Copyright 1959 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Paramount: 24 July 1959. U.S. release: July 1959. U.K. release: September 1959. Australian release: 1 October 1959. 103 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: A Boston man's daughters fall in love with South America.
NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Longacre on 14 February 1957 and ran exactly 100 performances. Don Ameche starred in his Broadway debut opposite Carmen Mathews, while Ann Flood and Sandra Church played the girls.
CinemaScope was now losing its box-office appeal. Notice the small prominence given the process in contemporary advertising. However, this de-emphasis has not deterred the producer from using the widescreen as a travelogue, with location lensing in both Lima and Rio de Janeiro.
COMMENT: Every bit as awful as you might expect from the credits and synopsis. A lot of witless, boring dialogue carried over from the original play that is as humorless as it is trite and dated and pandering (the one promising plot point when teenager seems to be romancing a middle-aged architect turns into a dud when it turns out to be the archie's beardless son she is really interested in).
Yes, this is a film for "youth" — even Jose Greco allows himself to be upstaged by a kid. Clifton Webb is just a robot delivering witless lines, and Jane Wyman is just along for the ride. Paul Henreid deserves no better and Crosby is about as welcome as a bazooka in a tank factory. Carol Lynley looks adoringly soppy and Jill St John is unattractively brash and know-it-all.
The photography is often extremely grainy and despite all the travelogue inserts of CinemaScope locations, the process screen is very obviously employed when there is any lensing in of the players to be done.
Levin's direction is as dull and disinterested as ever. He just plonks the camera down in front of his players and lets them slowly act out the tedious script. The sound recording is crisp and the music — when we hear it, often dialogue scenes are played in a dead vacuum — has a bit of mediocre sparkle, but the film is a dead bore. Even Clifton Webb cannot save this one. He or his agent should sue.
SYNOPSIS: A Boston man's daughters fall in love with South America.
NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Longacre on 14 February 1957 and ran exactly 100 performances. Don Ameche starred in his Broadway debut opposite Carmen Mathews, while Ann Flood and Sandra Church played the girls.
CinemaScope was now losing its box-office appeal. Notice the small prominence given the process in contemporary advertising. However, this de-emphasis has not deterred the producer from using the widescreen as a travelogue, with location lensing in both Lima and Rio de Janeiro.
COMMENT: Every bit as awful as you might expect from the credits and synopsis. A lot of witless, boring dialogue carried over from the original play that is as humorless as it is trite and dated and pandering (the one promising plot point when teenager seems to be romancing a middle-aged architect turns into a dud when it turns out to be the archie's beardless son she is really interested in).
Yes, this is a film for "youth" — even Jose Greco allows himself to be upstaged by a kid. Clifton Webb is just a robot delivering witless lines, and Jane Wyman is just along for the ride. Paul Henreid deserves no better and Crosby is about as welcome as a bazooka in a tank factory. Carol Lynley looks adoringly soppy and Jill St John is unattractively brash and know-it-all.
The photography is often extremely grainy and despite all the travelogue inserts of CinemaScope locations, the process screen is very obviously employed when there is any lensing in of the players to be done.
Levin's direction is as dull and disinterested as ever. He just plonks the camera down in front of his players and lets them slowly act out the tedious script. The sound recording is crisp and the music — when we hear it, often dialogue scenes are played in a dead vacuum — has a bit of mediocre sparkle, but the film is a dead bore. Even Clifton Webb cannot save this one. He or his agent should sue.