Another Pygmalionvariation, with Katharine Hepburn as a plain Jane from the Kansas plainsand Burt Lancaster as the grinning con man who tries to teach her todream. His name is Starbuck-to emphasize the dual aspect of hisappeal-and he could charm the rains right out of a drought-ridden sky,for a town that comes to believe that "once in your life you have totrust a con man." Hepburn's intensity as the awakening spinster, whosewillful verbosity matches Lancaster's bravado, challenges the pointedwhimsy of N. Richard Nash's script, which was born as a teleplay andthen staged on Broadway. "(Director Joseph Anthony) gave the film amoderately stylized air that suited it to perfection, taking note of thebarren earth where reality had been eroded to create a blankness fromwhich metaphor could rise" (Gordon Gow, Hollywood in the Fifties).