User Reviews

This first "Mr. Belvedere" film is a film with very modest goals and it achieves them quite well. It is a family comedy about an incredibly stuffy know-it-all named Belvedere who comes to live with a couple whose kids and dog are extremely difficult, to say the least. Mr. Belvedere isn't exactly a nanny or housekeeper, but sort of like a boarder who also helps out with the kids but doesn't do the cooking. Miraculously, the kids and dog shape up very quickly (though I really couldn't see why) but although the arrangement seems ideal, nosy neighbors (especially the one played by Richard Hayden) try to undo this by spreading rumors that Belvedere and the lady of the house were having an affair! All this is handled very cutely and much of the credit needs to go the the writers as well as the great performance of Clifton Webb as Belvedere. While Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young are just fine as the husband and wife, Webb truly steals the show with his charming performance that seems highly reminiscent of the later cartoon character, Mr. Peabody (who is rumored to be modeled after Webb). An excellent family movie that deliberately avoids sappiness or extreme sentimentality.

"Sitting Pretty" is the first of three films that were based on a 1947 novel, "Belvedere," by Gwen Davenport. Clifton Webb, as Lynn Belvedere, is the only actor who repeats in the 1949 and 1951 films. They are "Mr. Belvedere Goes to College" and "Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell." As with many a series of films, the first one is the best of this trio of films. And, it's thanks to television, especially late night TV since the late 1950s, that people after the 1950s ever saw any of these films.

All of the cast are good in this film. Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young are delightful as a suburban couple, Tacey and Harry King – even in the days before "suburban" became a catchword. They live in the Hummingbird Hill neighborhood. But, they have trouble keeping a maid. Webb comes into the picture about one-third of the way through. That's after the audience has had sufficient introduction to the King family, especially the three children and their Great Dane dog, Henry. And some of the neighbors who play good parts in this story.

Tacey King hires Lynn Belvedere sight unseen, thinking he is a woman. This was one of Clifton Webb's arrogant roles that he perfected so well in his film career. Here he is an expert in just about everything. The movie just shows a couple of scenes of his interaction with the children, so it's quite a stretch to see the boys suddenly well behaved, polite and liking Mr. Belvedere. But that's what happens in short order. The audience is left wondering, just as Harry and Tacey are in the film.

While this is a comedy based around the King family, it's also more of a comedy-satire of neighborhoods in the mid-20th century. Having grown up during that time in three different places, I wonder if the neighborhood gossips and busy bodies were that widespread a thing. Hollywood made a number of movies with that element as part of them into the 1960s, And, this is a very good one in which the gossips are more of a scandal than what they spread.

Richard Haydn is the prime busy body-gossip spreader, Clarence Appleton. This is one of the prissy, smug eccentric roles for which Haydn became known. No one could do them better, and he's very good in this film. His mother, a cranky wheelchair-bound snoop, is played by Grayce Hampton. Hayden got his start on the British stage but made his name mostly in some top comedy movies, in his unusual characters. In this film, his passion is breeding irises, not far from his real life interests outside of work. He was into serious gardening and horticulture.

This move is a fine, light comedy. Following are some funny lines from the film. For more sample dialog, see the Quotes section under this IMDb Web page of the film.

Harry King, "Don't I get a kiss?" Tacey King, "Oh, no. I'm a one-man woman and my heart belongs to Belvedere."

Harry, talking with Tacey on the telephone, "What? She didn't! Why the old bag." He looks at Bill, his law partner, and says, "The maid quit." Tacey, "In a way I'm glad to get rid of her. All she did was guzzle beer all day."

Tacey, "The sooner you start out on your own and stop lettering Mr. Hammond kick you around, the better I like it."

Ginger, "Gosh, Mrs. King. I hope you're not sore just because I invited a few friends. Golly, a person'd go absolutely insane with nothing to do but sit." Tacey King, "If I were your mother, which heaven forbid, I'd make it extremely painful for you to sit for the next few days." Ginger, to Harry after Tacey has left, "Gosh, Mr. King, I feel so sorry for you. She has a terrible disposition, hasn't she?"

Clarence Appleton, "Oh, good morning, Mr. McPherson." McPherson has just carried to the curb two metal trash cans full of empty beer and liquor bottles. McPherson, "Hmmm." Clarence, "Must have been quite a party you had last night." McPerhson, "Would you like a list of the guests who got cockeyed, or have you already got it?" Clarence, "There's no need to be unpleasant. I merely made a friendly observation." McPherson. "Well, make it someplace else."

