The American Dream

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I suppose it is a big part of the American dream to build one's dream house, and Cary Grant was no exception in "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," which premiered on this day in 1948.

But the American dream can come at a pretty steep price, even in 1948.

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Which raises an important point. It is critical to keep in mind the difference between financial amounts in 1948 and comparable amounts seven decades later. Those amounts in 1948 were roughly one–tenth what they are today. For example, in the movie Grant's job paid him $15,000 a year, which sounds like poverty wages, but it was enough to support a family of four. In 2018, the same job probably would pay $150,000.

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But be it 1948 or 2018, it is easy to become overwhelmed by that money thing, and Mr. Blandings soon learned how expensive renovating a home can be. To renovate the home he and his wife (Myrna Loy) had chosen easily exceeded a year's income when all the family's needs were addressed.

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And that didn't include issues with his best friend, played by Melvyn Douglas.

In all, it was an entertaining movie in that "Holiday Inn" mold.

'Bobby-Soxer' Was Entertaining

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"The Bachelor and the Bobby–Soxer," which made its debut 70 years ago today, was a silly story, but it had a strong cast that made it worth watching.

And, while it was silly, the story was interesting enough to keep audiences engaged — and the cast didn't hurt.

Cary Grant was one of the hottest stars in America (ranked #2 all time by the American Film Institute). The bobby–soxer was played by Shirley Temple, once the hottest star in the country (when she was a child) and ranked #18 among actresses by AFI. Myrna Loy didn't make AFI's list, but she found fame in the "Thin Man" movies in the years preceding "The Bachelor and the Bobby–Soxer."

All in all, a top–notch cast, and they produced an entertaining movie.

The first character the audience met was Loy, who played a judge at a time when female jurists must not have been too common. They can't be a lot more common today; the American Bar Association reported in 2014 that women made up slightly more than one–third of the American legal profession.

Loy may or may not have been seen as a trailblazer for women who aspired to careers in the law, but her portrayal may have been groundbreaking. I'm not aware of actresses who played judges in the movies before she did — although there may well have been some.

Anyway ...

Loy was presiding over a case in which Grant played a wrongfully accused defendant.

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Grant's character was a bachelor artist who was charged with starting a brawl at a nightclub. When it became clear that the fight started between two women, both of whom wanted to be with Grant, Loy released Grant with a warning.

And Grant went on his merry way to deliver a lecture at a high school attended by Temple, who happened to be Loy's younger sister. As I observed earlier, Temple was the bobby–soxer of the story.

Now without going into too much detail — but for the benefit of any folks under 75 who are reading this — a bobby–soxer was a teenage girl — specifically one easily influenced by social trends or fads. Each generation has its own names for specific types of people, and bobby–soxer was the term used for impressionable teenage girls in the '40s.

Temple's character was susceptible to the messages — both real and imagined — from guest lecturers, and she fell in love with Grant, whom she (literally) saw as a knight in shining armor as he delivered his lecture on art.

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Now that kind of puppy love has been around for a long time, and teenage girls, whatever your generation called them, always seem to be especially vulnerable to it.

Temple's character was a rather extreme case — even for a bobby–soxer. She manufactured a reason to be with Grant — as a model for one of his paintings. In a complex screwball comedy kind of way, Temple was discovered at Grant's apartment by Loy; Grant was arrested — and offered a deal. If he would pretend to date Temple and let the infatuation burn itself out, the charges would be dropped.

So he agreed.

But as the scenario played out, Grant and Loy began to fall for each other, much to the dismay of the assistant district attorney, who wanted Loy for himself. To get Grant out of the way, he agreed to drop all charges against Grant, thus freeing him of any further obligation to see Temple.

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In the end, all the right people ended up with each other — as inevitably they must in a screwball comedy. Temple went back to her long–suffering high school boyfriend, and Grant and Loy were together as well.

Comedies, especially screwball comedies, are seldom rewarded with Oscar nominations, but "The Bachelor and the Bobby–Soxer" didn't just receive a nomination. It had an even rarer achievement when it won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

A Love That Would Not Be Denied

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"There must be something between us, even if it's only an ocean."

Nickie (Cary Grant)

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I'm not the kind of person who is interested in romantic movies.

But, as a writer, I do appreciate a good story, even if it is a romance — and "An Affair to Remember," which made its debut on this day in 1957, was both.

It was such a good story that more than 35 years after it was playing in theaters, it was mentioned frequently in "Sleepless in Seattle," sparking something of a revival. How much of a revival? Well, sales of the video tape went up by some 2 million copies.

Make no mistake, though. "An Affair to Remember" was melodramatic, and the story might not seem as good if someone remade the movie, scene for scene, today. You would certainly have to make some concessions. The world of 1957, after all, was quite different in many ways from the world of 2017, but I think it could be done.

