Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

   "...you may agree with Grant that anyone who builds these days is crazy..."

With Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas.

Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Next to an exciting mystery or horror film there's nothing so relaxing as a good comedy.  But what makes one man laugh makes the next guy scowl.  I have listed below a few notes on recent pictures that may tickle your funny bone.  Blandings is the only one that had me rolling in the aisles (what a silly figure of speech!), however the others may roll you.  Every man to his own aisle.  

No doubt the secret of Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House is that you see yourself, as this city dweller and his family endure the confinements of a small New York apartment, dream of a home in the country, buy one, get fleeced right and left as they rebuild, but finally survive everything and live to enjoy the place in spite of all the plotting of man and nature against them.  Director H. C. Potter knows people and has given us a series of funny episodes that range from documentary-like shots of New York and its crowded millions to bucolic scenes of the hinterlands complete with the vicissitudes of the open spaces and commuter trains.  Of course Eric Hodgins's original story deserves much of the credit for the fun; scriptwriters Norman Panama and Melvin Frank have broadened the themes, but they have retained the warm humor and clever satire of the Hodgins book.  The cast is excellent: Cary Grant giving one of his best portrayals as the frustrated advertising man, Myrna Loy looking like and acting like the ideal wife, Melvyn Douglas responding as this couple's best friend and lawyer, and a large group of supporting players, not forgetting the real estate agent who knows a sucker when he sees one and he sees one.  The Grant-Loy-Douglas triangle is a little forced, and the film is rather long for its single home-building theme.  But the laughs continue to the end; and while you may agree with Grant that anyone who builds these days is crazy, you are more likely to agree with Douglas that the result is worth it."

Philip T. Hartung, Commonweal

New Artwork by Rebekah Hawley at Studio36 -
Number 52 - Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (Lobby Card Style)

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Bringing Up Baby (1938)

   "Actor Grant...more interested in an intercostal clavicle for his nearly reconstructed Brontosaurus than he is in bony, scatterbrained Miss Hepburn."

With Katharine Hepburn.

Bringing Up Baby - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"When she was college girl ten years ago, red-headed, Melpomene-mouthed Katharine Hepburn, in a trailing white nightgown cross-hatched with gold ribbon, regaled Bryn Mawr as Pandora in The Woman in the Moon.  And since then most of Actress Hepburn's public appearances have been for the catch-in-the-throat cinema, playing alternately great ladies and emotional starvelings of brittle bravado.  For Bringing Up Baby she plumps her broad A in the midst of a frantically farcical plot involving Actor Cary Grant, a terrier, a leopard, a Brontosaurus skeleton and a crotchety collection of Connecticut quidnuncs, proves she can be as amusingly skittery a comedienne as the best of them.  

Actor Grant is an earnest, bespectacled paleontologist who is more interested in an intercostal clavicle for his nearly reconstructed Brontosaurus than he is in bony, scatterbrained Miss Hepburn.  Miss Hepburn has a pet leopard named Baby, and an aunt with $1,000,000 waiting for the right museum.  On the trail of the million, Actor Grant crosses paths with Actress Hepburn and Baby, loses the scent in the tangled Connecticut wildwood.  In the jail of a town very like arty Westport, the trails collide.  Most surprising scene:  Actress Hepburn, dropping her broad A for a nasal Broadway accent, knocking Town Constable Walter Catlett and Jailmate Grant completely off balance with: "Hey, flatfoot!  I'm gonna unbutton my puss and shoot the woiks.  An' I wouldn' be squealin' if he hadn' a give me the runaround for another twist."  

Under the deft, directorial hand of Howard Hawks, Bringing Up Baby comes off second only to last year's whimsical high spot, The Awful Truth, but its gaily inconsequent situations cannot match the fuselike fatality of that extraordinary picture.  Bringing Up Baby's slapstick is irrational, rough-and-tumble, undignified, obviously devised with the idea that the cinema audience will enjoy (as it does) seeing stagy Actress Hepburn get a proper mussing up." 

- Time

New Artwork by Rebekah Hawley at Studio36
Number 30 -Bringing Up Baby (Lobby Card Style)

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The Amazing Adventure of Ernest Bliss (1937)

   "Cary Grant...secures laughs easily and apparently without effort."

With Mary Brian.

The Amazing Adventure of Ernest Bliss - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"E. Phillips Oppenheim's story (filmed years ago as a silent) is a bit old-fashioned and present-day filmgoers may regard it as implausible.  Coincidences are highly improbable, and the whole thing, despite excellent direction and acting, moves at a pace that demands a large measure of cutting before being offered to the general public.  Implausibilities include an elderly lodging house keeper who refuses to oust a man from his room, despite arrears of rent, when she could get cash from someone else.  Also encountering his former gold-digger mistress who, finding him working as a chauffeur, deliberately leaves her diamond bracelet in the car.  

In the end everything comes out all right, of course, and he is enabled to provide liberally for all those who were kind to him during his self-imposed poverty.  

There is a mechanical progression in the photographic sequences which lacks credence, but this may be fixed by cutting, thereby speeding up the movement towards the story's culmination.  

Cary Grant looks and acts the part with deft characterization.  He secures laughs easily and apparently without effort.  Mary Brian plays the role of the typist with a metallic harshness which would be more in keeping with the gold digger.  One expects more feminine softness and sympathy from such a role.  Most of the other actors and actresses are adequate, and production details are very good."  

- Joshua Lowe, Variety

New Artwork by Rebekah Hawley at Studio36 -
Number 26 - The Amazing Adventure of Ernest Bliss (Lobby Card Style)

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On This Day, March 6th 2021

Quote From Today, March 6th 2022