Through the front window, Harry sees Clarence Appleton stooped with a feather in their flowers. "What the devil is he doing?" he asks. Tacey, "Seems we have a very healthy male iris, and he asked if he could have some pollen so he could breed it to one of his." Harry, "You outta charge him a stud fee."

This mildly amusing and inoffensive comedy was so popular in its time that it spawned two sequels with the now rather dated character of Mr Belvedere in them. Those new to it now will probably wonder why.

I actually found the opening scenes before Belvedere arrives the best part. A delightful introduction of the nosey neighbours, a gossipy mother and effete flower breeding son, made me expectant that this would be a classic. Alas, the appearance of Belvedere, like the appearance of the title character in Beetlejuice, changes that. The Belvedere character is one familiar to American comedy, basically the snotty and detached butler that has become a staple of comedies from the fresh prince of Bel Air to Arthur. Belvedere adds one ingredient, however, in that he's a genius. I must confess to finding his shtick somewhat wearisome and the storyline in no way accounts for why the children take to him so much. They take to him simply because the plot demands they should take to him. Perhaps we should not expect too much from what was meant to be a light hearted comedy.

The plot, such as it is, soon founders, but it is basically a series of contrivances anyway. This is not to say that there is not a certain amount of charming comedy to be had; I found the scene where Belvedere is discovered in his dressing gown apparently drinking gin with Maureen O'Hara, very skillfully done. But a lot depends on how one warms to Belvedere which I failed to do.

However the plot turns messy when Belvedere is revealed to have written a successful novel. Why would such a genius engage in writing such a trashy piece of gossip? And why wouldn't the towns folk be rather put out to have their peccadilloes so publicly aired? The final scene where Belvedere passes the blame to the nosey flower breeder fails to convince for a number of reasons and leaves a bitter aftertaste in the mouth.

This is really a very funny movie indeed.

It is conventional in that the setting is an aptly-named picture-box small, white-painted, though gossipy, town, full of middle ranking executives and professionals bringing up their families and providing competently for their spouses (well, wives, really). Unconventional in that absolutely the most extraordinary character suddenly implants himself into the situation with immediate and transforming effect. Something like this happens in reverse when Sheridan Whiteside lands the wrong way up on the doorstep of Mr and Mrs Ernest Stanley in "The Man who came to Dinner". The direction wisely delays the principal character's entry for some time and it takes at least some nerve to do this but it works brilliantly here.

Clifton Webb manages to be both seriously comic and comically serious at the same time and there is genius in that ability. It is entirely credible that the quite sparky children rapidly take to Lynn Belvedere, no matter how often they are reproved by him.

Other reviewers have set out the story well enough that it need not be rehashed here, but what stands out in Clifton Webb's brilliantly iconoclastic performance (I mean that the class of personages known usually as babysitters does, apparently, contain a subset marked "other") is the way in which he simply makes himself fit in, not only to Robert Young's noisy family, but into this movie itself in an artistic sense. Webb's character is more than outrageous, but not for a moment do the other characters in the film, nor we, actually draw the line and (r)eject him. It's a great achievement, indeed.

He does have the able assistance of the British actor Richard Haydn, as the snoopy adenoidal neighbour, who is also tremendously entertaining on screen, both vocally and with several excellent visual gags at the ready. Haydn and Webb do use the movie to prove that the screen is too small for the both of 'em and the rest of the cast thus bounce off them gleefully whenever either or both are playing a scene.

The Mr Belvedere character was subtly used in two sequels to "Sitting Pretty" which both explore its creative and dramatic valency in quite satisfyingly different ways.

Nothing wrong with "Sitting Pretty" at all, and everything right: one is left on something of a high for several days.

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.

This film oozes charm and warmth with the feel of an America that never really existed like the Carvel of Andy Hardy or the England of Quiet Wedding. For many people this was the start of Clifton Webb's career, for slightly older filmgoers his career began four years previously with his Waldo Lydecker in Laura, but for seriously old Broadway buffs he began as an accomplished and debonair song-and-dance man a quarter of a century earlier (he was, for example, in Cole Porter's first Broadway Show, See America First (a flop) in 1916 and in 1937 he introduced Porter's At Long Last Love. With Lynn Belvedere the role and the man came together triumphantly and ever after he played only leads. We should give at least a nod in passing to Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara, who actually get top-billing and Richard Hadyn as the 'old woman' gossip but it's Webb's movie from the very first frame in which he appears.