Sitting Pretty (1948)

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

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.

A young upwardly mobile couple with three small children seek a live-in baby sitter. That couple, the Kings, are played by the fantastic Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara (I'm sold already). When they hire Lynn Belvedere as a nanny they get quite a surprise. Lynn Belvedere is a not the typical live-in sitter doing light house work, he's a man! And, Belvedere is a self- professed "GENIUS". Harry and Tracy King's first impression is to simply relieve Belvedere by a feigning it's a misunderstanding as they fully expected a female. This comes to exactly nothing as Belvedere is in the house and he's staying.So, we have a screw-ball comedy complete with eccentric overly nosy (confirmed spinster bachelor) neighbor Mr. Clifton Appleton who, between his cross-pollinated iris breeding and subservient bowing to his mother, adds extra color. Appleton is played by the consummate nasally voiced actor Richard Haydn. This amalgam of characters, along with the mischievous King brood of 3 young sons and a wayward Great Dane Henry, provide great angst from which countless situations spring.Belvedere is eccentrically wonderful as brought to the screen by the British actor Clifton Webb. Straight-laced and extremely proper the presence of Belvedere seems wholly out of place, but is just what the doctor ordered to bring order to the unruly King household. As a self-described genius everything is within his wheelhouse he boastfully might say. That would include authoring a tome' that exposes all the dirty laundry of the supposedly straight-laced locals. The book by Belvedere rockets to top of the best-seller list and what results is a hilarity filled up-commence of the supposed bulwarks of the stodgy "Hummingbird Lane" enclave. Wonderfully entertaining with a blue-chip cast delightfully up-staged by Clifton Webb as Belvedere. A 40's comedy classic that lives on yet today and is highly recommended.

Clifton Webb in his Oscar-nominated turn as the snobbish, persnickety, insufferably humorless Mr. Belvedere, a philosopher (and self-described genius) who answers an advertisement for domestic help and winds up turning an entire suburban community on its tail. Director Walter Lang seems to know exactly how to showcase Webb in this scene-stealing role, but a few of the other performances and situations escape him. Robert Young does well as the husband and father whose wife apprehensively welcomes Belvedere into the household, but Maureen O'Hara is stuck doing the same old thing (letting her temper get the best of her and--at one embarrassing point--taking her youngest child and running home to mother!). Similarly, Richard Haydn overplays as a fey flower-breeder and neighborhood gossip, while Ed Begley chews up cigars and stomps about bellowing (his scenes are easily the worst). The movie is not without its modest charms, though it probably looked a lot more fresh in 1948 than it does today. The formula opening is busy and frenetic, while the winking, nudging finale (with nowhere else to turn) becomes far too silly. Followed by two sequels. **1/2 from ****

Clifton Webb is absolutely marvelous here in the role of know-it-all genius-Lynn Belvedere. He is erudite and at his best in his commanding best actor nominated performance here. Unfortunately, this was the year of Laurence Olivier's win for "Hamlet," but that film, as was true with the films of Shakespeare, became relatively boring when transferred on to the big screen.Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara are wonderful in the roles of the parents whose children soon come under the supervision of baby-sitter Belvedere. He has a way with children all right.There is a terrific supporting performance here by Richard Haydn, as the nosy neighbor, full of making trouble throughout the neighborhood.