Blonde Venus (1932)

   "...Grant is worthy of a much better role..."

With Marlene Dietrich.

Blonde Venus - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Marlene Dietrich's latest film, Blonde Venus, over which B. P. Schulberg, until recently head of Paramount's Hollywood studio, and Josef von Sternberg, the director, clashed last spring, is a muddled, unimaginative and generally hapless piece of work, relieved somewhat by the talent and charm of the German actress and Herbert Marshall's valiant work in a thankless role.

It wanders from Germany to many places in America, over to France and then back to New York, but nary a whit of drama is there in it.  There is good photography, and for those who are partial to scenes in a theatre, there are some over which                Mr. von Sternberg has taken no little care.  But the pain of it is the dismal and suspenseless tale of a woman who sinks to selling her favors and finally ends by returning to her husband.  

There is scarcely any simpathy evoked for the characters, except for a little boy.  Most of the scenes are unedifying, without possessing any strength or a common sense idea of  psychology.  It is regrettable that Miss Dietrich, Mr. Marshall and others should have been called on to appear in such a vehicle.  

When there is any attempt at levity it is silly, and one lengthy episode might better have been left to the imagination, for it never for a moment is anything but dreary and dull.  

There are good portraits of Miss Dietrich, who sings two or three songs.  Mr. Marshall does as well as his lines and the situations permit.  Cary Grant is worthy of a much better role than that of Townsend, and little Dickie Moore gives a suggestion of brightness to the unhealthy scenes in which he is sometimes beheld."

- Mordaunt Hall, The NewYork Times

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Monkey Business (1952)

    "Grant has never been better..."

With Marilyn Monroe.

Monkey Business - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

" Grant has never been better than in his part as the absent-minded professor in search of the elixir of youth.
His extraordinary agile and amusing performance is matched to the hilt by that of Ginger Rogers as his long-suffering wife. And those who recall that Miss Rogers was once a famous dancing star, will find that she excels in that department. She obviously delights in her part, which is a demanding one.
Throughout, director Hawks has seen to it that Monkey Business doesn't become static. Grant's wild car ride with Marilyn Monroe is pure farce in the great tradition of the screen and some other climactic sequences come across with the same explosive effect." 

- Motion Picture Herald

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People Will Talk (1951)

   "...turns in one of the most intelligent performances of his nineteen-year Hollywood career."

With Walter Slezak.

People Will Talk - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"And once again, Hollywood's ranking "genius" - the only man to win four Academy Awards in two years - has something to say and says it frankly and funnily.  

The film, which has a three-way plot, concentrates on one of the strangest and most adult love affairs ever to emerge from Hollywood.   The wedding between                  Dr. Praetorius and Deborah Higgins takes place when the doctor knows she is more than a month pregnant, although he is not responsible - a situation handled in perfect taste, and resulting in an exceptionally happy union.  

These heterogeneous plot strands are welded together by Grant, who turns in one of the most intelligent performances of his nineteen-year Hollywood career.  And       Miss Crain proves, as she did in Pinky, that she is ready to graduate from her usual pigtail roles.  Much of the credit for an impressive film goes to the very adult and literate writing of Mankiewicz."

- Newsweek

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I Was A Male War-Bride (1949)

   "...a past master at playing the handsome      he-man thrown for a loss by a difficult dame..."

I Was A Male War-Bride - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"A temperamental French army captain and a strong-minded WAC lieutenant stationed in Occupied Germany spend the first half of this comedy hating each other and the second half trying to find a way for the captain to emigrate to the United States.  There is a short intermission between halves in which the two sparring partners get married.  

The film is poorly paced.  By the time Captain Rochard and Lieutenant Gates get to the altar, it seems as if we've had our money's worth.  But, no - complications are barely beginning.  It appears that the only provision under which Rochard may accompany his wife back to the States is the law regulating the immigration of war brides.  It is with this embarrassing predicament that the film finally gets down to the business announced in the title.  

