Tonight I wrapped up my Clifton Webb mini-marathon with "Cheaper By The Dozen" (1950), in which Webb stars as an efficiency expert for a major corporation. His specialty is the study of time and motion, and though he is never shown at his workplace, he studies every detail of the domestic tasks at home also, so that he can improve the efficiency of his family, consisting of his wife Myrna Loy and their twelve children (hence the title). Webb is a bit of a prig, he has a stopwatch and times his children on how long it takes them all to come downstairs for dinner. He also times himself on things like buttoning his sweater. This obsession with time management is a carryover from his job, but his kids love him anyway because he is more or less a jolly sort.
His eldest daughters (Jeanne Crain, one of my favorites, and the lovely but tragic Barbara Bates) do not love that he insists upon keeping them old fashioned and out of style. The year is 1921. The Bob haircut is all the rage. Flappers are daring girls to show their knees. Older teenage girls are wearing makeup. Dad Webb will have none of this. He wants his daughters to remain as they were, with long Victorian hair, faces "unpainted" (his term), and black bathing suits for the beach that look almost like a full set of clothes. The daughters have a crush on one of the young lifeguards (we are in Montclair, New Jersey), but he doesn't notice them in their 19th century swim trunks. He is busy serenading three girls who are up to date in form fitting one piece suits, legs showing (but still a far cry from bikinis, lol).
The crush of Jeanne Crain for the lifeguard leads her to rebel and cut her hair into a fashionably short "do". She also goes out and spends her own money to buy high heels, makeup and a negligee. Dad is horrified at first, but he comes around quickly because this movie is not about dramatic conflict, really, or even plot. It's about this slightly eccentric and very large family and their day to day life. It's really Clifton Webb's show. As the uptight but jovial father, his word is law. His kids are exasperated by him but can't wait for him to get home because he is so much fun. Wife Myrna Loy wears no makeup as per her husband's wishes, but gives him little extra ground where the children are concerned. She loves having a million kids (so does Webb), and one of the prime comedic scenes in the movie arrives when a prim-and-proper early feminist organiser visits their home. This woman is from the local branch of Planned Parenthood (I did not know they existed in 1921), and when Webb calls his brood downstairs, stopwatch in hand, she sees that she has come to the wrong house.
"Cheaper By The Dozen" is all about spending time with this family, the older daughters with their crushes and hopeful desires, the littler kids with their goofy reasoning at "family council meetings" : "Hey Dad, why should I have to wash my hands? They're just gonna get dirty again"!
It's all very 1920s America, when the country was first becoming modern with the inventions of the automobile, the airplane, radio, refrigeration, etc. Clifton Webb wants to be at the forefront of all of this modernization, at least in his professional life, and he is one step ahead of the competition with his well developed techniques for saving time in the manufacturing process. But at home, he is still stuck in the 1890s, and his daughters have to pull him out of that era.
This happens at a local dance for the teenagers (although it must be noted that there was no such thing as "teenagers", officially, until Elvis Presley came along)....but we'll call them teenagers anyway. His two eldest daughters want to attend the high school prom dance. At this point, Webb can't stop them from dressing modern, but he can and does insist on being their chaperone. And wouldn't you know it, because of Hollywood screenwriting, and because Clifton Webb was a versatile star, he winds up being a big hit at the dance with all the schoolgirls, who think he is cute.
In real life, Clifton Webb (born 1889) got his start in showbiz as a ballroom dancer, so the director of the movie made use of his ability in this penultimate scene.
"Cheaper By The Dozen" is a tale of a bygone America that you wish you could revisit, because things were less crude and more genteel.
Now, it turns out that the story of this family is a real one. The father's name was Frank Bunker Gilbreth, he really was an engineer and a motion study experimenter, and he and his wife really did have twelve children. In it's old fashioned way it is an entertaining and enjoyable movie. You can't go wrong with Webb, he is like Bogey (our other recent marathoner) in that regard. Both of those guys are "money" in whatever they do. Ditto Myrna Loy, who was so far ahead of her time in portraying today's woman. She is more traditional in this film, but you can see that she still holds the reins in the family.
"Cheaper By The Dozen" could be described as a light family film with comedic elements, a slice of 1920s America as seen through the lens of this offbeat family.
I am a sucker for films of this nature, so you know I am gonna give it Two Big Thumbs Up.
I don't mean to place a downer on things, but America sucks right now - really, really badly! - and we've got to fix it. And the way to fix it is just to return to our roots, of being nice people.
You can see examples of this in so many of the old movies.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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