Cinema: A Biddle as Boor

If 1) everybody loves a lovable eccentric, especially if he is a millionaire, then 2) everybody will love a comedy about a lovable eccentric millionaire.

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.

And so the 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 in their pre-World War I costumes, and the American elegance of a really dazzling collection of vintage cars.