. Sitting Pretty is an excellent showcase for Mr. Webb's unique brand of humor, as he managed to be superior and priggish but never mean-spirited.