The comedy has its share of bright and breezy moments.  Cary Grant is a past master at playing the handsome he-man thrown for a loss by a difficult dame or an undignified situation.  But none of the boy-girl situations in this opus is original enough to stand being spun out for two hours."   

- Scholastic Magazine

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The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)

   "...poor Mr. Grant finds himself doing many things that hardly fit his age."

With Shirley Temple.

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Without taxing or insulting your intelligence, some new comedies are providing some hearty laughs and a good excuse for timely escape into air-cooled cinema palaces.  The plot of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer won't solve any major problems about the younger generation, but its lines are amusing and the members of its handsome cast are bubbling with anxiety to entertain.  Cary Grant is pleasantly coy as the artist-playboy who finds himself squiring a love-sick seventeen-year-old in order to avoid a more trying sentence.  Because Shirley Temple is such an attractive young actress, the task should be considerably lightened for him; but high-school girls these days have extraordinary ideas about how their knights in shining armor should behave and poor Mr. Grant finds himself doing many things that hardly fit his age.  He's a good sport about the whole thing (even during the obstacle race at the picnic) until he realizes how much he prefers Shirley's older sister, played by Myrna Loy, who looks lovely but acts like a cold tomato because she's a female judge who takes herself very seriously indeed.  Rudy Vallee, in another of his clever portraits of a stuffed shirt, is more to her liking - until she too sees Cary lustrous in armor.  Irving Reis has directed his cast for laughs and succeeds in getting them.  Ray Collins, as a court psychiatrist, tries to inject a serious note on the behavior of adolescents who have crushes; but even he succumbs to the spirit of this playful comedy."

- Philip T. Hartung, The Commonweal

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The Talk of the Town (1942)

   "George Stevens has adroitly directed the three principals and the fine supporting cast..."

With Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur.

The Talk of the Town - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"My gripe with The Talk of the Town is the same complaint that I had against similar serio-comedies: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe.  It is only by a sudden fluke in the finale and a quick action on the part of one of the characters that a dreadful miscarriage of justice in this democracy is averted.  Along with our debates on the practical vs. the theoretical aspects of law and justice, we are served some witty repartee and some very funny situations.  George Stevens has adroitly directed the three principals and the fine supporting cast, including Edgar Buchanan, Glenda Farrell, Rex Ingram.  If any one performance stands out, it is that of Mr. Colman.  But still, when all the humor and wit are done, there remains the fact that but for Colman's last-minute rescue, Grant would have died at the hands of lynchers; and a mob, even in the cultured state of Massachusetts, is an army of blood thirsty beasts.  Just because it is an American mob makes its crime no more serious than a mob of Nazis.  If Mr. Stevens could have ended his film before the lynching scene (the whole is much too long anyway), he would have had a first-rate serio-comedy.  As it is we have to take the film's warm and human glow with a grain of salt while we lament our own lynching problem in a world that is crying for law and adjustment." 

- Philip T Hartung, The Commonweal

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In Name Only (1939)

  "No surprises are the easy ad-libbish styles of Stars Grant and Lombard..."

With Carole Lombard.

In Name Only - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"In Name Only will puzzle cinemagoers who thought they knew just what high jinks to expect when Screwball Cary Grant falls in love with Screwball Carole Lombard.  Far from high jinks is the somber situation of rich young Alec Walker when he falls in love with Julie Eden, a widowed commercial artist who has taken a summer cottage near his stately county seat.  For, as rarely happens in a screwball comedy but is very likely to happen in life, Alec has a tenacious wife with an undeveloped sense of humor, parents who also thought infidelity no joke.  Before Lovers Grant and Lombard fight through to the clear, they have traded more punches than puns, emerged with the realization that matrimony is more than the off-screen ending to a Grant-Lombard movie.  