In some ways, it might even be better.

Take, for example, the addiction so many people have to smartphones. Every day I see people walking along on sidewalks with their eyes glued to their smartphone screens, completely oblivious to what is going on around them. Late in the movie when Deborah Kerr's character was struck by an automobile while she was crossing the street, the reason that was given was that she was in a hurry to her meeting with Cary Grant at the Empire State Building and simply wasn't paying attention. It would certainly be plausible for her character to be so engrossed in her smartphone that she walked into oncoming traffic — but it might imply that the woman was more interested in her smartphone than the rendezvous she was on her way to keep.

(Actually, "An Affair to Remember" was a remake of a 1939 movie starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, "Love Affair.")

Yes, an updated story could be an improvement, but how could you top the casting of Grant and Kerr? Actually, Grant might have been paired with Ingrid Bergman or Doris Day. Both were considered for the role — and both would have been good, although their interpretations of the role would have been different. And "An Affair to Remember" would have been a different movie.

As it is, the American Film Institute judged it to be the fifth–best movie love story of all time — behind "Casablanca," "Gone With the Wind," "West Side Story" and "Roman Holiday."

Based on that, you would have to conclude that the right casting choices were made (Bergman, of course, was the female lead in "Casablanca").

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To modern audiences, the story must seem almost laughable. Grant and Kerr met on an ocean liner. Although each was involved with someone else, they developed a friendship that quickly evolved into something deeper.

Upon their arrival in New York, they agreed to meet at the top of the Empire State Building in six months — if they had split up with their significant others and embarked on new careers.

On the appointed day Kerr's character was struck down by a car and taken to a hospital. In the meantime, Grant's character waited at the top of the Empire State Building for hours, finally conceding that Kerr wasn't coming.

Eventually, I suppose, the moral of the story was that love will find a way. Grant and Kerr were reunited at the end, pursuing professional interests both had suppressed for years.

"An Affair to Remember" was nominated for four Academy Awards — Best Original Score, Best Original Song (sung by Kerr's character in the movie but actually dubbed by renowned singer Marni Nixon — who also dubbed for Natalie Wood in "West Side Story"), Best Costume Design and Best Cinematography — and lost all four.

Suspicious Behavior

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"Well, well. You're the first woman I've ever met who said yes when she meant yes."

Johnny (Cary Grant)

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I am a fan of Alfred Hitchcock's movies — something, as I have written before, that I picked up from my parents — but nearly all of his movies were before my time, and I have often wondered why his movies didn't win more Oscars. After all, many of his movies are considered classics today. You will always find them on "best of" lists. The American Film Institute included four Hitchcock movies in its list of the top 100 movies of all time. AFI included nine of Hitchcock's films in its list of the top 100 thrilling movies of all time.

Hitchcock himself was nominated for Best Director five times, but he never won. In spite of directing many of Hollywood's brightest stars in the 1940s and 1950s — some, like Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, in multiple films — only one received an Oscar.

That was Joan Fontaine for her performance in "Suspicion," which was in American movie theaters on this day in 1941.

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Hitchcock wasn't nominated for his directorial work in "Suspicion," but the movie was nominated for Best Picture and Best Score of a Dramatic Picture in addition to Fontaine's Oscar for her acting.

Fontaine played an introverted, rather frumpy heiress who married a rogue/charmer (Grant) she met on a train. After their honeymoon, Fontaine's character began to discover her new husband's shadowy past. He was a rather reckless gambler who sold two of her antique chairs to pay off a gambling debt, and she became suspicious of his motives when one of his friends turned up dead under mysterious circumstances.

Fontaine's character wondered if he planned to kill her for her money, especially after he questioned a friend of hers, who happened to be a mystery writer, about poisons that could not be traced, and you had all the pieces in place for a classic Hitchcock psychological thriller.

In the end, though, Grant's character was vindicated, and, in truly Hitchcockian fashion, the movie shifted in the final minutes from a tale that cautioned wariness when facing the unknown to a cautionary tale about making assumptions based on incomplete and inaccurate information.

It was Fontaine's movie, and she was rewarded with the Oscar, but Grant was the one who really stole the show with his magnetism.

The story I have always heard is that Grant was frustrated by what he perceived as Hitchcock's preferential treatment of his leading lady. That shouldn't surprise any student of movies. Hitchcock always had an eye for lovely ladies, and he featured them prominently in his movies. Fontaine was merely one in a rather long line that included the likes of Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren.

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I guess Grant found this particularly egregious, though, perhaps because it was pretty well known that he thought Fontaine was unprofessional and temperamental, and he pledged never to work with Hitchcock again.

They must have patched things up because they made three more movies together, including perhaps my favorite Hitchcock movie of all, "North by Northwest."

The Mother of Romantic Comedies

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Tracy (Katharine Hepburn): If you just face the facts squarely as I did.

