1948 - SITTING PRETTY , late 1940's period comedy

Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young play a husband and wife living in the suburbs with three hyper active children. Unable to find any kind of help with the children, the wife runs an advertisement in the paper and ends up with actor Clifton Webb playing a character named Lynn Belvedere a person who bills himself as a "genius." Belvedere's strict approach to child care results in his bringing order to the household much to the relief of the parents.  But Mr. Belvedere appears to have other reasons for living with this family.

This is a very enjoyable comedy from 20th Century Fox studio which was mostly a show piece for actor Clifton Webb  essentially repeating his witty Waldo Lydecker character from his debut film Laura, this time without actually murdering someone as he did in that film.

 

The film has lots of amusing situations and you kind of get a feeling for what life might have been like in the post World War II world in the United States.  The film was a modest production but a hit for Fox Studio.  Webb's character was so popular he appeared in two more films playing the Lynn Belvedere character.

 

The film was written by F. Hugh Herbert and the running time is 83 minutes.

1945 - STATE FAIR, lesser Rogers and Hammerstein musical

An original musical from Rodgers and Hammerstein.  But really not much of a musical. The plot what there is of it, involves a family traveling to the Iowa state fair to compete in the best hog and pickle contests.  The brother and sister fall in love at the fair.  The mother and father fret over their canned pickles and the big fat hog they are about to enter into competition.  Incidentally, the hog falls in love with another hog.  And that's about it for plot.

For a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical this film has about 2 decent songs and one song in particular, "It Might As Well Be Spring," is sung over and over.  Most of the cast is dubbed during the musical numbers, I think there are two actual singers in the film.

The emphasis in this film is on wholesomeness.  The film is set in Iowa and it's probably the cleanest state fair I have ever seen.  No garbage or drunks or crappy food vendors.  

This film is just so much "nothing" that I could barely remember it after it was over.  State Fair was filmed in very gaudy technicolor to put it mildly.

100 minutes.