LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Clifton Webb: Characters
built 642 days ago
Clifton Webb is back as the title character, this time enrolling himself in a nursing home to prove that old age is only in the mind. Also starring Joanne Dru and Hugh Marlowe. More silly fun. Excellent quality.
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It is Clifton Webb's performance as Waldo Lydecker that stands at the heart of the film, with Vincent Price, as Laura's fiancee Shelby Carpenter, nibbling at the edges like an eager spaniel. Both actors, and Judith Anderson as a neurotic friend, create characters who have no reality except their own, which is good enough for them. The hero and heroine, on the other hand, are cardboard. Gene Tierney, as Laura, is gorgeous, has perfect features, looks great in the stills, but never seems emotionally involved; her work in ''Leave Her to Heaven'' (1945) is stronger, deeper, more convincing. Dana Andrews, as Detective Mark McPherson, stands straight, chain-smokes, speaks in a monotone, and reminded the studio head Daryl F. Zanuck of ''an agreeable schoolboy.'' As actors, Tierney and Andrews basically play eyewitnesses to scene-stealing by Webb and Price.
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Herbert Marshall plays Maugham himself, as a friend of Webb's and the film's narrator. He provides a few choice bon mots ("You sound like a very religious man who doesn't believe in God," he tells Power), but his voice-over is often far too busy telling us what to think of the characters ("I don't think anyone can fail to be better and nobler, kinder for knowing him...") instead of letting the viewers decide for ourselves.
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