Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

thetods The visuals in this movie of Greece and its islands are simply beautiful, like a travelogue. It is interesting to see some of these places before tourists overran them. Sophia Loren and Clifton Webb are at their best but Allan Ladd seems disinterested all the way through it. Boy on a Dolphin is available in Australia through Bounty Entertainment. It is in CinemaScope format but the colour is a bit faded in parts, the print not having been restored. There are no extras. Bounty has a few other very rare Fox titles, including King of the Khyber Rifles and Soldier of Fortune, also both in their original CinemaScope. The prints of the latter two are both very good.

theowinthrop An average adventure film, it is easy to say what is good about BOY ON A DOLPHIN: the scenery of Greece is wonderful, the music and dance numbers interesting (the first Greek dances I suspect in a major production film prior to NEVER ON Sunday), and the pleasures of looking at the young, vibrant Sophia Loren. They are sufficient to make the film a "5" out of "10". Dragging it down a bit is casting Alan Ladd as the hero archaeologist - he speaks his lines okay, but he was beginning to look a little puffy in the face (it is not the Ladd of THIS GUN FOR HIRE or TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST or THE BLUE DAHLIA). But pushing it up to a "7" is Clifton Webb. More about that later.Sophia is a sponge diver, and has accidentally located the wreckage of a 2,000 year old wreck which entered myth because it had a the statue of a boy (made out of solid gold) on top of a bronze dolphin. Ladd is approached by Sophia about showing him the treasure for possible financial reward. But Ladd's resources are small (he works for various antiquities organizations and national governments, and worked after World War II returning antiquities looted by the Nazis). He arranges to have lunch with her, but she arrives first. She is told they cannot serve her alone, so she plops herself down next to the next available person. It's Webb, who turns out to find her more interesting than initially when she mentions knowing Ladd and awaiting him. Webb cleverly spirits her out of the restaurant onto his yacht. There (keeping her a well treated prisoner) he does a little research on his own, and catches up with Ladd in a Monastic Library. He returns to the yacht. He explains the situation - he will pay much more money for the statue of the boy on the dolphin than Ladd will. Loren agrees to help him.So the situation is set up, with Loren working to delay and defeat Ladd's urge to find the statue, and once he goes she'll lead Webb to it. But due to unforeseen side issues (Ladd becomes friendly with Loren's kid brother Piero Giagnoni) he learns that she visits the yacht, and soon is aware he cannot depend on her anymore. But Loren is also finding she is falling for Ladd, and this is beginning to worry not only Webb but Loren's old boyfriend Jorge Mistral. Switching to relying on Mistral, Webb prepares to snatch the prize while Ladd is preoccupied. And there I will leave the plot.After LAURA and THE DARK CORNER, with the possible exception of his ridiculous social snob Eliot Templeton in THE RAZOR'S EDGE, Clifton Webb played good guys. Usually they were acerbic, like his Lynn Belvedere, but usually had his heart in the right place. His Richard Sturgis in TITANIC is confronting his wife Barbara Stanwyck, but is in for a severe emotional drubbing from her regarding his son's parentage before he pulls himself together and shows he is heroic at the conclusion. Most of his films were comedies, though TITANIC and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN end with his death. However, it is not until he made BOY ON A DOLPHIN that Webb returned to his special brand of sybaritic style villainy. His Mr. Victor Parmelee (as noted on this thread, Webb's real last name was Parmelee) is a wealthy aesthete who collects art objects, and doesn't care how he gets them. He would have been the sort who would have dealt with Mr. Cathcart in THE DARK CORNER, and read Waldo Lydecker's columns in the newspapers. Webb has the aesthete down pat, and in the end you admire his thorough planning and stick-to-it-ness in seeking to circumvent Ladd. But he has one thing going in this film not found in the earlier two melodramas. Nobody is killed in BOY ON A DOLPHIN, although one suspects that the jealous Mistral would love to do in Ladd. So at the end Mr. Parmalee shrugs his shoulders and orders his yacht to Monte Carlo...ho hum...an occasional failure is to be expected. But he was not arrested (they found nothing to arrest him for), and a trip to Monte Carlo is certainly a better fate at the end of a film than being blasted by police bullets in your female friend's apartment or being shot in the back by your infuriated wife in the basement of your antique shop.

lastliberal Hugo Friedhofer's musical score, the enchanting beauty of Greek islands, and the incredibly luscious Sophia Loren combine to make this film memorable despite the thin story.Alan Ladd steps out of the saddle to play an archaeologist that is determined to preserve Greek treasures for Greece. Too bad he wasn't around to save the Elgin marbles. He teams with Sophia Loren to retrieve "The Boy on a Dolphin" and kept the evil Clifton Webb (three Oscar nominations) from spiriting it out of the country.Sophia Loren was only 23 when this film, which is almost as old as I am, was made. Those who have never seen her in her prime would do well to see what you fathers lusted after when your mother wasn't looking. If all you've seen is Grumpier Old Men, you may wonder what all the fuss was about.As a bit of trivia, she was required to walk in a trench in this film in order to give audiences the impression that her diminutive co-star, Alan Ladd, was taller than she.Not to dismiss Loren, the beauty of the Greek islands where this was film equals her allure to me. A film made in Greece is always worth watching, especially one that shows it before it was ruined by tourism.

moonspinner55 Miscast, misfired adventure has Sophia Loren playing a Greek skin-diver (!) who comes across the title-named sunken treasure just off the Greek Islands. Soon, two Americans--an archaeologist and a wealthy art collector--are vying for the prize, and Loren finds herself playing both sides: one man for the money, the other man for love. Rarely have I seen a picture so full of pretty ambiance and yet so dead at its core. The music and locations--as well as Sophia's figure--are all gorgeous, but this story is lost at sea. Alan Ladd, looking bloated with gimlet eyes, never connects with mercurial Sophia, who initially is in a constant rage (she snaps at everybody, even the doctor taking a nail out of her leg). It's a shame this film doesn't work, the beauty of the Aegean Sea is worth beholding. The dim script, from David Divine's novel, needed more bite, and the lazy direction needed more zest. Perhaps Sophia should have directed? ** from ****