Word: gilbreths
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Belles on Their Toes (20th Century-Fox), a sequel to 1950's successful Cheaper by the Dozen* is, like most follow-ups, somewhat of a letdown. Present once more are Efficiency Expert Lillian Gilbreth (Myrna Loy) and her twelve lovable but strenuous children. The rambling scenario, in a flashback to the Pierce-Arrow and Charleston days of the '20s, focuses on the girls of the family...
...sert. Over on the Right Bank that same afternoon the editors of the newspaper Parisien Libéré were awarding its Prix de la Vérité to a book reporting bad conditions in French hospitals. The Prix Scarron for books of humor went to Ernestine Gilbreth Carey and Frank Gilbreth Jr. for their Treize à la douzaine (Cheaper by the Dozen). The prize, which is supposed to be 500 gold écus, was paid off this year in 500 ten-franc aluminum pieces, all in a spirit of high good humor. The Prix Rabelais (50 liters...
...Clifton Webb, Gilbreth is by means as appropriate a part as Belvedere was. Gilbreth, by nature, has certain "lovable" qualities--devotion to his family, generosity--that require of the actor as much folksy as comic skill. More than that, the comedy in Webb's previous assignments was in the person of Belvedere. But "Cheaper by the Dozen" is much more of a situational comedy, where the large family and the antiquated automobile set up the gags. Webb on the whole has far less chance to display his skill as a comedian...
Myrna Loy as the mother and Jeanne Crain as the eldest daughter are in their element. Long the queen of the understanding wives, Miss Loy is superb as the brake on Gilbreth's genius. Miss Crain, of course, has stars in her eyes; she is an ideal selection for the heroine of the high school prom...
...plot, however, is trite; it would be almost impossible to have original sequences in such a shopworn framework. You know perfectly well what will happen when the family buys a dog that Gilbreth disapproves of, and what the cute little remarks are going to be when mother has her twelfth baby. You can easily sense each time the "cheaper by the dozen" gag is coming up. Only Gilbreth's time studies redeem the movie from being completely hackneyed, and they aren't enough to make it really amusing. "Cheaper by the Dozen" is just a quantitative variation on the "Life...