Margaret (Mary Nash): We both might face the fact that neither of us have proved to be a very great success as a wife.

Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husbands, that's all.

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I suppose it is tempting to call "The Philadelphia Story," which premiered on this date in 1940, the best of Jimmy Stewart's career. After all, he received his only Best Actor Oscar for his performance in that movie — although he was nominated for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "It's a Wonderful Life," "Harvey" and "Anatomy of a Murder," all favorites of mine.

Frankly, if Stewart could only win Best Actor once, I would have preferred that he win it for any of those performances instead. Don't get me wrong. "The Philadelphia Story" was good, but it just wasn't unique, at least in the way those others were. Still, its influence was far reaching.

I suppose it can't really be said that "The Philadelphia Story" performance was the best by Katharine Hepburn, who was the star of the show and was nominated for Best Actress (she had a dozen Best Actress nominations in her career), but she didn't win (Ginger Rogers won for "Kitty Foyle").

Poor Cary Grant wasn't even nominated — and his performance in "The Philadelphia Story" is regarded as his best by many film critics.
In hindsight, I guess you could call "The Philadelphia Story" the mother of romantic comedies.

"The Philadelphia Story" certainly occupies an important place in the story of Hepburn's career. She won the Best Actress Oscar in 1934 and was nominated again in 1936, but her career had been on a downward spiral prior to this day in 1940. She had even been labeled "box office poison" so it could rightfully be said that "The Philadelphia Story" was what turned her career around — and made it possible for her to be nominated nine more times and to win three.

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Without "The Philadelphia Story," which was the fifth–most popular movie of 1941 (earning more than $2.3 million in North America), it is quite possible that Hepburn's career would have vanished into oblivion.

So even though she didn't win the Oscar, she probably won something that she valued more.

It was the kind of romantic comedy that was most popular in the '30s and '40s — one in which a married couple get divorced, dally with others, make their exes jealous and then get back together. Well, that's probably oversimplified for most of the movies in that genre — but it pretty much sums up the plot of "The Philadelphia Story."

And there was probably no one better prepared for the role he played in it than Grant. What the earthy John Wayne was to the western the debonair Cary Grant was to the romantic comedy.

Hepburn and Grant played a couple who apparently had married on something of a whim, then got divorced. Two years later, Grant showed up at Hepburn's home just before she was to marry someone else. Hepburn's character was a member of a socially prominent family so, naturally, her wedding drew folks from the press, one of whom was Stewart.

The stage was set for some high–society conflicts. In fact, "the stage" is an appropriate noun to use because "The Philadelphia Story" began life as a stage play. Hepburn acquired the film rights to it with the intention of using it as her comeback springboard.

Mission accomplished.

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Macaulay Connor (Jimmy Stewart): Doggone it, C.K. Dexter Haven. Either I'm gonna sock you or you're gonna sock me.

C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant): Shall we toss a coin?

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If you've seen a documentary on the golden age of moviemaking, you have probably seen the memorable scene early in the movie when Grant's character, as he leaves Hepburn, puts his palm on her face and pushes her back inside the house. In conversations I have had with movie fans, that scene is probably second only to the one in which James Cagney grinds grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face in "Public Enemy" on the Most Memorable scale.

Kind of similar scenes. But not entirely.

"Public Enemy" wasn't a madcap romantic comedy, though, and "The Philadelphia Story" was. I'll leave all its quirky twists and turns for you to discover for yourself. That's the real fun of it.

To Catch the Style of a Thief

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Francie (Grace Kelly): I called the police from your room and told them who you are and everything you've been doing tonight.

Robie (Cary Grant): Everything? The boys must have really enjoyed that at headquarters.

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Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King had a lot in common — primarily the fact that each was/is misunderstood. People like to give labels to others, but King and Hitchcock really defied being pigeonholed. As a result, people who had little, if any, exposure to their work labeled them based on a vague comprehension of that work.

For example, while he is far more talented as a writer than labeling gives him credit for, Stephen King has been known as a master of the horror genre for decades. There is some truth to that, just as there is in most stereotypes, but King's skills really are more diverse. Dismissing him as only a horror writer does him a disservice.

Likewise, Hitchcock has been known for directing scary movies — probably the legacy of 1960's "Psycho," which may be his best known movie among non–devotees of Hitchcock's work. But even if the speaker has more familiarity with Hitchcock's movies than that, the speaker is still likely to think of Hitchcock as the director of scary movies.

I take issue with that. His movies weren't scary. They were electrifying. There is a difference.

Hitchcock himself regarded his movies as thrillers, suspense flicks even, not horror movies. It is true that most of his movies had a certain whodunnit quality to them because someone usually wound up dead at the hands of another; if that happened, the audience either saw it from a distance or after the fact. It wasn't explicit. But there were exceptions. Sometimes no one died at all, and such a movie, "To Catch a Thief," premiered on this day in 1955.

