Webb plays English literature professor Thornton Sayre. He is rather stodgy - like Clifton Webb's characters usually are - and so when the student body discovers that the professor played "Dreamboat" in a series of silent adventure films they are having a big laugh at his expense. This is a part of his past that was short lived and that nobody in his life even knew about. This fanfare would eventually fade away, except Sayre's costar in the Dreamboat films, Gloria Marlow (Ginger Rogers) is going to keep playing them on TV to promote her line of beauty products. This will keep Sayre in the spotlight as a joke indefinitely. The university board is considering firing him, but he asks for time to travel to New York and get an injunction to stop the airing of these films.
What follows is a fish out of water story. Sayre is in New York dealing with TV sponsors, executives, and even Gloria, none of whom are particularly honest in their dealings with him. Meanwhile, his daughter Carol (Ann Francis), who up to this point has been turning into a mini me of her dad and planning to become a professor of English literature herself, is finding her head turned by the New York nightlife.
It makes fun of the entertainment industry and in particular of television as it existed in 1952. In those days commercials really did go on for an entire minute and were often embedded in the TV show being aired such that you can't skip over them. I wonder if youtube came up with this idea from watching this film? But I digress.
The only thing I did not like is how Elsa Lanchester's character, the college president, continually throws her self at Sayre, enamored with his Dreamboat persona. Once would have been funny. As long as this goes on it is just cringeworthy.
What follows is a fish out of water story. Sayre is in New York dealing with TV sponsors, executives, and even Gloria, none of whom are particularly honest in their dealings with him. Meanwhile, his daughter Carol (Ann Francis), who up to this point has been turning into a mini me of her dad and planning to become a professor of English literature herself, is finding her head turned by the New York nightlife.
It makes fun of the entertainment industry and in particular of television as it existed in 1952. In those days commercials really did go on for an entire minute and were often embedded in the TV show being aired such that you can't skip over them. I wonder if youtube came up with this idea from watching this film? But I digress.
The only thing I did not like is how Elsa Lanchester's character, the college president, continually throws her self at Sayre, enamored with his Dreamboat persona. Once would have been funny. As long as this goes on it is just cringeworthy.