MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (Selznick International 1948) Warner Home Video

H.C. Potter’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) is a sort of post-war take on quaint domesticity and the headaches that derive from becoming a ‘home owner’ that make even the absurd comedy of The Money Pit (1986) look charmingly out-dated by direct comparison. By 1948, Hollywood was in something of a mad-dash to regain its audience, applying its time-honored tricks of the trade, hoping it could merely produce more of the same to keep their studio’s solvent. Alas, the times had shifted, and so did the audience – the advent of television, very soon to sound the death knell for such middling rom/coms. So too, was Cary Grant, although hardly to be considered ‘over the hill’, attempting the slow and awkward transition from Hollywood’s young buck to more ‘mature’ roles. In Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Grant takes his first valiant steps into the ‘Father Knows Best’ milieu as the harried patriarch of a young family, cramped into a New York apartment. No stranger to domestic roles, the marvelous Myrna Loy plays his wife, an ever-so-slightly dotty type, who is so invested in picking out the paint colors, she overlooks the more pressing structural soundness of their love nest, soon to wreck havoc on their joint bank account. From modest reno to major overhauls, dear Mr. Blandings will have to endure some heady competition for his wife’s affections from their supposed mutual friend and solicitor, Bill Cole (played with laid-back finesse by Melvyn Douglas).  

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House celebrates the post-war American pursuit to aschew the cramped inner-city apartments and tenements for a little oasis in the country. And despite a rather tepid screenplay by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank – based on the novel by Eric Hodgins, the picture proved to be Cary Grant’s most successful at the box office. Our story begins with Jim Blandings (Grant) an ad executive with a huge headache. Not only is he stifled in his creativity to come up with an appealing slogan for Wam! – that ‘whale of a ham’ – but he is also constantly being reminded by his wife, Muriel (Myrna Loy) and two young daughters, Joan (Sharyn Moffett) and Betsy (Connie Marshall) how confined their apartment has become since starting a family. Indeed, former school mate come the family’s financial advisor, Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas) agrees with Muriel and suggests she and Jim look into finding a bigger place – perhaps away from the stresses of the inner city. However, not even Bill can assess how far Jim will go when pressed on a whim.

Discovering a dilapidated farm house on a few acres of land in Connecticut, Jim impulsively buys the property – then realizes it will have to be torn down due to irreparable structural damage to make way for the new and costly construction of another house. Hiring the contractor, Simms (Reginald Denny), Jim and Muriel plan an ambitious estate, only to have the reality of its cost smack them squarely on the chin. The story clings together, thanks to a series of truly amusing vignettes – the most riotous involving Italian construction worker, Mr. Zucco (Tito Vuolo) who informs the couple that his excavation crane has hit a large stone, necessitating the use of dynamite for its removal before construction of their home’s foundation can continue. In the end, Mr. Blandings does indeed get his dream house, though not before several minor nightmares evolve into inspired romantic comedy. Grant and Loy make a most appealing married couple – slightly harried, though nevertheless in love. Douglas is an amusing third wheel, subtly attracted to Muriel though entirely honorable in his intentions. The movie plays fast and loose with virtually all of the obstactles briefly set before our happy – if slightly harried - couple, and, in fact, never affords the audience much time to consternate over anything except Jim’s eventual slogan for Wam: “If you ain’t eatin’ Wam, you ain’t eatin’ ham!”

Warner Home Video’s DVD exhibits an overall appealing B&W transfer. The gray scale is not quite as refined as one might expect, with mid-range tonality appearing slightly boosted. The harshness is amplified in the grain structure, occasionally, augmented by video-based noise. Age-related artifacts are present and quite obvious. Even so, this is an acceptable presentation. The audio is 1.0 Dolby Digital mono and represented at an adequate listening level. Extras are limited to vintage featurettes and a theatrical trailer. Recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

1