A lavish and lush adventure film, BOY ON A DOLPHIN could easily be dismissed as a variation of THE MALTESE FALCON shot under water, but for the considerable talents of its principal players, chiefly the resolute Ladd, the snide and sophisticated Webb, and the earthy and generously endowed
Loren, whose animalistic sex appeal wowed male viewers around the world in this, her first American film. While swimming off the coast of the Greek island Hydra, sponge diver Loren discovers a sunken ship in the deep, an ancient Greek galley which boasts treasure, including an exquisite statue of
a boy on a dolphin. So awe-inspiring is this underwater marvel, Loren almost fails to surface. When she does, she blurts her find to her boy friend, Mistral, a sleazy sort who immediately begins scheming to sell the artifacts. They naively approach Ladd, an American archeologist working for the
Greek museums, and he becomes excited. He will not pay for it, however, demanding that Loren and Mistral turn it over to their country as patriots who should want to see its heritage preserved. Mistral goes to greedy millionaire Webb, a collector of great treasures. The two begin planning how to
raise the ship's treasure secretly and smuggle it out of the country, a job for which Webb promises to pay handsomely. He is also taken with Loren and offers to make her his mistress, but she rejects him, leaving his yacht in a huff. Moreover, Loren has fallen in love with Ladd and is having
patriotic pangs of guilt. She is encouraged to side with Ladd by her kid brother Giagoni, whose innocent performance of an American-idolizing boy is captivating and funny. She finally leads Ladd to the spot, and both dive, only to find the treasure gone. Mistral has taken Webb to the location
first. Ladd believes Loren has betrayed him and will have nothing more to do with her. In a risky confrontation with her former boy friend and the avaricious Webb, Loren manages to recover the treasure with the help of Greek authorities; it is delivered into the harbor, the bronze statue of the
boy on a dolphin jutting from the government gunboat. Webb sails away empty-handed, telling his yacht captain to steer a course for Monte Carlo. Ladd, realizing that Loren has been faithful to him, takes her into his arms as the Greek villagers cheer wildly at the restoration of their national
treasure.
Many of the cast and crew had been involved in the production of the 1954 smash hit THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN which was shot on location in Rome and were enlisted for BOY ON A DOLPHIN when Fox decided to re-create the same kind of exotic background. The film is filed with shots of the Parthenon,
the winding streets of Athens, the crumbling Epidaurus amphitheater, and the stunning coastal towns along the azure Aegean Sea. Robert Mitchum was originally selected to play the role of the archeologist, but he was committed elsewhere, so Fox gave the nod to Ladd, who was just completing THE BIG
LAND. He agreed to do the film, but his price was high, more than $275,000, according to one report, then a whopping sum. He was not too happy with Webb's presence, having run afoul of that actor's acerbic wit years earlier. (Webb would be cordial throughout the film but, on his return to
Hollywood, he complained of Ladd's temperament.) Yet Ladd's best scenes are with Webb as they play cat-and-mouse games about the treasure. In these, he is animated and properly adversarial while in almost all his scenes with Loren he is withdrawn, almost indifferent. Of course, he had reason to
be. Loren was using the film to boost an international reputation as Italy's new sex symbol, her expansive physique advertised to be bigger and broader and more sumptuous than the considerable attributes of Gina Lollobrigida. Ladd stood only about 5'4" and was amazed when he first met Loren, who
is 5'8". Their love scenes had to be framed as special two-shots. At one point, the two walk along a beach. So that Ladd would appear taller, a trench was dug for Loren to walk in. This embarrassed Ladd, distancing him from cast and crew. Director Negulesco played all the scenes to Loren,
particularly the diving sequences in which she grabs the hem of her skirt, tucks it between her legs, and pins it, then dives into the water and emerges dripping wet, her body clearly outlined, a shot that would be used in the film's promotion. Ladd refused to be anything but polite, and she later
claimed he was her only leading man who refused to become her friend. When they posed for publicity shots, he was cold and indifferent, although she later said that Ladd was one of the sexiest men she had ever seen on the screen. He hated being away from his children, and the trip to Greece had
proved unnerving: a burglar had slipped into his compartment on the Orient Express traveling from Paris to Athens and had stolen his dinner clothes and his wife's best jewelry. By picture's end, Ladd felt that it had been a mistake, at least for him, and he blamed the director for handing Loren
the film. The film remains Loren's first smash American vehicle, with stunning photography and a haunting, Oscar nominated score by Friedhofer; it's a great travelog with a story thrown in for good measure. leave a comment