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.
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.
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.
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.
"Behold, the bridegroom cometh. And no oil for my lamp as usual. A foolish virgin me. Oh, foolish anyway."
Daisy (Ann Harding)
On the rare occasions when I have seen "The Animal Kingdom," I have found it hard to believe it wasn't made in the 1960s. While it looks every bit the 1930s flick that it is, it was the classic tug–of–war between safe, conservative lifestyles/generations and rebellious ones.
In "The Animal Kingdom," which premiered on this day in 1932, Leslie Howard played a well–off book publisher who lived with his lover (Ann Harding), a Bohemian artist. (Remember, this was in the days before the implementation of the Hays Code.)
They also happened to be pretty close friends. Sex and friendship, as you may have noticed, do not always go hand in hand. In this case, though, they did.
His father wanted him to have a more conventional life, and when he acquiesced, his bride was Myrna Loy, who was socially prominent but did not have that same spark with Howard that he had with Harding.
It showed.
At Loy's insistence, Howard's character sold books he knew would sell — whereas, when he had been with Harding, he published the books he wanted to publish. Their sales potential had far less influence on his decisions.
Loy was also steering Howard away from his old friends; in fact, she just wanted him to sell the business and live with his father in New York where they could assume their rightful places as respectable members of society.
In the meantime, although she tried to stay away from Howard, Harding and the couple's circle of friends found it impossible to believe Howard truly was happy. That was a tough one for viewers to accept, too, given the fact that Howard kept seeking out Harding to use as a sounding board on, well, everything.
I know that Howard was a matinee idol in the '30s, and I know he was a civilian hero during World War II — but I also know that the characters he played (well, the ones I have seen) were weak–kneed schlemiels. Maybe that was just the kind of character he played — or perhaps that was how he chose to play all his characters, whether they were intended that way or not. Nevertheless his character in "The Animal Kingdom" fit that description.
Tom, his character in "The Animal Kingdom," was every bit as malleable as Ashley Wilkes in "Gone With the Wind."
I doubt that anyone ever mistook Leslie Howard for John Wayne.
I only recently became aware of this movie; while I liked it, the title baffled me and still does. At first I concluded that it was an allusion to the fact that humans, as advanced as we are, are still animals, and we act on our animal instincts, primitive though they may be.
But the second time I watched it I picked up on one of Harding's lines — "For all our big talk, we both still belong to the animal kingdom."
And I began to think that maybe it means more than animal instincts. Maybe it is a reference to the different ways humans find to survive trials and tribulations.
And isn't the instinct to survive the most powerful instinct of all?
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"You can't build a life on hate or a marriage on spite. Marriage is too important. Mine only lasted an hour, but I know."
Connie (Myrna Loy)
Since I worked for newspapers for many years, I have a residual fondness for movies about newspapers and newspaper people — as long as the stories are reasonably plausible.
And the story in "Libeled Lady," which premiered on this day in 1936, was plausible. Reasonably so, anyway.
It is important to remember that it was a screwball comedy, a genre that was at its peak in the '30s and '40s. That raised the bar for the quality of the movie. And it didn't tell a true story, which freed it to tell wildly exaggerated jokes without having to be accountable to the harsh truths of the business. Screwball comedies existed to entertain, not enlighten.
It is also important to remember how serious the issue of libel is. At the larger newspapers, entire legal departments are maintained on the premises almost entirely to deal with the subject of libel, how to avoid it, what to do when faced with legal action and so on. When I was in college, nearly all of my journalism classes had sections devoted to the subject of libel. I can't claim to know what it is like in journalism classes at four–year schools these days, but I don't think it was possible to graduate with a degree in journalism when I was in school if one did not have at least some comprehension of the subject of libel.
Screwball comedies were like the forerunners to Saturday Night Live, I suppose. They could take something serious like libel and turn it into a joke that kept feeding on itself. The story of "Libeled Lady" really was ridiculous, silly, but it was built on a deadly serious theme.
The movie was good enough that it earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. It lost to "The Great Ziegfeld."
I believe it deserved the nomination, but what was it about the movie that merited a Best Picture nomination? Most of the time you can get an idea from the other nominations the movie received. Was it the acting? The directing? The film editing? The music? The story? What was it?
Well, you can't tell from the Oscar nominations because "Libeled Lady" received no other nominations. By modern standards, though, a Best Picture nomination for a comedy — especially a screwball comedy — is a considerable achievement by itself.
The Oscars tend to look down on comedies today even though the number of permissible Best Picture nominations has been 10 — the same as in the '30s — for several years. In the years when only five movies could be nominated for Best Picture, comedies were rarely among the nominees. These days stars tend to get pigeonholed as comedic or dramatic actors, and there is little crossover.
But in the '30s, everyone did screwball comedies — even (or perhaps that should be especially) if they also did dramatic movies. Screwball comedies were popular escapism in the Depression. They were money in the bank.
And "Libeled Lady" heavily promoted the fact that it had four bankable stars — William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow.
