The Story
Cary Grant and Myrna Loy in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant) is an ad man who lives in a really cramped Manhattan apartment with his wife Muriel (Myrna Loy) and their two daughters, Betsy and Joan. Faced with the housing shortage and the need to vacate their apartment, they give in to the desire for a place of their own in the sun and start looking for a “dream house” in suburban Connecticut. The Blandings contact a realtor, who knows he's got a couple of easy marks when they come to see him, and without consulting their lawyer Bill (Melvyn Douglas), they buy a 170-year-old house for five times what it is worth. That is when the trouble starts: the dilapidated house begins to reveal its age, problem by problem; Jim’s job suffers; they have to tear down the old house and start from scratch, until - after a series of trying and comical events - they eventually build their new “dream house”.
This comedy, based on what looks like more or less a one-joke premise, is really lifted to classic status by the lead performances. Cary Grant was arguably at his comedic peak in the late 1940s, and it is sheer pleasure to watch him grow increasingly frustrated as he struggles with the agonizing problems of being a home builder. Myrna Loy is effortlessly elegant and enchantingly unhelpful. The scene in which she explains to the handymen what colors she wants the new house’s rooms to be painted in ranks among the finest moments in 20th century screen comedy.
Star Bios
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904, in Bristol, England. He began his show business career with an acrobatic comedy troupe in England. After touring the United States, he settled there and performed in stage musical comedies before making his film debut in This Is The Night (1932). In his early Hollywood years, Cary Grant played a variety of roles in costume dramas, war films, adventure pictures, and topical comedies. He slowly and steadily built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most dependable leading men, and he finally hit his stride in a string of sophisticated screwball comedies, beginning with Topper and The Awful Truth (both 1937), in which he evolved the debonair, witty, uninhibited screen persona that ultimately brought him superstardom. The next several years saw Cary at his peak, alternating classic comedies (such as 1938's Bringing Up Baby, 1940's His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story) with equally memorable dramas (1941's Penny Serenade), adventure films (1939's Gunga Din) and thrillers like Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) and Notorious (1946). He continued his hugely successful career until the mid-1960s, the most outstanding performances of that period probably being his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, To Catch A Thief (1955) and North By Northwest (1959). Cary Grant’s seemingly ageless appearance enabled him to collaborate with Hollywood’s most desirable leading ladies of an entire generation - his leading ladies included Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. Having retired from the screen in 1966, Cary Grant received a special Academy Award in 1970 in recognition of his extraordinary career. In his final years, he toured the country with his one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, sharing anecdotes about his career and answering questions from his many fans. On November 29, 1986, shortly before one such appearance in Davenport, Iowa, he suffered a stroke and died that evening.
Myrna Loy was born Myrna Williams on August 2, 1905, in Radersburg, Montana. A former dancer, she began her film career as a bit player in the mid-1920s and was primarily cast as exotic, mysterious characters for the first ten years of her career. The image that best summed up this early stage of her career was captured in The Mask Of Fu Manchu (1932), where the played the title villain's daughter, gleefully whipping his white captives. In 1934, W.S. Van Dyke cast Loy as Nora Charles opposite the ideal co-star in William Powell in the first of the hugely successful Thin Man comedy-mysteries, establishing her as a favorite among movie audiences across the United States. She displayed remarkable chemistry with debonair Powell - they seemed like a match made in movie heaven, and the two were about to make a total of fourteen films together. Her popularity peaked in the late 1930s, and in 1937, when Clark Gable was voted “King of Hollywood” in a popularity poll, Myrna Loy was right beside him as elected “Queen”. Having become increasingly politically active after her World War II service with the Red Cross, she continued her career with a fine performance opposite Fredric March in William Wyler’s Oscar-winning study of postwar readjustment, The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946). She became very active in promoting liberal causes, and was the first major Hollywood star to serve as a U.S. representative to UNESCO. Loy continued in occasional character roles until the early 1980s. Her deceptively understated artistry kept her from receiving the kinds of flashy roles that earned Oscar nominations, but she was rewarded for her illustrious career with an honorary Academy Award in 1991, which was presented to her “in recognition of one of the genuine treasures of world cinema who, in a career rich with memorable performances, has added permanent luster to our art form”. Myrna Loy died in New York City on December 14, 1993.
The Director
H. C. Potter (November 13, 1904 - August 31, 1977) was primarily a man of the theater, but between 1935 and 1957, he directed around twenty movies for several of the major Hollywood studios. Among his best-known films are
Hellzapoppin (1941), the film version of the notoriously crazy stage revue,
The Farmer’s Daughter (1947), which won Loretta Young an unexpected Best Actress Academy Award, and
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), the film featured on this page.
On Broadway, he enjoyed considerable success directing A Bell For Adano (1944).
Quotes
(manually transcribed from video)
Cary Grant and Myrna Loy in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”
(In Jim’s and Muriel’s Manhattan apartment, space is not exactly available in abundance.)
Muriel: Looking for something?
Jim: My socks!
Muriel: Why don’t you look in your sock drawer?
Jim: That’s where I found my underwear …
Muriel: Ooh. (Considering) Well, try your underwear drawer.
Jim: I am in my underwear drawer.
Muriel: Well, they must be somewhere - socks don’t just get up and walk away by themselves!