A mature, meaty picture, based on the novel Memory of Love, by veteran bucolic Bessie Brewer (wife of muralist Henry Varnum Poor), In Name Only has its many knowing touches deftly underscored by Director John Cromwell, brought out by a smoothly functioning cast.  No surprises are the easy ad-libbish styles of Stars Grant and Lombard, the enameled professional finish of oldtime Actor Charles Coburn as Alec's conventional father.  Surprising to many cinemaddicts, however, will be the effectively venomous performance, as Alec's mercenary wife, of Cinemactress Kay Francis.  Having worked out a long-term contract with Warner Bros. which kept her in the top money (over $5,000 a week) but buried her as the suffering woman in a string of B pictures, sleek Cinemactress Francis in her first free-lance job shows that she still belongs in the A's, that, properly encouraged, she can pronounce the letter r without wobbling."

- Time

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Number 34 - In Name Only (Lobby Card Style)

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Devil and the Deep (1932)

 "...the best dramatic talkie we have yet seen."

With Tallulah Bankhead.

Devil and the Deep - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"The Picture is, in my opinion, the best dramatic talkie we have yet seen.  It is unabashed melodrama at times, but Charles Laughton's magnificent acting disarms criticism of the more violently sensational incidents.  He appears as the jealous, half-demented commander of a submarine, stationed on the West African coast.  His wife, played by Tallulah Bankhead, has endured five years of hell through his insane jealousy, but to the world at large he appears as a goodnatured fellow with an impossible wife.  At length, driven from home by a maniacal outburst of rage, Tallulah meets Gary Cooper and succumbs to his manly charms, only to discover, the next morning, that he is the newly arrived second officer.  

The submarine leaves port for diving maneuvers, and, through an accident, Tallulah is on board, with her half-mad husband and unsuspecting lover.  The vessel is rammed by a liner, owing to the machinations of Laughton, and the crew are entombed at the bottom of the sea.  This sequence is admirably done, in spite of the occasional use of models in the shooting.  The half-mad commander orders his second officer to be arrested, but Tallulah reveals her husband's insanity, and one by one the crew make their escape by means of the emergency apparatus.  

Only Laughton is left behind, and as he smashes his wife's portrait to atoms with an axe, the water rushes in and he is drowned in his cabin.  Tallulah Bankhead has better opportunities than of late as the distrait wife, but she is overshadowed by Laughton's amazing performance.  Gary Cooper is completely negligible as the lover."

- David Fairweather, Theatre World

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Ladies Should Listen (1934)

  "A good deal of it is actually unfunny, and all of it is too synthetic."

With Frances Drake.

Ladies Should Listen - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Basically there may have been enough comedy and farce possibility in this story, but as handled, it emerges a much too highly strained attempt at farce.  A good deal of it is actually unfunny, and all of it is too synthetic.  

Cary Grant is brutally miscast as a philandering young Parisian.  He plays the part for comedy, miscuing several times.  On the other hand, Frances Drake as his vis-a-vis, a nosey telephone girl, who listens in on conversations and has a habit of trying to straighten things out for other people, turns in her best performance yet and does much to establish herself.  

Picture allows Charles Ray to make a film comeback in a very minor role.  Handles a comedy bit very effectively and ought to be able to go places again.  

Claude Binyon and Frank Butler overworked hoke and puns in their adaptation, and these were all overstrained in the direction." 

- Wolfe Kaufman, Variety

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Number 17 - Ladies Should Listen (Lobby Card Style)

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To Catch A Thief (1955)

      " ...a high-polish job, a kind of reversion to the urbanities of a gentleman Raffles..."

With Grace Kelly.

To Catch A Thief - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Has Alfred Hitchcock over-refined his technique?  There are those who will say yes after seeing his To Catch A Thief, but this fan is quite happy with Hitchcock as he is.  In his latest mystery, the emphasis is less on the mystery than on the incidental mechanics that develop it, much as it was in Rear Window, though here the plot is even thinner.  

Nevertheless, it is a high-polish job, a kind of reversion to the urbanities of a gentleman Raffles, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly ideal in the romantic leads."

- Philip K. Scheuer, Los Angeles Times

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The Toast of New York (1937)

  "The production is faultless..."

With Thelma Leeds.

