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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Number 41 - The Talk of the Town (Lobby Card Style)

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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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Number 4 - Devil and the Deep (Lobby Card Style)

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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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Number 60 - To Catch A Thief (Lobby Card Style)

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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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Number 28 - The Toast of New York (Lobby Card Style)

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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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Number 23 - Suzy (Lobby Card Style)

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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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Number 66 - North by Northwest (Lobby Card Style)

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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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Number 27 - Topper (Lobby Card Style)

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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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Kiss and Make-Up (1934)

      "Plenty of sight stuff and plenty of laughs in spots."

With Edward Everett Horton and Helen Mack.

Kiss and Make-Up - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Either a gag comedy with a romantic thread or a light romance with gag comedy, but more gags than romance.  A nice picture lacking sufficient strength to wow but should do all right.  Plot is thin, though sufficient.  

Cary Grant does well as the doctor but both he and E. E. Horton play too strongly for laughs.  Genevieve Tobin fills the specifications for the beauty, but acting honors go to Helen Mack as the secretary.  A delightful sincere performance.  Plenty of sight stuff and plenty of laughs in spots.

- Winthrop Sargent, Variety

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Number 16 - Kiss and Make-Up (Lobby Card Style)

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The Pride and The Passion (1957)

      "...Kramer has used locale and crowds of people superbly, alternating the big panoramic canvas with telling close-ups that are right from Goya"

With Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren.

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

"One great advantage that The Pride and The Passion has over most epic films is its unity of theme; all action revolves around the gun, the symbol of men fighting for what they believe in.  The English captain, skillfully played by Cary Grant, is a trained soldier, an authority on ordnance who has been commanded by his commodore to rescue the giant cannon, which was jettisoned by the fleeing Spanish army, and deliver it to a British warship.  The guerrilla leader, played by Frank Sinatra, is an uneducated, undisciplined patriot determined to deliver his hometown, Avila, from the occupying French.  Again and again the two men are contrasted: the smart, immaculately dressed, cold but sentimental English officer versus the emotional, cruel, provincial Spaniard.  Each has his big moments: the Englishman muddies his clothes as he assembles the broken cannon and directs its perilous journey, blows up a bridge and even eloquently pleads with the Bishop at the Escorial that the cannon be hidden in the cathedral; with less eloquence but with greater passion, the guerrilla leader persuades a group of townfolk to help drag the cannon out of the river and he effectively commands the peasants who work under him in the long march to Avila...  

It is fortunate that producer-director Stanley Kramer stressed the visual aspects in telling his story.  The script, written by Edna and Edward Anhalt, and stemming from C. S. Forester's novel The Gun, is strangely ineffectual; and the dialogue, whether due to the actors' odd mixture of accents due to poor recording, does not come through well.  The plot's argument is, therefore, difficult to follow at times; but Kramer has so directed the picture that the visuals succeed in developing the themes with little help from the spoken word.  Kramer's film is occasionally reminiscent of For Whom The Bell Tolls, another movie in which a foreigner was involved in one particular objective in helping the war-torn Spaniards; although the characters in the film made from the Hemingway novel were better drawn and motivated, The Pride and The Passion is far superior visually.  In magnificent scenes, like those showing the Holy Week procession in the Escorial, the dragging of the cannon through a dangerous mountain pass, the storming of Avila's walls and the routing of the French, Kramer has used locale and crowds of people superbly, alternating the big panoramic canvas with telling close-ups that are right from Goya.  Without minimizing the horrors of war, The Pride and The Passion is an epic sung in praise of the triumph of will over all obstacles.

- Philip T. Hartung, The Commonweal

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Number 61 - The Pride and The Passion (Lobby Card Style)

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Crisis (1950)

      "...brittle and diamond-brilliant... His sincerity in the story's guts is its premise for being believed..."

With Paula Raymond.

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

"Crisis is a bold piece of movie adventuring.  Under Dore Schary's progressive administration at MGM, we are now considered adult enough to enjoy an unbuttoned screenplay on the violent temperature that erupts in Latin-American civil war and dictatorship.  

Cary Grant is more brittle and diamond-brilliant than before as the enlightened doctor.  His sincerity in the story's guts is its premise for being believed.  Jose Ferrer is cunning to the point of evil genius." 

- Reed Porter,  The Mirror (Los Angeles)

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Number 55 - Crisis (Lobby Card Style)

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An Affair to Remember (1957)

      "...an early exponent of cinematic charm, still looks good and talks good..."

With Deborah Kerr.

An Affair to Remember - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Leo McCarey has had the good sense not to pretend that this romantic comedy is ever anything more than that, meanwhile exploiting a quality so long absent from the screen that it comes through with all the force of a brand new discovery - namely, charm.  Jerry Wald, the producer, observed that one reason there were so few real love stories being made any more was because there were so few actors who could play them convincingly.  "Today's actors," he said, "either look good and talk lousy or they look lousy and talk good."  Well, Cary Grant, an early exponent of cinematic charm, still looks good and talks good - and his graceful performance as a playboy is one good reason for seeing this film." 

- Arthur Knight, Saturday Review

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Number 62 - An Affair to Remember (Lobby Card Style)

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Night and Day (1946)

      "...the score of Night and Day, a radiant web woven tight of Cole Porter's melodies..."

With Monty Woolley and Jane Wyman (The film was released both in Black and White and Colourised).

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

"In Hollywood they are acclaiming the twentieth anniversary of the talkies.  The Warners with a proprietary interest in the event have designated Night and Day, their motion picture biography of Cole Porter, as the anniversary film.  If they planned to celebrate some of the incredible inanities that have been perpetrated in the name of talk during the past two decades, they could not have chosen a better film with which to do it.  But the sound track was designed to carry a load of music as well as words, and it must be admitted that the score of Night and Day, a radiant web woven tight of Cole Porter's melodies, makes it seem well worth having struggled through the first twenty years."

- Theatre Arts Magazine

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Number  48 - Night and Day(Lobby Card Style)

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