Word: miscasts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cheaper by the Dozen (20th Century-Fox] is a movie version of the bestselling based-on-fact book about life with a father of twelve in the 19205. A plotless string of mild, rambling anecdotes, with Clifton ("Belvedere") Webb miscast in the central role, it is not much more fun than leafing through somebody else's family album...
With the chomping of popcorn almost audible in the sound track, the action is transparent enough to permit some enjoyment of the film's natural beauties, including the heroine. Miscast as an actress, Miss Dahl shows high promise for a career on magazine covers...
Rick's upward struggles are cut to a minimum in order to bring in the psychiatric element. He is sped to New York, becomes a huge success, and meets Lauren Bacall, horribly miscast as a lady-psychiatrist. Most of what she says is unbelievable ("I am an intellectual mountain goat"). Her "class" bowls him over and he marries her, only to find that she is insanely jealous of his own success. This, and the fluff of a not-too-high note in recording session, make him go to pieces...
...gold-digging Lorelei Lee in the new musical version of Anita Loos's famed bestseller of the '20s, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, strapping (5 ft. 9 in., 153 Ibs.) Carol Channing is ludicrously miscast. Her head, topped by an unruly peroxide burlesque of a flapper's hairdo, seems too small for her generous features. Set insecurely on the top of a columnar neck and broad, sloping shoulders wrapped in the shapeless fashions of two decades ago, it gives her the appearance of an amiable performing seal; and like a seal she seems naively anxious to please...
...conditioned reflex, experienced moviegoers may accept Tyrone Power as a dashing example of Renaissance Man. But Wanda Hendrix, ludicrously miscast as an Italian noblewoman, looks like a bobby-soxer lost in an art museum. As her guardian-husband, Aylmer is still playing Polonius with all the sententiousness and none of the wit. Welles, in his own freehand style, out-borgias Borgia. Even as capable an actor as Everett Sloane plays a scoundrel to excess...