Primo peccato

Imagine the surprise when the faculty and students of a small college discover that a prim and proper English professor was in fact a silent screen star. It's discovered when Clifton Webb's old co-star, Ginger Rogers is hosting a program showing some of their old films. The man she calls her Dreamboat.

I suppose it's hard to imagine for today's audience a television in its infancy. But in 1952 it still was and a good way to fill up a lot of programming time was to broadcast old films. Even the silent ones. In my youth WOR TV in New York City was an RKO station and had the entire RKO library available to it. In the infant days of that station their programming was mostly old films as I remember.

Anyway Clifton Webb is quite content to be out of the Hollywood scene and he's quite annoyed that his past has been resurrected. He and daughter Anne Francis have law suit on their minds.

It's a dated story, but the script is quite good with some nice witty lines for Webb and Rogers to toss back and forth at each other. Among the supporting cast, the biggest kudos should go to Elsa Lanchester the prim and proper college president who discovers she's got a genuine sex object on her faculty and wants to do something about it.

Clifton Webb made several movies before his big hit film, LAURA. He even appeared in some silent films. But, like Sidney Greenstreet (whom unfortunately he never popped up to play against in any films) his real career in motion pictures does not begin until 1944. Then it takes off...in spurts. He is a hit as Waldo Lydeckker, and then plays a carbon copy of Waldo as the villainous Cathcart in THE DARK CORNER. Then he gets the role of Elliott Templeton, the world's greatest snob, in the first version of THE RAZOR'S EDGE.

It is not until Templeton that the studio revises it's views on the talented Mr. Webb. Up till that time, Webb was seen as a sophisticated (perhaps effeminate) villain - and had played the part well twice. Templeton is villainous only in one area - he sees no future for his niece Isabel (Gene Tierney) with Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power), so when Isabel breaks with the latter Elliott encourages her to do so (using her future large inheritance from him as a lure). He also suggests she marry Gray (John Payne), a safer, more reliable husband (and a stockbroker). This may seem villainous (if you like Power's character), but he accepts it readily enough. Isabel actually is more villainous as the story progresses, getting rid of a weakened rival with truly fatal results. But Elliott just becomes a selfish, self-indulgent joke as the film progresses. In the end we welcome him for being funny (in an unintentional way). After Elliott Templeton it occurred to 20th Century Fox (and later other studios) that Webb could be a comedian - and a sharp one.

They should have realized this to begin with. Webb, in his youthful heyday of first Broadway stardom (1920 - 1940) was a leading musical comedy star. Most people seeing him today as Mr. Belvedere or as John Philip Sousa (ironically, his only musical film part), or as the doomed Richard Sturgis in TITANIC can't think of him as one of the best singer comedians in Broadway history - at one point the leading rival to Fred Astaire! His decision to make STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER in 1953 destroyed the one opportunity he would have had to strut his musical comedy talents on celluloid. Vincent Minelli hoped he'd play Geoffrey Cordova, the "Renaissance Man of the Theatre" in THE BAND WAGON. He would have played with Astaire. Instead the film has British musical comedy star Jack Buchanan in the role.

What he might have been like as a silent film comic actor (or even dramatic actor) is hard to say. He only has one surviving modern film which tackles this issue. In 1952 he played Bruce Blair, once the partner with Gloria Marlowe (Ginger Rogers) in a series of silent romantic dramas. Their partnership is like that of Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, who made about five films together in the late 1920s. Blair left movies at the end of the silent period - tired of the grind, and wanting to teach literature at college (where the superior Webb would gravitate too naturally). He is using his real name, Thornton Sayre, as his professorial name. He is there with his daughter, and a seemingly quiet academic life. Then all hell breaks lose - Gloria has been hired to be the hostess of a television series showing their old popular movies. And they are a hit. But they have made his students, fellow academe, and the head of the college (a hopelessly adoring Elsa Lanchester) recognize Sayre for whom he actually was.

