Thornton Sayre (Clifton Webb) has been living comfortably for decades as a pompous professor of Latin and English literature at a small east cost college. Now a widower and with his academically inclined daughter Carol (Ann Francis) attending the college, his contented existence is thrown into turmoil when his past life finally catches up with him.
Decades before Thorton had, under the name Bruce Blair, been a celebrated lover of the silent screen. The films he made with co-star and then romantic partner Gloria Marlow (Ginger Rogers) have started showing on television and Thorton's students and his colleagues are in a tizzy. Thorton and Carol head for New York City in an effort to stop the films from being shown, high jinx ensue.
Clifton Webb, 62 at the time this movie was made, had in fact appeared in a number of silent films, though the ones shown here where made for this feature and use makeup and camera tricks to imply that Webb and Rogers are decades younger. The film also takes some amusing digs at television, a medium at the time much hated by the studios. This movie is legitimately funny, my favorite bit being when Webb ends up in a bar room brawl while a bar room brawl from one of his old movies plays on the television, he looks at it periodically for guidance in fighting. As with the other Webb comedys of the time this is targeted at a family audiance, so it lacks the bite that someone like Billy Wilder could have brought to the project. Still ***
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