Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.
1948 RKO Radio Pictures, now owned by Turner Entertainment.
Starring: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas, Louise Beavers, Reginald Denny
Director: H.C. Potter
Available from Amazon as a single DVD, or as part of the Cary Grant Signature Collection.

Jim Blandings (Grant) is an account executive in the advertising business, living with his wife Muriel (Loy) and their two daughters in a cramped Manhattan apartment. The place is cramped enough that Mrs. Blandings secretly plans to remodel the apartment, an idea that is nixed when Mr. Blandings comes across a newspaper ad for new homes in Connecticut. The Blandings first intend to purchase and "fix up" an existing house, but they unwittingly contact a crooked real estate agent who decides that the Blandings are the rubes he needs to sell them "The Old Hackett Place" in a fictional county. Mr. Blandings still buys the property for more than the usual going rate, ignoring the recommendations of his friend and lawyer, Bill Cole (Douglas), who occasionally provides narration. The old house is structurally unsound, and needs to be replaced, so the Blandings hire Mr. Simms (Denny), an architect to design and supervise construction of a new house.

The Blandings' dream house runs into one problem after another (worthless land, Hackett expects full payment and didn't consent to the demolition of the old house, longer commute times for Mr. Blandings, water issues, and no windows). On top of that, Mr. Blandings is given the task of coming up with a slogan for a SPAM-like product that has prematurely ended the careers of previous account executives assigned to it. While struggling with that, Jim suspects that Muriel may be having an affair with Bill, who had to stay over one night during a thunderstorm when Muriel was the only other person home.

Will everything work out?

Recommended movie. The DVD release includes two radio performances of the script, both featuring Cary Grant as Jim Blandings.

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