The plot has Webb trying to bring legal action to prevent the showing of the films (particularly as ridiculous sound effects and rewritten message cards advertising products are making him look idiotic). Gloria backed by her agent/producer (Fred Clark) fight this, and Gloria - in trying to vamp Bruce - remembers how she did like him years ago but lost him to another woman. All of which leads to a final courtroom showdown.

The whole film is funny, but the best bits were Webb overacting (in the silent film method) in the silent films he made, such as a World War I aviation epic, which ends with a crash (but he's still able to kiss his beloved Rogers in his trademark triple arm kiss - they are in a clinch at the fade out of the silent film). There is also a priceless scene where an angry drunk in a bar starts a fight with Webb for accidentally turning on his wife. Webb, no physical pushover here, watches the physical wrestling throws of twenty five years earlier on the television screen, and repeats them on the drunk!

The problems with misused silent films bugged many retired film figures in the early days of television. Stan Laurel was angry at the butchering of his comedies for commercials (it ruined well planned timing for gags). So the film actually does show a situation that existed in early television. It also partly answers the question of what Webb would have been like in an earlier age of movies.

Clifton Webb at his most stuff-shirtish is the life of this takeoff on swashbucklers and television commercials. Even today these eerily seem to foreshadow the commercials still shown (only usually in color.) with their pointless animations and annoying voices uttering gross exaggerations.

Ginger Rogers, here without Fred Astaire, proves herself quite a good farceuse as Webb's nemesis, Anne Francis is good as Webb's daughter and Jeffrey Hunter, some years before playing Jesus in "King of Kings" (also known humorously as "I was a Teenage Jesus" because of his youthful looks, even if he was close to the right age) played opposite Miss Francis.

Other reliable character players included Elsa Lanchester, Fred Clark and Ray Collins.

The film was brilliantly directed by Claude Binyon from his own sharp script based on a story by John D. Weaver.

Very witty script. I had no idea that this movie existed.

Was flipping through the TV channels and settled on AMC, a channel that no longer runs black and white social comedies from the 30's through '50s.

I was delighted and surprised to find this Clifton Webb jewel. As a mother of two younger children (one ten months) it is difficult to find movies and TV shows that entertain both children and adults. This one fit the bill.

Ginger Rogers is incredibly well cast as the woman who is all for business and Webb is quite the comic.

Clifton Webb is "Dreamboat," in this 1954 film. Webb plays a silent film star named Bruce Blair who is now a college professor under what one assumes is his real name, Thornton Sayre.

All is well until his silent films begin to appear on that new popular medium, television, and hosted by his former co-star (Ginger Rogers).

The college board calls for his resignation, so Sayre goes to New York with his brainy daughter (Anne Francis) to get an injunction to stop the televising of his old films.

Webb was an underrated actor who could do the acerbic queen beautifully, but one forgets he was also a gifted comedian and a moving dramatic actor - "The Man Who Never Was" and "Titanic" being two prime examples of his capabilities. He also was a trained opera singer, something the New York theater audiences, alas, only got to hear.

In "Dreamboat," his silent film character is a cross between John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Webb does a terrific job overplaying the silent film acting.

Ginger Rogers is wonderful as the glamorous, conniving ex-costar, Gloria Marlowe, but I have to agree with one comment, that the two stars had little chemistry. The role was originally offered to Marlene Dietrich - she and Webb might have been quite funny together.

Anne Francis is the plain Jane daughter in an early role, and Jeffrey Hunter is the gorgeous Bill Ainslee in an early role for him, a man assigned by his agency boss (Sam Levitt) to escort Francis around town. They make a great couple; both appeared in the 1965 programmer 'Brainstorm' to excellent effect.

By that time, their studio days were over; Hunter's film career had disintegrated, and Francis would have her most of her career in television. They both still looked fabulous, though.

Very, very entertaining. Highly recommended.