FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE (1950)
Article #716 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-1-2003
Posting Date: 7-29-2003
Directed by George Seaton
Featuring Clifton Webb, Joan Bennett, Robert Cummings

An angel attempts to help the spirit of an unborn child to manifest herself in the lives of two self-involved theatrical types.

As a self-involved theatrical type myself, the thought that some disembodied spirit has been hanging around me for several years waiting for me to start propagating is pretty scary; nonetheless, this isn’t a horror movie. It’s also not particularly funny or compelling; Clifton Webb can be a fun actor, but watching him spend most of the movie trying to imitate Gary Cooper and making colorful cowpoke metaphors (many with the word “tick” in the title) makes me wish they had gotten Walter Brennan instead. Edmund Gwenn is also on hand, and even though he has long been one of my favorite actors, even he needs something a little less slight than his angelic adviser role here. Joan Blondell steals the movie by just being there, and Whit Bissell is also on hand as a psychiatrist. And if there are any disembodied spirts hanging around my apartment, I’m giving them a fair warning; I’m spraying next week.