A dream team in a way - Moss Hart wrote the script, based on a best selling novel, with CinemaScope, Richard Burton fresh off The Robe playing a great actor, Maggie McNamara coming off Three Coins in the Fountain and The Moon is Blue, Philip Dunne as producer and director (well, it was his first film as a director but he was associated with "A" product as a producer and writer).
There's great material here - Edwin Booth had a controlling brother, a wife who died, a brother who shot Lincoln. But the material is treated like a musical biopic with renditions of Shakespeare instead of musical numbers. It's interesting to see Burton recite the verse but that's what he does - recite rather than act. McNamara isn't much as the wife. Derek livens up every scene he's in but it's the part more than the actor - still Derek doesn't disgrace himself. Really the film should've just been about the brothers.
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