Bonne à tout faire

With Sitting Pretty, Clifton Webb created his most enduring film character, the aesthetic and acid tongue, self-styled genius, Mr. Lynn Belvedere. He enters the lives of the King family by answering an advertisement Maureen O'Hara puts in a paper about needing a live-in baby sitter.

Never assume folks, Maureen doesn't specify the gender of whom she seeks and with that first name of Mr. Belvedere she and husband Robert Young assume they've got themselves a female.

Belvedere moves in and he's quite the character. I'm not sure there's a subject or a field he's not well versed in and he's not above letting one know it. Thanks to a fussy busybody neighbor, Richard Haydn, Webb and O'Hara become the focal point of a lot of neighborhood gossip.

Clifton Webb never had any luck with his three Oscar nominations. In 1944 for Laura he lost to Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way. In 1946 in The Razor's Edge he lost to Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives. Those two were for Best Supporting Actor, but in 1948 he was nominated for Best Actor and this time lost to the greatest actor of his generation playing arguably the greatest acting role ever, Laurence Olivier as Hamlet.

Robert Young as O'Hara's husband is not generally commented on, but I've always had the sneaking suspicion that some astute casting directors saw Young in this film and decided he'd be perfect as THE television suburban all American father when it came time to casting Father Knows Best.

For some reason Maureen O'Hara gave this film a fast mention in her recent memoirs and didn't discuss it at all. I'm not sure why, she certainly did well enough in it.

Richard Haydn is also not commented on too much, mainly because he was playing a very typical Richard Haydn part. Clifton Webb of course was the cinema's closest thing for almost 20 years to an out gay actor and I'm sure Mr. Belvedere if done today would be more explicitly gay. So would that first meeting of Haydn and Webb where today it would be shown for exactly what it is, Haydn trying to pick up Webb and Webb turning the prospect down cold.

Almost sixty years later, Sitting Pretty has not lost a bit of its entertainment value. Clifton Webb's Mr. Belevedere is an enduring cinema legend. I only wish the two succeeding Belvedere films were shown. I've never seen either of them as of today and don't ever even recall them being broadcast.

Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara as Harry & Tacey King were the headliners in this film but a man named Lynn Belvedere (Clifton Webb) stole the show. It was perfectly logical that Mr. Belvedere would take control of the film, he is a genius. What one thing has Belvedere not done, write a book of course! But what type of book and where will the information be collected from? How about a little town of gossips that will make a satire of a town a masterpiece of writing? But how can a genius be among them and not be discovered? The King family have terrible children that no human can control. They need a maid and live-in babysitter, whom better than a person that understands children's psychology yet hates children. Mr. Belvedere soon is hired and has the whole family under his control. A man that has the children chew their food 28 times, not 20 or 24 but 28 times. A dog trainer that has the huge mountain of a dog controlled. A man that can tell the adults in the household just how childish they can behave. When the family almost breaks up can Mr. Belvedere save the family? This is a classic which will live on in movie history.

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.

This movie is hilarious! I don't think I stopped laughing the entire time. Everything about it is cute and funny, with the perfect counterbalance of wit and sophistication. Robert Young is in handsome lighthearted form, and the children are of course adorable and winsome - especially Roddy, who wails at the slightest provocation. It has everything! The more I watch it, the more humorous subplots emerge. My favorite scenes are when the nosy neighbors spread rumors of Lynn and Tacey's sordid affair, and she says at the lounge as they pass by, "Let's give them something to gossip about!", and proceeds to jitterbug with him. And when Mr Belvedere exposes the hypocrisy of the townspeople: Priceless. I'm so pleased with Ms O'Hara's versatility when you think about the vastly contrasting films in their genres, themes and moods that she made around the same time within the space of a few years, how they display her dynamism and acting genius with her outstandingly unique ubiquitous great theatrical stage presence that translates well to the screen which is so rare and difficult a feat to accomplish. She appears equally at home with deep brooding roles as she does the urbane comedic together-woman. This is definitely one of her best!