Totally Ruined by Cecile Aubrey.

Totally Agree. What someone owed her can only be assumed. So many other beautiful English beauties could have been cast in this role. Still a great adventure movie but it could have been even GREATER.

Agree also. I recall my same perplexed reaction (WTF with that silly little gal) as easily an impressed adolescent whilst viewing on television.

A decent adventure story ruined by that lisping child trying to look oh so sexy. Of course when I saw this on tv as a teen I loved her cause she was a sexy French girl about my age I thought. Watching it today is hard to do. Time changes one.

Cécile Aubrey got this role after her acclaimed performance in the French film Manon (1949), which won her the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. On the strength of that success 20th Century-Fox signed her and cast her in the title role of the Black Rose.

Like many casting decisions, it looked better on paper than on film. Aubrey was a good actress but the childlike demeanor that had worked in Manon wasn't at all suited to this part. That kind of thing has happened a lot in movie history. She continued to have a moderately successful career, mainly in France, until she quit acting, which had never been a great passion with her, in the late 1950s. She became a very successful writer of children's books and television adaptations in France and died in 2010 at age 81.

But no doubt the film would have been better with a more adult-seeming leading lady, like the young actress whom Fox first approached to play the part, but whose mother told her to turn it down -- a little-known 18-year-old French dancer named Leslie Caron!

THOSE TEETH!!!

"A stitch in time, saves your embarrassment." (RIP Ms. Penny LoBello)

I liked it fine but she's its biggest problem. No chemistry and even though she was 22 at the time, she looks like a child and her scenes with Power are unintentionally creepy as a result.