Jim: Hmm - (he finds one of her nightgowns) Muriel, I thought we had it clearly understood that these two - two and a half drawers were mine. I thought - why didn’t …
Muriel: (suddenly remembers) Closet! That’s where they are. We put them in the closet.
Jim: Put what in the closet?
Muriel: Your socks! There didn’t seem to be enough room in the drawers.
Jim: … oh, but there’s so much of it in the closet …
Muriel: So Gussie and I decided that from now on we’ll keep them in a basket on the shelf!
Jim: … Basket …
Cary Grant and Myrna Loy in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”
Muriel: What a wonderful friend!
Jim: What’s with all this kissing all of a sudden?
Muriel: What’s that?
Jim: Well - just because a man is helpful in a business way, it doesn’t give him extracurricular privileges with my wife!
Muriel: That’s a fine thing to say about a friend of fifteen years!
Jim: Well, I just don’t like it. Every time he goes out of this house, he shakes my hand and he kisses you.
Muriel: Would you prefer it the other way around?
Jim: Mmh … Why is he always hanging around - why doesn’t he ever get married or something?
Muriel: Because he can’t find another girl as pretty and sweet and wholesome as I am!
(Muriel and Jim are reviewing sketches with the architect, Mr. Simms)
Mr.Simms: May I suggest that neither of these are really major eliminations. Now, if you could do with one less bathroom …
Muriel: I’m sorry, we couldn’t possibly!
Mr.Simms: A simple bathroom, eight by ten by eight, with grade A fixtures, will cost around thirteen hundred dollars.
Muriel: I refuse to endanger the health of my children in a house with less than four bathrooms!
Jim: For thirteen hundred dollars, they can live in a house with three bathrooms and rough it!
Jim: Now just a minute! I’m entitled to know what I did. This is America - a man is guilty until he’s proven innocent!
Betsy: It’s the other way around, father!
Jim: You go to bed!
Muriel: Go!
(Jim’s first attempt at lighting a fire inside the new house)
Betsy: Father, the first principle of lighting a fire is to see if the flue is open. A three year-old child knows that.
Jim (annoyed): Next time we want a fire I’ll send out for a three year-old child!
(The girls are unpacking stuff after moving into the new house)
Betsy (whistling)
Joan: What’s that?
Betsy: That’s mother’s diary while she was in college. It’s slightly torrid!
Myrna Loy in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”
(Muriel explains to the handymen how she wants the rooms in the new house to be painted.)
Muriel: Now, Mr. P. Delford, we’ll talk about the painting.
Mr.Delford: Okay.
Muriel: I had some samples - ah, here they are. Now, first: the living room. I want it to be a soft green.
Mr.Delford: Aha …
Muriel: Not as blue green as a robin, say, …
Mr.Delford: No …
Muriel: … but not as yellow green as daffodil.
Mr.Delford: Aha …
Muriel: Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow. But don’t let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue.
Mr.Delford: No.
Muriel: It should just be a sort of greyish-yellow green!
Mr.Delford: Aha …
Muriel: Now, the dining room I’d like yellow. Not just yellow - a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshiny.
Mr.Delford: Aha …
Muriel: I tell you, Mr. P. Delford - if you’ll send one of your workmen to the grocer for a pound of their best butter and match that exactly, you can’t go wrong!
Mr.Delford: Aha …
Muriel: Now, this is the paper we’re going to use in the hall. It’s flowered, but I don’t want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers.
Mr.Delford: No …
Muriel: There’s some little dots in the background, and it’s these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhockle, …
Mr.Delford: No …
Muriel: … but the little blueish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear?
Mr.Delford: Aha …
Muriel: Now, the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white.
Mr.Delford: No …
Muriel: A little warmer - but still, not to suggest any other color but white.
Mr.Delford: Aha …
Muriel: Now for the carter room - in here - I want you to match this thread. And don’t lose it: it’s the only spool I have, and I had an awful time finding it. As you can see, it’s practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened jonathan.
Mr.Delford: Aha …
(The sound of tableware falling down is heard in the background)
Muriel: Oh, excuse me …
Mr.Delford: You got that, Charlie?
Jack: Red, green, blue, yellow, white!
Mr.Delford: Correct.
Cary Grant in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”
(Jim Blandings working on the slogan for the new “Wham” commercial)
Jim: Compare the price - Compare the slice. Take our advice: “Buy Wham!”
(That’s not very good. With a sigh, Jim lies down on a sofa. - There comes the next idea.)
Jim: If you’d buy better ham, you’d better buy Wham!
Assistant: Boil Petroleum. “Buy better oil, you better buy Boil.”
Jim: Mhm.
(Another useless one. Jim starts considering again.)
Jim: This little piggy went to market,
as meek and as mild as a lamb.
He smiled in his tracks when they slipped him the axe -
He knew he’d turn out to be Wham!
(Jim’s assistant gives him a look of sheer disgust).
Jim: … he knew he’d turn out to be Wham. - It’s gone. I’ve lost my touch! Well, maybe I never had a touch, who knows. I can’t think any more. All I’ve got on my mind is a house with an 18,000 dollar mortgage, and bills, and extras, and antiques and - oh, I don’t know.
映画の邦題：『ウチの亭主と夢の宿』1948年