Holiday for Lovers

While I love Clifton Webb, he's one of my favorite actors. However, this movie was just okay. The remake, "Take Her, She's Mine" with James Stewart and Sandra Dee was considerably more entertaining. In "Take Her, She's Mine" James Stewart's character keeps getting mistaken for the "actor" James Stewart. This is also one of the first movies that Sandra Dee transformed from the "cute, sweet little Gidget" type girl to "showing" that she was a fully grown woman. There are also appearances by very young Bob Denver (Gilligan from Gilligan's Island), Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle from the Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.), and James Brolin (Marcus Welby, M.D., The Amityville Horror - 1979 version, and Westworld.)

The colorful opening credits give the impression that this is going to be quite a film. This most boring family had no chemistry. There was none between parents, nor was there any between the daughters and their respective loves. Carol Linley was fun to watch but of all the men she would choose that were part of the military, Gary Crosby? Really? Did the producers think that every single scene with the main cast which was done in front of a rear screen projection was not going to be noticed? Was the audience of those days so naïve. This movie needed an affair desperately by the parents with someone. Skip it.

This one won't be for everyone but I enjoyed the gentle, quiet side of it as well as its comedy. There are parts that move slowly and parts that may not make sense to some in a modern audience. I watched them as a slice of life, and for the most part I liked them.

Mostly dreary vacation movie filmed on Hollywood back lots standing in for various South American locales, with lots of travel footage sandwiched in between the studio stuff. Why the studio didn't have the cast go on location is beyond me. The year was 1959 and the film is in color, and it is all too apparent when the actors are performing on sound stages. Clifton Webb and Jane Wyman take daughters Carol Lynley and Jill St. John on vacation only to have the girls fall in love with total strangers (Gary Crosby as a military man for Lynley and a Latin actor playing a playboy for St. John). Webb is funny as always while Wyman is strictly window dressing. Paul Henreid does a nice turn as the playboy's dad. Badly dated.