There were certain themes that Hitchcock explored frequently in his movies, one of which was mistaken identity. Those movies are among the most gripping that Hitchcock ever made — and "To Catch a Thief" was one of the best from that particular subset of Hitchcock movies.

It was also made smack dab in the middle of what could — arguably — be regarded as Hitchcock's peak period — the 1950s.

Of course, it starred Cary Grant, which had a lot to do with its success. I do think Grant did star in the best of Hitchcock's mistaken identity movies, but it wasn't "To Catch a Thief." It was "North by Northwest."

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But that doesn't take anything away from "To Catch a Thief." It was a stylish movie. With Grant as its star, though, could it possibly be anything other than stylish?

Grant's co–star was the incomparable Grace Kelly. She had a brief career (11 movies in six years), but she made three of those movies with Hitchcock in the director's chair. You could always tell Hitchcock's favorites among the actors with whom he worked, too. They were the ones who were in more than one movie that he directed.

Grant was a favorite of Hitchcock's, too, appearing in four of Hitch's movies. Reportedly, Hitchcock said Grant was "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life." Read into that what one will.

Grant played a retired jewel thief known as "The Cat," who was leading a quiet life tending his vineyards on the French Riviera — nice work if you can get it, right? Out of the blue, burglaries bearing The Cat's signature began happening, and the police naturally suspected Grant's character was involved. He sought a sanctuary of sorts with his old gang from his French Resistance days, but they all suspected him of pulling off the crimes while they were under suspicion.

Grant decided that the way to prove that he was innocent was to catch the actual burglar in the act — and enlisted several people to help him, including Kelly, who still harbored suspicions of her own.

Nevertheless, Kelly became something of a rival for Grant's attention with a young French girl (played by Brigitte Auber), the daughter of one of Grant's old buddies and something of a love interest at one time. Based on her apparent age, one suspected that she may have had a schoolgirl crush on Grant. Right now, I don't recall what, if anything, was said about that. My memory is that it was mostly implied. But there was something there between them — or there had been at one time.

One–sided it may have been, but there was something there.

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In a memorable scene in which the two women were introduced to each other while in the waters of the Riviera, Grant (Robie) said to Auber, "Say something nice to her, Danielle."

Auber replied in her distinctive French accent, "She looks a lot older up close."

Kelly remarked, "To a mere child, anything over 20 might seem old."

I've always thought Auber's response was one of the most classic of Hitchcock lines: "A child? Shall we stand in shallower water and discuss that?"

As beautiful as Kelly was, I have a hunch that, if she had accepted that challenge from the 27–year–old Auber (who was more than a year older than Kelly), it would have been a very close contest. Clearly, Auber did not have the figure of a child. Hers was a voluptuous figure compared to Kelly's. But Kelly was regal in her beauty — fitting, considering that she married the prince of Monaco less than a year later.

Many years after that, when Kelly suffered a stroke while driving her car in the hills of Monaco, it was said that her car went out of control along the same stretch of winding mountainside road where her character terrified Grant in "To Catch a Thief." I never found out if there was any truth to that.

Hitchcock, of course, liked having beautiful women in his movies, and he really hit the jackpot in "To Catch a Thief." Not only were the women beautiful, but one of them played a significant role in the story. Auber, it turned out, was the copycat Cat.

Oh, shoot, I've given away the ending, haven't I? Well, it's still an enjoyable movie, one that everyone should see once.

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"To Catch a Thief" received Oscar nominations for Best Color Art Direction and Best Color Costume Design — and won for Best Color Cinematography.

Murder and Mayhem in Brooklyn

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Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant): Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.

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In 1944, Cary Grant was one of the most popular movie stars in Hollywood.

He's been called "the best star actor there ever was in the movies," and, if he wasn't, he should have been. The American Film Institute agrees. When AFI named its top 50 male and female movie stars, it listed Grant as second only to Humphrey Bogart.

During his career, Grant must have co–starred with nearly all of the most beautiful leading ladies of his time, but I don't think he ever really had the same chemistry with any of them that he had with Priscilla Lane in "Arsenic and Old Lace," which made its big–screen debut 70 years ago today.

Grant seemed to have chemistry with everyone, but there was something special about his chemistry with Lane. She had a definite girl–next–door quality, not unlike Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island, that set her apart from Grant's other co–stars. That was a good quality for her to have because, in "Arsenic and Old Lace," she was the girl next door. The viewing audience knew her as Grant's new bride, but, before that, she had been the girl next door.

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Lane was young and vivacious — and not a star in the sense that Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne and many of Grant's usual co–stars were. Lane probably would have qualified for one of those "you know the face, but do you know the name?" contests — if such a thing existed in 1944.

