CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (1950) **1/2 I don't know if this was source material for The Sound of Music, or if dads were just all wilfully grumpy back in those days. Clifton Webb's entertaining-and his underlying humanity shows clearly through-but the film (and family) works so well because of Myrna Loy's feminine touch. She doesn't have as many lines to work with, and virtually no memorable ones, but she endows the mundane and trivial with an irony that not only hints at the profound but proves its very existence. I doubt anything was ever quite like this, but it's probably also fair to say that it's impossible to show it how it was. It's a montage of artless symbols pointing to the small things that add up. It's linear derivation of the fantastic, a fringe fascination of the genteel at the expense of the lurid. It's backwards and far reaching and reactionary and visionary without unnecessary expense. It's all that-kind of, and without being any more pompous about it than is overtly shoved into the spotlight with a wink. It's a movie about a guy who has twelve kids, and his need for a dog. Actually, maybe he needed two dogs...
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