This rather silly story about a dignified professor whose cloistered life is disturbed when the college discovers that he was once a silent-movie star shows off Clifton Webb at his most snobby, acerbic best. Teenage Anne Shirley is thoroughly plain and very believable as his equally superior daughter remote from real human experience until (of course) she meets Mr. Right. Whereas Webb plays this all with the right note of high-style comic outrage, unfortunately Ginger Rogers camps it up as the diva. Webb is much too aloof and effeminate an actor to be credible as anyone's heartthrob; and there is little chemistry between the two stars. But there are some wonderful parodies of silent-movies, however, and even an ingenious hotel barroom fight with the enraged professor watching and copying the moves he made in an old movie playing on the television set. Well worth watching if only to hear Webb toss off his barbs with perfect acidic aplomb.
Review of Dreamboat