Harlow and Powell were a couple off the screen, and Harlow wanted a particular role so that she and Powell would end up together. But the studio wanted to pair Powell with Loy to capitalize on the popularity of their Thin Man movies, the second of which premiered on Christmas Day 1936, and several other movies they made together, including "The Great Ziegfeld." (It was probably a prudent decision. Powell and Loy made more than a dozen movies together.)
Even so, in the role she played, Harlow did get to play a wedding scene with Powell. Considering that Harlow died before she and Powell could marry in real life, that was probably a fitting consolation prize.
Screwball comedies often have elements of film noir, but they are frequently comparable to some of the great stage comedies of all time as well. Some people may see elements of "Lysistrata" or "The Importance of Being Earnest" when they watch a screwball comedy. I usually see elements of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Much Ado About Nothing."
And, for me, "Libeled Lady" has always had a distinctly Shakespearean feeling to it.
Tracy played a newspaper editor whose newspaper had published a libelous story about an heiress (Loy), claiming that she broke up a marriage. The editor wanted to set her up so she would have to drop the lawsuit she had filed against him. He recruited a former reporter (Powell) to try to maneuver Loy into a situation where they were alone together and could be confronted by Powell's wife — and the press conveniently on hand to document it all. That would establish her track record as a home wrecker.
The problem was that Powell's character wasn't married.
No problem. Tracy volunteered his girlfriend (Harlow) to marry Powell — over her very vocal objections — and then play the aggrieved spouse.
Trouble was, Powell and Loy's characters really did fall in love. And Harlow came to conclude that she preferred being married to Powell to waiting for a newspaperman who had been stringing her along for years. When she confronted Powell and Loy, she really was aggrieved.
Powell and Loy persuaded Harlow that she was really in love with Tracy, so all was well that ended well.
Olivia de Havilland, who marked her 100th birthday about three weeks ago, was an astonishingly fortunate woman in her youth.
She was one of those women who always looks younger than she is. Now, that is one of those things that most people attempt but few achieve. The ones who manage it seem to do so effortlessly. Perhaps some do. Perhaps others achieve it only after spending several hours working on it every day.
From what I have heard, de Havilland was one of those people who achieved it with no special effort. As a youth, I guess she was a natural beauty. It isn't necessary to guess, though. You can see it for yourself. She was in her early 20s when she made "Gone With the Wind."
She put that trait to good use in "The Ambassador's Daughter," which premiered on this day in 1956. In reality, de Havilland was 39 when the movie was being made — and turned 40 just before its theatrical premiere — but her character was probably in her 20s and, as the title suggested, the daughter of an ambassador (played by Edward Arnold), the ambassador to France to be specific.
A senator from America (Adolphe Menjou) declared Paris off limits to servicemen due to their misbehavior, and de Havilland's character took it upon herself to prove that U.S. servicemen could be gentlemen. She decided to do this by dating a serviceman who would not know her true identity. The serviceman (John Forsythe) was under the impression that she was a model, and he took her to nightclubs and on a humorous excursion to the Eiffel Tower.
There were some moments of deception on both sides.
Forsythe's character offered to buy de Havilland's character an airplane ticket to America when news of an emergency back in the States reached her, and she was suitably impressed — until she learned that counterfeit airplane tickets were a commonplace scam used by U.S. servicemen to score points with girls.
Forsythe, on the other hand, had been told that de Havilland was a Christian Dior fashion model, but when he went looking for her at a Dior fashion show, he discovered that Dior's staff had never heard of her. Then he saw de Havilland watching the show with the senator — and assumed they had some kind of relationship.
Everything got cleared up at the end when the two attended a performance of "Swan Lake."
Myrna Loy as the senator's wife, in a rather understated role for her, joined forces with de Havilland to persuade the senator to lift his ban. Thus, all was well that ended well.
Director Norman Krasna built his reputation in screwball comedies — which would, understandably, make potential viewers think they would be in for an off–the–wall experience with "The Ambassador's Daughter." But they would be wrong. It was a romantic comedy, but that really isn't the same thing. The dynamics of a romantic comedy and a screwball comedy are different — in often subtle ways but still different.
The cast seemed to have a good time, but as for the audience ... I can only guess.
Well, it would be hard not to have a good time watching de Havilland have a good time.
Nick (William Powell):I saw a great group of men standing around a table. I knew there was only one woman in the world who could attract men like that. A woman with a lot of money.
For the third time in five years, movie audiences were treated to William Powell and Myrna Loy as the wisecracking detective spouses, Nick and Nora Charles, in "Another Thin Man," which premiered on this day in 1939.
Powell and Loy made six "Thin Man" movies together, but they were paired in 14 movies all told. Well, to be accurate, they were co–stars in 13; the last one was Powell's movie, and Loy made a cameo appearance. Even so, without a doubt, they were one of the big screen's most prolific couples.
In a way, I think the "Thin Man" movies proved what a great actress Myrna Loy was. I guess you have to put her performances as Nora Charles up against her performances in other movies with other leading men to see what I'm talking about but try to stay with me here. Powell was a center–of–attention kind of guy, and Loy tailored her performance to let him do his thing. For want of a better label, she was Powell's straight man.