Lane didn't upstage Grant, who was clearly the star (and, therefore, the primary attraction) of the movie — perhaps that was part of what made the movie so appealing. In reality, Grant was 11 years her senior, but they looked very natural together on screen. It worked in a way that Grant's other on–screen relationships did not.

Lane's character wasn't submissive, she was deferential. The thesaurus may tell you that those words are synonyms, but they don't really mean precisely the same thing.

Maybe a big part of the movie's success was the dialogue, which came from Joseph Kesselring's 1939 stage play. It was a huge hit, opening in January 1941 and moving to the Hudson Theatre in 1943 before finally wrapping up in 1944 after more than 1,400 performances.

That's an important fact to remember because the movie was made in 1941; but it couldn't be released until after the play had concluded its run on Broadway because of a mutual agreement between Warner Bros. and the producers of the play.

That led to some interesting quirks in the story. For example, the story itself took place in Brooklyn, and it was supposed to be set in the present day. When the movie was made, the then–Brooklyn Dodgers had won their first National League pennant in more than 20 years (they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees, four games to one), and the opening sequence shows the jubilation of Brooklyn baseball fans.

In the next three years, the Dodgers plummeted to 42 games out of first place, and, what with the war and everything, the '41 pennant was a distant memory by the time the movie made it to the theatres — so the references to Brooklyn's championship season had no real relevance to moviegoers in 1944.

One of my favorite lines in the movie was when Aunt Martha (Jean Adair) said she was anxious to leave Brooklyn because the community had changed since the Dodgers "won that old pennant thing." That certainly would have been a lot more amusing in 1941. Audiences in 1944 had to reach too far into their collective memory bank.

Aunt Martha and Aunt Abby (Josephine Hull) were delightful supporting characters who, as one of their charities, poisoned lonely old bachelors and widowers to end their suffering, then buried them in the cellar — with the assistance of their nephew Teddy, who believed himself to be Teddy Roosevelt.

(A nice touch was the way Teddy would run up the stairs and yell "Charge!" It was his re–enactment of Roosevelt's famed charge up San Juan Hill.)

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I don't think I ever saw Adair in any of her other film roles (there weren't that many of them; most of her career was spent on the stage) so I think of her performance as Aunt Martha when I think of her, but Hull is different. I always associate her with her Oscar–winning role in "Harvey." It was a similar kind of role, I guess — a peculiar, even eccentric, older lady — and she was awfully good at it.

It wouldn't be right to discuss the supporting characters without mentioning two other, more sinister characters — played by Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre.

Massey took the place of Boris Karloff, who was still appearing in the stage version on Broadway when the movie was being made. Adair and Hull were in the Broadway play, too, but they were given leaves of absence to make the movie. Karloff was the main attraction of the Broadway show, however, and couldn't be spared.

The movie retained a line that was written for Karloff. His stage character was supposed to have had facial surgery by his companion, who had been intoxicated and made the character of Jonathan look like Karloff. The resemblance was mentioned in the script and, presumably, it drew a huge laugh from theater audiences when Karloff was said to look like Karloff.

To support the story about the surgery, Massey was made up to look like he had scars on his face.

As a student of history, though, I have more appreciation for a line that Massey's character delivered.

To set the table, as it were ... there was a discussion about Massey's murder record stacked up against the record of his aunts in Brooklyn. One of the victims Massey claimed to have killed had died of pneumonia — but he had been shot first. Lorre's character insisted that it didn't count.

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"He wouldn't have died of pneumonia if I hadn't shot him," Massey replied.

I don't know if Americans of that time were as ignorant of the nuances of history as they are today, but that was an allusion to the death of President James Garfield in 1881.

Garfield was shot in early July 1881 and lingered for weeks, at times appearing to improve only to get worse. Eventually, he died more than two months after being shot. Officially, he died of a heart attack and pneumonia, neither of which probably would have occurred if not for the facts that he had been shot earlier and the inadequate medical treatment he received had taken a toll on his system.

So Massey's assertion that a victim wouldn't have died of pneumonia if he hadn't been shot was a reference to the manner of the president's death.

I wonder how many people knew that in 1941 or 1944.

Lombard Was Too Screwy to Be Accepted in Soap Opera Roles

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No wonder Clark Gable fell in love with Carole Lombard. She was a real live wire.

She was bright and pretty and vivacious. Professionally, she was the highest–paid actress of the late 1930s and is often mentioned as having defined the screwball comedy genre. (I don't know if that was completely true. There were a few other actresses who excelled in that genre, too.)

But by this point in her career, apparently, she was trying to show her range as an actress. Earlier in 1939, she played a dramatic role in "Made For Each Other" opposite Jimmy Stewart. Seventy–five years ago today, she appeared in "In Name Only" as a woman in love with a married man (Cary Grant) who couldn't get a divorce from his wife.

