The Last Outpost (1935)

 "...a curious mixture.  Half of it is remarkably good and half of it quite abysmally bad."

With Gertrude Michael.

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

"The Last Outpost, which will be shown shortly at the Plaza, is a curious mixture.  Half of it is remarkably good and half of it quite abysmally bad.  One can even put one's finger on the joins, and it will be well worth a visit if only because it indicates what might be made of the short story form on the screen.  It consists of two stories unrelated except for the coincidence of characters. The first, which lasts for about half-an-hour, is a very well-directed and well-acted War story of a British secret service agent and his success in warning a defenseless tribe against a Kurd attack and inducing them to move with their flocks over a flooded river and across a snow-bound range of mountains to safe pastures.  It is one of those stories of dogged physical endeavor that the film does so well.  It belongs in the order of Grass and The Covered Wagon.  Mr. Claude Rains as the secret service agent in Turkish uniform and  Mr. Cary Grant as the incurably light-minded and rather stupid British officer whom he rescues from the Kurds both act extremely well.  Mr. Rains's low husky voice, his power of investing even commonplace dialogue with smouldering conviction, is remarkable.  He never rants, but one is always aware of what a superb ranter he could be in a part which did not call for modern restraint but only for superb diction.  I should like to see him as Almanzor or Aurengzebe, for he could catch, as no one else could, the bitter distrust of the world, religious in its intensity, which lies behind the heroic drama.  

The Last Outpost, if it had stopped on the mountain pass above the pastures with the officer on the way down to hospital and the comforts of Cairo and the secret agent turning back towards the enemy, would have been a memorable short film.  Mr. Charles Barton, the director, has obviously used old documentaries: the crossing of the flooded river is not a California reconstruction, and all through this first section the camera is used with fine vigor to present a subject which could not have been presented on the stage.  

I cannot see why we should not have serious films of this length as well as farces, short stories as well as novels on the screen.  The essential speed and concision would be an admirable discipline for most directors, who are still, after seven years of talkies, tied to stage methods, and we might be saved from seeing such a good film as this padded out to full length by the addition of a more than usually stupid triangular melodrama of jealousy and last-minute rescue in the Sahara where needless to say Mr. Rains sacrifices his life at the end, for his wife's love, so that it all may end in the fixed, almost Oriental, short-hand of military melodrama, "It is better so," clasped fingers and topees off and fading bugle calls."  

- Graham Greene, The Spectator

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Wedding Present (1936)

 "...a new high in factual distortion."

With Joan Bennett.

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

"Newspaper work has taken it on the nose from the cinema on more than one occasion this season, but Wedding Present reaches a new high in factual distortion.  We do not wish to destroy the 'movie' myth about journalism, but we suggest that the situations of this photo-play are implausible, dissociated, undramatic, preposterous and dreary.  The film is not fortunate in its principals.  Cary Grant plays the crazy reporter turned editor in a lackadaisical manner, mouthing most of his lines and acting more like a dramatic caricature than a character.  If he is not walking through his lines in this production, we never saw that feat accomplished.  Joan Bennett, for her part, does little to stay the complete demoralization of the plot."

- Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune

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I'm No Angel (1933)

 "The casting of Cary Grant... was again another brilliant piece of dramatic awareness."

With Mae West.

I'm No Angel - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Ingenious casting had much to do with the success of I'm No Angel.  Although her control over her vehicles at Paramount was almost absolute, unlike Chaplin in a similarly favored position, Mae West did not depend on a weak supporting cast to magnify her own personality or call attention to her humor.  A strong cast, each one capable and playing his or her role with uncommon passion, lent a credibility to the film, a quality of balance and proportion which only the finest motion pictures attain.

The casting of Cary Grant in the role of the man who finally wins Tira's love was again another brilliant piece of dramatic awareness.  Cary as Jack Clayton has none of the characteristics about him that had previously attracted Tira to men.  When she meets Nat Pendleton (playing the trapeze artist) on her way to the hotel at the very start of the picture, she feels his muscles, and comments on them.  She makes a similar overt gesture with Davidson (playing the Chump) while the two are dancing in her hotel room.  But with Clayton all such pretension is dropped.  Supposedly not interested just in his money, as she had been with Kirk Lawrence, seemingly in love, she feels his muscles at the end of the picture just before the fade.  But in 1933 Cary Grant was narrow of line and thin of physique, not at all the Nat Pendleton image.  Tira, a lion tamer, is unaccountably drawn to him, but there is something slightly incredible about their union, incredible enough for the viewer to have the same impression as one has at the conclusion of She Done Him Wrong, Tira cannot stay with him forever; she is insatiable and immortal.  From this very subtle and almost unconscious impression, the viewer comes away with that same sense of awe before magnitude, talent and vibrance, which Chaplin managed only by weak casting as a crutch.  