The Toast of New York - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"This film is chiefly noteworthy for the rounded characterization of an early American individualist which Edward Arnold adds to his fine gallery of screen portraits, and, more than the careful and authentic reconstruction of old New York, his performance conveys the spirit of the time in which this historical drama is laid.  It is the story of Jim Fisk who drops his medicine-show business at the opening of the Civil War to prosper at cotton smuggling and go on to the higher gamble of the stock market.  Attacked by the press as an Ogre feeding on the small investors, he conceives the gigantic scheme of cornering the nation's gold and enters upon a financial struggle with Cornelius Vanderbilt.  Balked in his dream and disappointed in love, his strange career is abruptly closed by mob violence.  The direction of Rowland V. Lee is turned toward a large scale portrait which will serve for all the robber barons of our checkered post-Civil War industrialism.  Frances Farmer, Cary Grant and Donald Meek lend support and Jack Oakie provides more than one man's share of comedy.  The production is faultless and the morality of great wealth is a timely subject of discussion, so adults will undoubtedly find this production much to their liking."

- Thomas J. Fitzmorris, America

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Suzy (1936)

      "...his talents for varied characterizations have been recognized, and in each new venture he makes good."

With Jean Harlow and Franchot Tone.

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

"Romance, drama, war, espionage, Jean Harlow, Franchot Tone, Cary Grant, ample production and the direction of George Fitzmaurice - such are the ingredients of Suzy, compounded on the Metro lot and soon to be turned loose on the world at large.  It will give satisfaction.  We could wish for less talking than it contains, and a greater reliance on the camera in developing the psychological phases of the story, but as we seem doomed to have such pictures until Hollywood learns how to use the microphone, we will be lucky if we get none less entertaining than this well-made Metro offering.  

The chief merit of the excellently written script is the businesslike manner in which the story is told, the contrasting elements being woven into an easily flowing narrative free from non-essentials.  There are intensely dramatic moments as well as some melodramatic physical thrills.  The picture, in fact, has something of everything in it, being fashioned in a manner that should make it satisfactory entertainment for any kind of audience, and as no picture can be better than its direction, we may credit Fitzmaurice with having done a most creditable job.  Praise is due Ray June for photography of distinction. 

Performances are excellent.  Jean Harlow at all times is in compete command of her role which runs the gamut from light comedy to stark tragedy.  I do wish, however, that they would do something with Jean's eyebrows.  The thin, pencilled lines, resembling eyebrows seen only in caricatures, caught my attention when she first appeared, and thereafter I could not keep my eyes off them.

Franchot Tone grows in stature with his every performance.  Always the perfect gentleman, intelligent, personable, never in word or gesture does he suggest the actor.  Cary Grant, too, is something more than just a leading man.  Since his outstanding performance in Sylvia Scarlett, his talents for varied characterizations have been recognized, and in each new venture he makes good.  Here we have him as a philandering aviation hero, a part to which he does full justice.  Benita Hume is effective as a war spy. 

The final scene in the picture as I saw it is the only story weakness.  Grant has been killed and the scene shows us his funeral.  We hear a long eulogy which robs the scene of the impressiveness it would have had if its treatment had been more intelligent.  There is no reason why we should hear the words of praise accorded the dead hero.  A long shot to establish the fact of the speech being made, appropriate music to make it reasonable we should not hear the speech, close shots to register the emotions of some of the mourners, and sympathetic camera treatment of the entire sequence, would have made it a great screen moment.  We can expect such blundering just as long as producers are governed by their obsession that the microphone is their principal tool.  Here they use it to commit a cinematic crime. 

- Hollywood Spectator

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Notorious (1946)

      "...with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant to bring glamour and sultry vitality to the leads..."

With Ingrid Bergman.

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

"The unease that assaults an artist transplanted bodily out of his native soil has affected even veteran director Alfred Hitchcock who, since his arrival in Hollywood, has consistently failed to live up to the standards of Thirty-Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes.  A celebration is therefore in order for his most recent effort, Notorious.  With a highly polished script by Ben Hecht, and with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant to bring glamour and sultry vitality to the leads, Mr. Hitchcock has fashioned a film in the supercharged American idiom of the sort that made Casablanca popular.  With a minimum of tricks and an uncluttered story line, he tells of a beautiful American spy who marries an enemy leader and is rescued at Zero hour by her secret service superior when her husband tries to poison her.