It was a more leisurely approach to film production than Lombard took only a few years earlier. In the early '30s, it wasn't uncommon for her to be in five or six movies a year. Perhaps the slower pace allowed her the freedom to spread her wings in search of an Oscar.

And that — winning an Oscar — seems to have been her goal at this stage of her career. If she hadn't died in an airplane crash at the tender age of 33 (while raising money for America's World War II effort), who knows? She might well have won one — at least one.

But she received her only Oscar nomination in 1936 for "My Man Godfrey." "In Name Only" didn't bring her a nomination, but its soap opera–esque plot probably seemed like it might have been the road map to a future statuette.

In 1939, though, audiences didn't seem to be ready for a new Carole Lombard — at least, one who was new to the audiences she so often entertained in her screwball comedies of the '30s.

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She was certainly a different actress in the eyes of moviegoers who went to see "In Name Only" 75 years ago. Gone was the wisecracking actress with her rapid–fire rejoinders moviegoers had come to know.

In her place was a more serious actress in more serious roles. In "In Name Only," she played a young widow raising a daughter; she encountered Cary Grant on horseback while she was fishing. She wasn't really fishing, she explained, just using the fishing motion for exercise.

One thing led to another and, before you knew it, they were sharing her lunch. She had plenty — six sandwiches and a piece of cake. "I have a big appetite," she explained.

And, again, before you knew it, they were in love. Sometimes it happens that quickly, I suppose. (Well, not to me, but that really isn't the point. This is, after all, the movies, and you can't dawdle over deciding whether you're in love in the movies.)

Of course, there were a few obstacles to overcome. The most significant was Grant's wife (Kay Francis), who made it difficult for the viewers to decide how they felt, I suppose. From the first time they saw the movie, viewers must have struggled with that. I did the first time I saw it. Still do when I see it again. At times, Francis evoked empathy. At others, hostility. Talk about a juicy role.

It really was an intriguing performance. Her character was the kind of manipulative individual nearly all of us encounter at some time in our lives — the kind of person who, if caught telling a lie, will tell an even bigger one to confuse the issue.

It was a delicious part to play. Francis' self–absorbed character would change her mind on things at the drop of a hat — like whether to give Grant the divorce he needed so he could be free to marry Lombard.

She kept the audience guessing. At times, she seemed like a reasonable person — but then she seemed to remember what her true interests were, and she became a completely different individual.

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Francis and Lombard had a confrontation in the hospital, where Grant's character was recovering from pneumonia. In that scene, Lombard's character came across as good and caring; she wanted Grant to recover, even if that meant she had to leave his life forever. She was generous and self–sacrificing, the kind of character the Oscars have always liked to honor.

Francis, on the other hand, was clearly self–centered. Francis' character had fooled everyone, including Grant's wealthy parents, and she told Lombard she intended to get what she could from them.

She didn't realize, as she was saying that, that her in–laws were standing right behind her. They heard every word, and her father–in–law told his daughter–in–law — of whom he had been supportive — to her stunned face that she would get nothing from him. Then the parents, with Lombard, left Francis behind and the audience watched as the door slowly closed on Francis in much the same way the door closed on Diane Keaton at the end of "The Godfather" almost 35 years later.

Lombard's attempts at dramatic performances enjoyed some moderate success, but, eventually, she returned to comedic roots in her final movies, and audiences seemed to be relieved, coming back to the theaters to see her. It was too bad that she got typecast like that in the public's mind. I thought she had a lot of talent — she was great in the screwball comedies, but she could give dramatic performances, too.

Maybe she just needed a script that rose above soap opera predictability.

Mistaken Identity Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

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"In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only the expedient exaggeration."

Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant)

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"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant," Cary Grant once told an interviewer. "Even I want to be Cary Grant."

It always seemed to me that that was especially true of Cary Grant in "North by Northwest." Oh, I know, he had some run–ins with some not–so–nice folks who tried to kill him, but no one was as suave as Cary Grant, even when someone was trying to kill him.

I guess his identity was quite a dilemma for him, on screen or off. Like most of the folks in Hollywood, his screen persona (and name) differed from real life. He was born Archie Leach in England and came to the United States in his teens. He legally changed his name to Cary Grant when he became a naturalized citizen.

(The Cary part came from a character he once portrayed in a play. He chose the surname Grant from a list of options the studio gave him — because the CG combination had already proven successful for stars like Clark Gable and Gary Cooper.)

I suppose he always felt torn between his roots and his professional persona.

Combine Grant with Alfred Hitchcock in a movie about mistaken identity.

Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors, and I have seen most, if not all, of his movies. He is remembered as a master of suspense, and that was certainly an element of his style — he said he preferred suspense to surprise — but there were certain themes he explored more often than others. I suppose one of the most prominent was the one of mistaken identity. Offhand, I can think of at least half a dozen movies Hitchcock made that dealt with mistaken identity.