No scene in I'm No Angel is extraneous.  It is interesting, compelling, and enjoyable throughout.  Some scenes are played with rare distinction, as that of Cary Grant's initial visit to Tira's apartment, when she decides to let Kent Taylor go, but wants Cary instead.  The camera takes a three-quarters shot as this conversation straggles to its conclusion, with both their minds on something other than what's being said.  Cary has placed a small photograph of Mae in his coat pocket, and with his hands plunged nervously into his trouser pockets, the suit coat jutting out towards Mae, their bodies swaying ever closer together as they talk, Mae mumbling, "You'll hear from me," much more is implied that could ever be shown."

- John Tuska, Views and Reviews

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Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

 "...a superb blend of horror and comedy..."

With Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre.

Arsenic and Old Lace - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"My favorite scene is the one from the picture Arsenic and Old Lace which begins with Cary Grant making the spine-chilling discovery that his two dear old maiden aunts are poisoners who have murdered some dozen men.  

The old ladies' sweetly matter-of-fact attitude toward their gruesome hobby is a superb blend of horror and comedy, and the scene develops uproariously.  

I was helpless with laughter as I watched Cary change from a normal young man to a decidedly dizzy one, talking to himself, staring into the window seat from which bodies mysteriously appeared and disappeared, and making various wild attempts to cope with the situation."

- Ida Lupino, Saturday Evening Post

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None But The Lonely Heart (1944)

   "...plays its ...hero so attentively and sympathetically..."

With Konstantin Shayne.

None But The Lonely Heart - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"None But The Lonely Heart, a story about the education of a young man in London's pre-war slums, is an unusually sincere, almost-good film and was made under unusually unexpected auspices.  Its star, Cary Grant, asked that it be made, and plays its far from Cary Grantish hero so attentively and sympathetically that I all but overlooked the fact that he is not well constituted for the role.  Its most notable player, Ethel Barrymore, seemed miscast too, but I was so soft as to be far more than satisfied by her beauty and authority.  Its director, Clifford Odets, who also turned Richard Llewellyn's novel into the screen play, is still liable to write - or preserve from the book - excessive lines like "dreaming the better man"; he suggests his stage background as well as his talent by packaging his bits too neatly; and his feeling for light, shade, sound, perspective, and business is too luscious for my taste.  But I believe that even if he doesn't get rid of such faults he will become a good director.  I base my confidence in him chiefly on  the genuine things about his faith in and love for people, which are as urgent and evident here as his sentimentalities; on two very pretty moments in the film, one of two drunken men playing with their echoes under an arch, the other of two little girls all but suffocated by their shy adoration of the hero; and on the curiously rich, pitiful, fascinating person, blended of Cockney and the Bronx, whom he makes of a London girl, with the sensitive help of June Duprez.  I suppose I should be equally impressed by the fact that the picture all but comes right out and says that it is a bad world which can permit poor people to be poor; but I was impressed rather because Odets was more interested in filling his people with life and grace than in explaining them, arguing over them, or using them as boxing gloves." 

- James Agee, The Nation

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The Howards of Virginia (1940)

 "...Grant meets the exigencies of a difficult role with more gusto than persuasion."

With Paul Kelly.

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

"Elizabeth Page's best seller of last year, The Tree of Liberty, comes to the screen as The Howards of Virginia.  Although using only a portion of the 985-page novel, Columbia still seems to have tackled a larger canvas than it could paint effectively, with the result that this cavalcade of Colonial and Revolutionary America, while ambitious, expensive, and generally interesting, comes to life all to infrequently. 

Adapted by Sidney Buchman  and directed by Frank Lloyd, the Howard saga is most effective in the sequences that recreate frontier life and manners as seen through the eyes of the woman who loves her husband while rebelling against his democratic ideas.  These sequences are impressive in their homely humor and realism, though much footage otherwise wasted inevitably pulls the emotional punches in the story of Matt's relationship with his wife and children.  

Obviously miscast, Cary Grant meets the exigencies of a difficult role with more gusto than persuasion.  Martha Scott follows her impressive screen debut in Our Town with a sincere if more conventional characterization.  That this history has been staged with exceptional fidelity, is due in part to the fact that its Williamsburg sequences were filmed on location in the historic city which was reconstructed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. as a $20,000,000 project to perpetuate America's past."

- Newsweek

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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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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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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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