A MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE

Good tripe, but little more. Sorry -- for Francis Brett Young can do better than this. An unconvincing story of the Isit sisters, victims of an overpowering father fixation which is broken only when the all-pervading influence of an alien clime thaws the ice which had bound their spirits. Old Colonel Isit, ex-Indian service, reclaims a monstrosity of an ancestral mansion in North Bronwich, England, and then dies, leaving a burden of mortgage, and virtually no income for his almost middle aged spinster daughters. Their father's word was law, so everything was sacrificed to keeping up the mansion -- and they had been reduced to virtual penury when they fell heir to the estate exists of a vagabond uncle who had settled at Monfcon, in southern Italy. And there -- in the villa presided over by a glamorous Italian rascal, Galvators, the two maiden ladies came alive. Just what happened makes good enough summer entertainment, but not wholly convincing second thought. At that, one is glad when fate sends the elder Miss Agnes, bereaved after brief and riotous living, back to England, and permits Miss Ellen to breathe the air of her beloved Monfalcon away from sisterly selfish solicitude.