Word: macmurray
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...movie is a bore. MacMurray dashes around his vast house conducting calisthenic Bible classes, honking at his ambulatory alligators, roughing up his guests with show-off fisticuffs, show-off opera arias, show-off opinions. Singer Tommy Steele as the young family butler does his frenetic best with body English and music-hall mugging to get things off dead center, and Lesley Ann Warren does her maidenly best as Daughter Cordelia having a romance with Angier Duke (John Davidson). But the only bright spots in this Philadelphia story are provided by the English elegance of Gladys Cooper and Greer Garson...
This reasoning proved fallacious for Playwright Kyle Crichton, who had a 1956 Broadway flop with The Happiest Millionaire, which was based on the Philadelphia childhood reminiscences of Cordelia Drexel Biddle. The formula fails again in Walt Disney's movie musical. The main trouble this time is that Fred MacMurray's impersonation of Colonel Anthony J. Drexel Biddle is eccentric but not lovable. He is, in fact, a boor...
...THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11:30 p.m.). 1960's Academy Award winner, The Apartment, with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray...
Your review of this fine picture is positively nauseating, and an insult to the hundreds of thousands of scouters who devote their time, talents and energies to the youth of this nation. They do this, just as did "Scoutmaster MacMurray," because they believe adherence to the scout oath, or promise, by the youth of today will make better citizens tomorrow...
Before he can say Baden-Powell, Scoutmaster MacMurray becomes a leading citizen of the small town that Producer Disney constructed long ago on the back lot of his studio-that typical Midwestern town where the California sun is so hot that the lawns need a fresh coat of green paint every day. He gets a job in the general store and marries the prettiest girl in town (Vera Miles). Unfortunately, Fred and Vera don't have children-possibly because Fred goes trotting off on so many overnight hikes-but they do perform a numbing number of good deeds...