Boy on a Dolphin

Boy on a Dolphin
Original lobby card
Directed by	Jean Negulesco
Produced by	Samuel G. Engel
Written by	Ivan Moffat Dwight Taylor David Divine (novel)
Starring	Alan Ladd Clifton Webb Sophia Loren
Music by	Hugo Friedhofer
Cinematography	Milton R. Krasner
Editing by	William Mace
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	April 19, 1957 (1957-04-19)
Running time	111 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2.8 million
Box office	$3.3 million

Boy on a Dolphin is a 1957 20th Century Fox romantic film set in Greece and made in CinemaScope. It was directed by Jean Negulesco and produced by Samuel G. Engel from a screenplay by Ivan Moffat and Dwight Taylor, based on the novel by David Divine.

The film stars Alan Ladd, Clifton Webb and Sophia Loren with Alexis Minotis and Laurence Naismith. Hugo Friedhofer was nominated for the 1958 Academy Award in Best Music, Scoring category for his work. The cinematography was by Milton R. Krasner.

Plot

The plot revolves around the attempts by two competing individuals - an archaeologist and a wealthy art collector - to retrieve an ancient Greek statue of a boy riding a dolphin from the bottom of the Aegean Sea. Alan Ladd portrays the honest academic archaeologist, Dr. James Calder, whose aim is to see to it that the statue is handed over to the rightful Greek authorities. Clifton Webb on the other hand, plays a rich and unscrupulous grave-robber, Victor Parmalee, who wants to find the statue and keep it in his own private collection. Sophia Loren plays a Greek sponge diver, Phaedra, who accidentally found the statue and is trying to make money by assisting Webb's character, but gets romantically involved with Ladd's character.

Cast

• Alan Ladd as Dr. James Calder
• Clifton Webb as Victor Parmalee
• Sophia Loren as Phaedra
• Alex Minotis as Milidias Nadapoulos
• Jorge Mistral as Rhif
• Laurence Naismith as Dr. Hawkins
• Piero Giagnoni as Niko
• Gertrude Flynn as Miss Dill

Production notes

This film is Sophia Loren's American film debut.

The film was shot at Cinecittà, Rome and on location on the island of Hydra one of the Saronic Islands in the Saronic Gulf. Establishing shots of Athens, Rhodes and Delos are used as well. One scene utilizes the Orthodox monastery complex at Meteora that later would be used as a location in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.

Because of the disparity in the heights of Sophia Loren and Alan Ladd, their love scenes presented something of a problem for director Jean Negulesco and his crew. Ladd was 5' 6" (1.625m) and Loren was 5' 8" (1.73m), requiring him to stand on a box for two shots; for a scene where the two walked together along the beach, a trench had to be dug for Loren to walk in, so Ladd would appear taller. This was later parodied on Monty Python's Flying Circus in the episode and sketch "Scott of the Antarctic," wherein two actors appeared in a film and one of them stood atop three crates and the other in a three-foot trench, creating a ludicrous disparity in height between the two.

The title song was performed by torch song/blues singer Julie London, done in her famous sparse style of singing intimately close to the microphone accompanied only by a guitar, and can be heard in the opening credits. The lyrics are as follows:

There's a tale that they tell of a dolphin and a boy made of gold/ With the shells and the pearls in the deep, he has lain many years fast asleep/ What they tell of the boy on a dolphin, who can say if it's true?/ Should he rise from the depths of the ocean, any wish that you wish may come true/

You say he's only a statue and what can a statue achieve?/ And yet, while I'm gazing at you, my heart tells my head to believe/ If the boy whom the gods have enchanted should arise from the sea/ And the wish of my heart could be granted, I would wish that you loved only me/

External links

• Boy on a Dolphin at the Internet Movie Database
• Boy on a Dolphin at AllRovi
• Boy on a Dolphin at the TCM Movie Database