Elopement

As I write this review my brother is currently contemplating the cost of a big wedding for his oldest daughter and is thinking that it would be nice if she went and did like her younger sister did, go off and elope. After the surprise of Elopement there's a lot to be said for that option.

Elopement finds Clifton Webb and Margalo Gilmore in a huge tizzy over the fact that their newly graduated daughter Anne Francis is eloping with none other than her philosophy professor William Lundigan. They get a hold of his parents Charles Bickford and Evelyn Varden and find similar concern about suddenly getting a new daughter-in-law. As Lundigan and Francis travel to Deerfield, New Jersey to get married, the in-laws to be are also racing against time to get the young ones to reconsider. In tow is Francis's godfather Reginald Gardiner and Lundigan's little brother Tommy Rettig.

Although he tries hard William Lundigan is way too old for the part. It's even indicated that he had war service in World War II. And if young Rettig is his brother all I can say is that Varden must have been fertile for much longer than the natural span of things for women. Someone closer to Francis's age should have been cast.

Webb and Gardiner work well together having the same urbane and occasionally acerbic style. Too bad they didn't do more films together.

Elopement is definitely minor league Clifton Webb although his fans will like it.

A great director, a wonderful cast, a skilled director of photography and lots of studio gloss results in a stinker of a movie, redeemed only by Clifton Webb's mugging and one medium-sized interaction by Evelyn Varden and Margalo Gillmore as they discuss small children. Otherwise this script is too studio bound, with the more interesting players stuffed into a car and Anne Francis -- looking gorgeous as always and particularly and appropriately vivacious, is stuck with William Lundigan, one of the more uninteresting leading men of the era.

This is a great pity as I went in hoping and expecting to like this movie. But the script is pretty much of a stinker.

Clifton Webb and Charles Bickford play the fathers of two children (Anne Francis and William Lundigan, respectively), who plan to elope. When Webb discovers his daughter is missing, he runs around the neighborhood in his pajamas (but manages to wear a hat), is assaulted by dogs, and is picked up by the police as a prowler. He arrives home just in time to take a call from a nosy neighbor warning him that there is a prowler in the neighborhood.

This is Webb's film all the way, with a few dull interludes featuring Francis and Lundigan. Webb and Bickford, along with their wives, Bickford's youngest kid (Tommy Rettig) and Francis' godfather (Reginald Gardner) all end up in Webb's car, in pursuit of the couple. Along the way, Webb steals Rettig's sandwich, throws Bickford's pipe out the car window, and, when Rettig acts up, yells "can someone control that little ba ... barbarian??" Webb and Bickford get to slap each other. Francis and Lundigan call off the wedding, then end up eloping again. Everyone ends up happy. Great closing gag at the fade-out.

Families feud over eloping offspring.

Mildly amusing comedy from TCF's "Clifton Webb period". Webb and Gardner (Roger) get to trade intellectual barbs in a little gem of an introductory scene. And catch the cutting-edge livingroom interior for 1951, including the push button recliner that swallows up poor Roger. Of course, Webb is Webb, amusing and annoying at the same time. Actually, his movie persona of high-falutin' palaver and distaste for children suggests a sleeker, stuffier version of WC Fields. Here, Webb gets to show off both in that packed car ride, which, to me, is amusing up until everyone starts getting reasonable.

The main trouble is the movie sags every time the narrative switches to the sappy young lovers. Well, actually, not so young since Lundigan is a highly mature 37 and darn near 20 years older than the winsome young Francis. Speaking of youth, Tommy Rettig makes a great little boy who even acts like a little boy, and makes for a lively addition to the warring tribes. And, near the end, be sure to catch Howard's (Webb) concise comparison of elopement with church weddings. It's a surprisingly sober and incisive look at weddings in general.

No, there's nothing memorable here. Just an average little comedy with its share of both on- moments and off-moments, 1950's style.

An odd choice of leading man, Clifton Webb nevertheless was a major star at 20th Century Fox, starting out in character roles in films such as Laura and The Razor's Edge and then elevated to leads in a number of films.

Though he often was cast in the role of a stuffy, snobbish, sarcastic man, Webb was an excellent actor and played other types of roles, such as in Titanic, beautifully.

In 1951's Elopement, he's in a typical role: an industrial designer whose daughter (Anne Francis) is perfect, according to him, and can do no wrong. She's brilliant in academics and sports and is en route to Sweden to study with an expert in industrial design for three years.

On the night she graduates from college, however, Jake, as her parents (Webb and Margalo Gilmore) call her, elopes with Matt Reagan (William Lundigan), to the dismay of her parents. -- and his (Charles Bickford and Evelyn Vardan).

Both families take off for Dearfield, MD, where the couple is headed, and they have a visiting friend of Jake's family (Reginald Gardner) in tow, as well as the Reagans' youngest son.

Meanwhile, Jake is having second thoughts.

Cute comedy if slight, with nice performances all around. Francis at 21 is young and pretty and played many starlet roles at Fox before settling into a TV career, and she and Lundigan make an attractive couple. The best scenes are between the parents as they get to know one another.

Enjoyable.