I'm inclined to think that the one that premiered 55 years ago today, "North by Northwest," was his best.

A pretty good case could be made for "Vertigo," I suppose. The same could be said for "Shadow of a Doubt" and "The Wrong Man."

The case is weaker for some of Hitchcock's other mistaken identity motif efforts of which I am aware.

But stacked up against "North by Northwest," everything else comes up short — in my opinion, anyway.

I have mentioned Hitchcock's famous cameo appearances on this blog before. At first they came well into his movies, but, as audiences became increasingly aware of them, there was a tendency for viewers to focus too much on spotting Hitchcock before they gave their full attention to the plot.

Consequently, Hitchcock began having his cameo appearances earlier and earlier. Late in his career, it was a sign of just how much he wanted his audiences to follow the story; if he was eager for viewers to concentrate on the story — and he usually was — he got his cameo out of the way very early.

Only three of his movies had quicker cameos than "North by Northwest." In fact, the cameo came while the opening credits were still rolling. Hitch didn't want the viewers to miss a thing.

Come to think of it, rolling is probably a pretty good word for "North by Northwest" because it hit the ground running and kept charging along until the end.

I guess that is why Hitch was in a hurry to get down to business. He must have felt he had no time to waste.

As much as I like "North by Northwest," though, I will readily admit that it isn't perfect.

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Probably the most famous image from "North by Northwest" was of Grant running from the crop–dusting plane that was intent on killing him.

Frankly, I didn't think that was too sharp of ol' Cary. I mean, the plane was dusting crops where there were no crops. I never did find out exactly what his character was thinking.

After all, enough strange things had already happened. If I found myself standing out in the middle of freakin' nowhere and I saw a crop–dusting plane dusting crops where there were no crops — and I knew that some bad people had been trying to kill me — I do believe I wouldn't keep standing there.

But that's just me. Hitchcock's movies sometimes had a logic all their own.

And then, of course, there was that iconic chase across Mount Rushmore. It was great, nothing else like it on film, but I had to admit that the ending was rather ambiguous.

I mean, just how did Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint manage to get off whichever president's face that was?

I know that movies, both then and now, often require the audience to believe whatever it sees on the screen — but that really was asking a lot of the viewers. They really deserved to know more than Saint was in a perilous predicament and managed to get out of it — somehow.

Isn't that asking a bit much?

Well, I guess you can get away with it if you're Alfred Hitchcock.

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Oh, and Grant and Saint must have gotten married in the interim.

This was 1959, after all. Ike was still president. Married couples couldn't even be seen in the same bed together on TV for another decade or so, and here were Grant and Saint about to get it on just as their train went into a tunnel.

You didn't have to be Fellini to figure that one out.

But perhaps I am being too picky.

"North by Northwest" was only nominated for three Oscars in the year of "Ben–Hur" — and lost all three.

Holiday With Cary and Katharine

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I suppose that, to movie audiences 75 years ago, it must have seemed that Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant were co–starring in movies all the time.

Early in 1938, Hepburn and Grant were featured in a screwball comedy called "Bringing Up Baby."

On this day in 1938, they appeared in another movie together — "Holiday."

Now, "Bringing Up Baby" is generally considered to be a classic, particularly of its genre, which enjoyed its greatest popularity during the Depression — although it can hold its own with other types of movies from other eras. The American Film Institute included "Bringing Up Baby" in its list of the top 100 movies of all time.

"Holiday" isn't as highly regarded, nevertheless, it has stood the test of time. I think it is already considered one of director George Cukor's best, and it starred one of Cukor's first proteges (Hepburn).

I don't think it would be regarded as a screwball comedy. Sure, Grant was Hepburn's co–star in both movies, but the roles were different. The role Grant played in "Holiday" was too assertive to be a plausible male lead in a screwball comedy.

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Likewise, it would be a mistake to think that the roles Grant and Hepburn played were the same in both movies. The stories were different and, therefore, required different characters.

In "Bringing Up Baby," Grant played a nebbish scientist who was truly no match for Hepburn's conniving heiress.

In "Holiday," they were worthy adversaries, if you want to call them that. Hepburn was still an heiress, but she was the sister of Grant's original love interest and was initially supportive.

Grant's character was more well–to–do — a self–made man, in fact — but also quite free spirited — and, given his stated intention to take some time off from work while he was still young so he could "find himself," he was ahead of his time. He would have been right at home in movies made three decades later.

That independent streak in Grant's character led to the first cracks in his relationship with Doris Nolan, who played Hepburn's sister. Until Grant revealed his plans, Nolan's character was his ally in all things, even actively recruiting the allegiance of her brother and sister in the effort to win over their father, but she was too obsessed with wealth and its trappings.