- Hermine Rich Isaacs, Theatre Arts Magazine

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Number 49 - Notorious (Lobby Card Style)

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That Touch of Mink (1962)

      "When it comes to playing Cary Grant, nobody can beat Cary Grant."

With Doris Day.

That Touch of Mink - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"That Touch of Mink stars Cary Grant and Doris Day in a movie identical in almost every respect with Lover Come Back (Universal, 1962).  Lover Come Back was a funny picture and That Touch of Mink is a funny picture.  Stanley Shapiro was one of the authors and producers of Lover Come Back and is one of the authors and producers of That Touch of Mink.  Mr. Shapiro is not ashamed to repeat himself.  Ashamed? Am I kidding? The only significant difference between Lover Come Back and That Touch of Mink is that in Lover Come Back the Cary Grant part was played by Rock Hudson, and in That Touch of Mink the Cary Grant part is played by Cary Grant.  When it comes to playing Cary Grant, nobody can beat Cary Grant.  Go see for yourself.

- Brendan Gill, The New Yorker

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Number 69 - That Touch of Mink (Lobby Card Style)

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North by Northwest (1959)

      "...two of the very slickest operators before and behind the Hollywood cameras."

With Eva Marie Saint.

North by Northwest - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"If it does nothing else (but it does, it does), North by Northwest resoundingly reaffirms the fact that Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock are two of the very slickest operators before and behind the Hollywood cameras.  Together they can be unbeatable.  Each has his own special, career-tested formula.  Actor Grant's is a sartorial spiffiness and mannered charm; producer-director Hitchcock's is an outrageously simple yet effective blend of mayhem and humor at mayhem's expense, the whole usually framed by a famous piece of scenery that no one else had ever considered a suitable backdrop for melodramatic shenanigans.  The present shiny and colorful collaboration offers Grant as a dapper Madison Avenue advertising executive being chased by foreign agents over the slippery precipices of the Presidential faces carved into Mount Rushmore - a most unlikely bit of contrived suspense, but one that is hypnotizing while it jangles the nerves." 

- Newsweek

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Topper (1937)

      "The giddy rigmarole is for those who can take their death ribald and their fantasy straight."

With Roland Young and Constance Bennett.

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

"Thorne Smith fans will be delighted to learn that Culver City studio has again gone stark looney .  This one is about the gay couple who wander about upsetting mortals after they've been killed in a motor accident.  Though it will hardly influence cinema history, Topper comes off a lot better than Night Life of the Gods, MGM's other attempt to plant the novelist's insanity on a screen.  

Ghosts are far more amenable to camera tricks, of course, than walking statues.  The now-you-see-me-now-you-don't theme is paradise to a photographer.  It is thoroughly disconcerting to Mr. Topper, the timid banker whom the Kerbys propose to liberate from a nagging wife and a humdrum career.  

The giddy rigmarole is for those who can take their death ribald and their fantasy straight.  Constance Bennett and Cary Grant are suitable as Kerbys.  But it is Roland Young's show.  Between the capricious antics of his abstract companions and the carping of Billie Burke as his wife, his talent for being harassed finds exquisite expression.  

- Literary Digest

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Walk, Don't Run (1966)

      "...a light, bright touch and a debonair smile..."

With George Takei, John Standing, Jim Hutton and Samantha Eggar.

Walk, Don't Run - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Too long as are most comedies today, Walk, Don't Run seems to take its title far too literally; but there are several very funny sequences, a jaunty score by Quincy Jones, and the unflawed elegance of Mr. Grant.  With a light, bright touch and a debonair smile, he gives the film the happy sheen of charade that must never be taken seriously.  It almost works."

- Arthur Knight, The Saturday Review

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Number 72 - Walk, Don't Run (Lobby Card Style)

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