O Gênio na Televisão

Former silent film star Gloria Marlowe (Ginger Rogers) is hosting a show on TV that features her old movies. This causes problems for her former costar, Thornton Sayre (Clifton Webb), now a respected college professor. Sayre, who was known as Bruce Blair during his acting days, sets out with his bookish daughter (Anne Francis) to stop the movies from being shown.

What a treat this is. One of those movies you never hear about but is just great fun. Clifton Webb is terrific, throwing out one pithy line after another. I'm kind of surprised Ginger did this part, given that it dates her in a way most actresses of the time wouldn't want any part of. Actually, it makes her seem older than her real age. Props to her for not caring. You sure as heck wouldn't have caught Joan Crawford admitting to being 40 -- even when she was 60! She looks amazing, though, and is very funny. It's one of her best post-1940s comedic roles. Anne Francis is cute as a button and holds her own quite well. Supporting cast includes a wonderful Elsa Lanchester and an early role for Jeffrey Hunter. The fake silent movies are hilarious. It's especially funny seeing Webb channel Douglas Fairbanks in one of his action scenes. It's an underrated gem of a comedy that provides some smart commentary on celebrity and satire on television ("The phenomenon of television -- it encourages people who dwell under the same roof to ignore each other completely"). Definitely a movie you should check out if you get the chance, especially if you're a fan of Clifton Webb or Ginger Rogers.

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.

By the title, I was expecting a slice of romantic nonsense from Hollywood's younger crowd. Instead, the movie's a sharply written, cleverly mounted satire of the early days of television. In short, the film turned out to be an unexpected sleeper. Now ordinarily, Webb's snooty epicene characters don't appeal to me. Here, however, he plays it fairly straight as a college professor with a past he's trying to live down. The trouble is his ridiculous old silent films keep turning up on program-starved TV, much to the haughty prof's embarrassment.

Credit the quality to writer-director Binyon who sometimes showed flashes of brilliance in what appears an otherwise checkered career. And here I thought Frank Tashlin was the first moviemaker to mine TV's rich lode of absurdity. I love it when the professor turns channels randomly in the courtroom, and each channel is programming something ridiculous, including his old movies. It's hilarious. It's also hard to know how much things have changed since then, especially with the commercials.

The rest of the storyline is entertaining but nothing special. I enjoyed seeing a very young Ann Francis who makes a surprisingly good nubile academic. Too bad, however, there's not more of the delicious Elsa Lanchester. Her amorous moves on Webb amount to one of ditzy pairings of the decade. Then there's that clever tie-in at the end, helping make this 90-minutes of obscure, unexpected delight. Too bad the movie wasn't served by a more appropriate title.

When it first appeared, Dreamboat hit the mark with Sid Caesar-like precision. The old old movies were still floating around the smaller channels, and it was not unusual to find the TV screen filled with the histrionics of Valentino, Pola Negri, among others. Today, their existing work can be found, occasionally on TCM. Dreamboat was an absolute 'hoot' in its initial release, and Webb and Rogers were every bit as wacked-out funny as Caesar and Coca in a TV sketch about silent movies. Today, Deamboat may seem a little obscure, perhaps, but its broad and zany humor will still be there. One hopes that someone somewhere decides it is time to produce that elusive DVD release of this film (which includes an adorable Anne Francis, one of those underrated stars who deserves special attention).

Clifton Webb is in top form here as a college professor who starred in old silent films. His past resurfaces when the old movies are shown on TV and he becomes the "Dreamboat."

This is a deftly amusing film in which Hollywood is poking fun at the silliness of its arch-rival of the 1950s, TV. It also pokes fun at its own early days of silent melodrama.

The film is an enjoyable experience overall, but especially delicious is Webb as the prim professor who is also the soap-opera film star of old Hollywood.