Naturally, the story threw Grant and Hepburn together — but in significantly different ways than in "Bringing Up Baby."

Thus, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the movie was resolved in a significatly different way as well.

Bringing Up Baby Turns 75

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The golden era for Hollywood's screwball comedies was well before my time.

I still enjoy watching them, though, and I long ago concluded that they all had certain characteristics that they shared with each other, but I've always kind of felt that "Bringing Up Baby," which made its debut 75 years ago today, was unique.

I'm not really sure why that is so. There was nothing special about the stars — Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Both had been in screwball comedies before. Most stars in those days probably had. Screwball comedies in general were quite popular.

Hepburn and Grant did have a certain chemistry, though, that made "Bringing Up Baby" a lot of fun to watch. But I suppose most of Hepburn's screwball comedies were with Spencer Tracy.

Some stars got typecast in screwball comedies; others had more varied careers. When I hear names like Jean Arthur and Carole Lombard, I think of screwball comedies and little else. But when I hear names like Hepburn and Grant, for some reason, I think of other kinds of movies as well.

Likewise, there really wasn't anything special about director Howard Hawks' involvement with the project. He made many kinds of movies during his career, including other screwball comedies, although "Bringing Up Baby" was probably his most noteworthy contribution to that genre.

An important element of the screwball comedies was (and still is, in movies that aspire to be screwball comedies today) a strong female character who dominated her relationship with the lead male character. Such a character was the embodiment of what was known as the "Hawksian woman" in those days — able to hold her own (and then some) with any male.

Hepburn fit the mold of the Hawksian woman, regardless of the genre.

And dapper Cary Grant was in many screwball comedies over the years, but he also appeared in very dramatic films. Personally, when I think of Grant's career, I always think first of his work with Alfred Hitchcock, especially in "To Catch a Thief" and "North by Northwest," and Hitchcock's is a name most people wouldn't associate with screwball comedies.

And yet ...

An early Hitchcock movie, "The 39 Steps," included a segment where a man and woman were handcuffed together and fell in love after being thrust together by fate. Clearly an element of the classic screwball comedy.

Maybe what made "Bringing Up Baby" different was the fact that Hepburn and Grant became the "parents" of a homeless leopard. Hepburn was Baby's original parent, I guess. Grant, a paleontologist who was only seeking a benefactor, rounded out the family unit.

Whatever the reason, "Bringing Up Baby" is often mentioned as one of the greatest of the screwball comedies.

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I didn't know until long after I saw the movie for the first time that it was designed for Hepburn, that the male lead was never really considered an important part of the cast.

What I did know — or, rather, what I deduced on my own and later confirmed — was that "Bringing Up Baby" was a primary inspiration for 1972's "What's Up, Doc?"

It came out long after the heyday of the screwball comedy, but, nevertheless, "What's Up, Doc?" was one of my favorite movies in the 1970s so, when I saw "Bringing Up Baby" for the first time, the similarities were all too clear to me. Grant's character could have been played by Ryan O'Neal, and Hepburn's character was every bit as screwy as Barbra Streisand's.

But the O'Neal–Streisand partnership really was no match for Hepburn and Grant.

Catch a Thief Tomorrow

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Alfred Hitchcock nearly always made movies about murders.

But tomorrow at 1 p.m. (Central), you can see a rare exception to that rule on Turner Classic Movies.

As a matter of fact, although people frequently were killed in Hitchcock movies, the violence itself was seldom ever seen. You can come up with exceptions to that rule, too, I suppose, but even though Hitchcock, as I implied last month, could be said to be the originator of the so–called "slasher" flick — "Psycho" — his true genre was suspense, not horror.

Violence was not his stock in trade, but stories about murder and murderous intent were.

"To Catch a Thief" was about neither, really. Oh, sure, a character gets killed in the movie, but it's a case of self–defense. It was incidental, not terribly pertinent to the overall story, which was about burglary and mistaken identity.

For the most part, "To Catch a Thief" is a romance and a thriller. And how could it not be, with those two leads (Cary Grant and Grace Kelly)?

The film won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, which is not hard to understand, given that much of it was filmed on the French Riviera. That must have been a fun assignment. One should never underestimate the influence and cinematic power of imagery from that part of the world.

In fact, many years later, after Kelly — who was, by that time, known simply as Princess Grace of Monaco — suffered a stroke and crashed her car while driving on a winding road in Monaco, dying of her injuries the following day, she was said to have been traveling on the very same road on which she took Grant for a harrowing ride in "To Catch a Thief."

That has since been disproven, but it persists as an urban legend, nearly 30 years after Grace's death — a testament, I suppose, to the power of the image.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for some escapism on a hot summer afternoon, look no further than your TV. "To Catch a Thief" has all the wit and sophistication — and breathtaking scenery — you could ask for.