In her other movies, she had different personae to complement her leading man, be he Fredric March, Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable. Each brought different strengths and weaknesses to their roles, and Loy was always able to be whatever she needed to be to make it work.
Now, I liked the original "Thin Man" movie (which was based on a Dashiell Hammett novel), and I liked the sequel that was made two years later, too. In some ways, I liked the sequel better — because it did the things that a good sequel ought to do. It expanded on themes that were introduced in the original, and it even had a surprising twist at the end. Can't ask for more than that from a sequel.
In some ways, though, I felt the story was getting a little tired by the third installment. It was aptly named, but it needed a question mark to be correct, I suppose, and maybe an underline — Another Thin Man?
The third movie came out three years after the second one so it was only right to wonder what Nick and Nora had been up to. Well, as the audience discovered early, they had been fruitful and multiplied. The audience was already familiar with the Charleses' pet terrier, Asta, from the first two movies; now, there was a fourth member of the group, 8–month–old Nick Jr.
I am still not sure how I feel about that addition. In hindsight, it sort of strikes me as the kind of thing the writers for TV shows do when their programs are running out of gas. They insert a new character or they transport the cast to a new setting, hoping to open up new story lines and revive a sagging audience.
On TV, this tactic usually only buys the series a little more time, perhaps another season or two, at best. But it didn't seem to hurt the "Thin Man" franchise. It went on to produce three more movies in eight years.
It was a formula that happened to work very well. It was like some TV series that continue to thrive even after adding new characters. It was that way with Happy Days, which added characters and even a phrase to the popular vocabulary that defined desperation ("jumping the shark") yet continued to thrive.
Audiences knew what they were getting with Nick and Nora. The plot of the movie only existed to give the audience what it wanted.
It was strictly entertainment, nothing Oscar–worthy about it. And, in fact, "Another Thin Man" received no Oscar nominations — unlike the original "Thin Man," which received four Oscar nominations five years earlier.
Well, 1939 was an especially difficult year for movies to get popular attention, but I don't think "Another Thin Man" really deserved any nominations that year. It was just good escapist fare for Americans who were still trying to free themselves from the grip of the Great Depression.
Nick (William Powell):Now how did you ever remember me?
Dorothy (Maureen O'Sullivan):Oh, you used to fascinate me. A real live detective. You used to tell me the most wonderful stories. Were they true?
Nick:Probably not.
Dashiell Hammett was a great mystery writer. He created some of the great characters to be adapted for the big screen, including Sam Spade, the detective in "The Maltese Falcon."
But Sam was a rather somber sort. Hammett's most entertaining detectives, Nick and Nora Charles, made their screen debut in "The Thin Man" 80 years ago today.
Nick and Nora were a married couple who solved mysteries together. Their boozy banter ("The Thin Man" was rated #32 among the comedies by the American Film Institute) was part of their charm — which they parlayed into six movies between 1934 and 1947.
They had a pet terrier, Asta, who accompanied them in all six of the "Thin Man" movies — although, like the dog from the Frasier TV series, the character wasn't played by the same dog from start to finish.
All six of the titles included "the thin man," and I assumed (until I saw the first one) that it was a reference to William Powell, who played Nick Charles — but, in fact, it was a reference to the man Charles was originally hired to find.
Actually, Powell and Loy appeared in 14 movies together. "The Thin Man" was only the second of three movies they were in together in 1934, but it was the best.
In fact, "The Thin Man" may have been the best of the six–movie series. It was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, but lost all four to "It Happened One Night."
("The Thin Man" series of movies kind of reminds me of the "Rocky" series or the "Star Wars" series. The original "Thin Man" movie was a sleeper. It was made in a couple of weeks for less than a quarter of a million dollars. Not much was expected from it, but it ended up inspiring not only five big–screen sequels but radio and TV programs as well.)
About halfway through the movie, Charles referred to the missing man as a "thin man with white hair." The missing man turned out to be dead — a fact that was revealed before the movie ended — but the titles of sequels to the original always mentioned "the thin man." I don't think I was the only one who was confused by that — Powell was rather lanky — and Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer, I am certain, did what it could to encourage that confusion among moviegoers of the time.
Anyway, when moviegoers first met them in 1934, Nick was a retired detective and Nora was a wealthy socialite. Nick was pressed back into service when an industrialist friend (the thin man, played by Edward Ellis) vanished.
Nick Charles:The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox–trot time, a Bronx to two–step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time.
And that took Nick and Nora (Myrna Loy) down a twisting path that ultimately led to the revelation Nick shared with the suspects who were gathered together for a dinner party in the final scene.
Four decades later, Neil Simon lampooned Nick and Nora — as well as Sam Spade and other classic movie detectives — with David Niven and Maggie Smith in "Murder By Death." Much of the humor focused on a spoof of the old gathering–the–suspects–in–one–place scene.
In 1934, it wasn't the cliche it has become. In fact, it was a rather effective device — 80 years ago.
Too bad there wasn't a butler in "The Thin Man."That cliche originated elsewhere.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
