MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE: Blu-ray (Selznick, 1948) Warner Archive

Whoever suggested the quintessence of the American dream was home ownership, clearly never met Jim Blandings, the titular hero of director, H.C. Potter’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), a post-war take on quaint domesticity and the headaches it derives when the happy couple decide to pull up stakes from their cramped New York flat and buy a house in the country. For those interested, Mr. Potter’s directorial career was relatively short-lived, from 1936 to 1957, a tenure, nevertheless, to include the Margaret Sullivan/James Stewart classic weepy, The Shopworn Angel (1938), Astaire and Rogers’ last musical at RKO, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), and Loretta Young’s Oscar-winning turn in The Farmer’s Daughter (1947). Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House comes at the tail end of Potter’s life’s work on the screen (he had only 5 more features in his hopper, and one TV episode of the then popular Screen Director’s Playhouse). The son of a minister, Potter’s pics generally specialized in the tender-hearted pitfalls of daily living, the coupling – and near un-coupling - of unlikely characters, brought together by not-altogether extraordinary circumstances, and in observance of the joys – and heartache – of their bittersweet union. Ah me, such is life. ‘Blandings’ is a slightly different nut to crack. Indeed, our couple, actually a quartet…or rather, a family of four, comprises of one harried ad man, his dutiful wifey dear and two precocious daughters. Oh, and a problematic ‘friend’ added into the mix. More on this in a moment. Viewed today, the picture skews towards the domestically embattled ‘little problems’ faced by all that, in a few short years, would come to dominate television sitcoms like I Love Lucy and Leave It to Beaver, making pictures like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House virtually obsolete as viable box office on the big screen.  

By 1948, Hollywood was in something of a simultaneous mad-dash and free-fall to regain its audience, applying its time-honored tricks of the trade, hoping it could merely produce more of the same to keep their respective studio’s solvent. Alas, the times had shifted away from that pungent odor of unbridled glamor that was Hollywood’s bread n’ butter then, and, so had the audience’s level of expectation as well as their collective taste – the advent of television, very soon to sound the death knell for such middling rom/coms. So too, was Cary Grant, at age 44, although hardly to be considered ‘over the hill’, nevertheless straddling the awkward transition from Hollywood’s suave and sophisticated young buck to more ‘mature’ roles. Possibly, Grant’s desire to be ‘accepted’ as a family man had something to do with the tragic derailment of his second marriage to Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton and his rather curious, if fervent pursuit of mousy actress, Betsy Drake, whom he would wed one year later. Aside: Drake’s presence in Grant’s life has always seemed like an anathema to that otherwise carefully calculated and uber-suave screen incarnation of Cary Grant we only thought we knew. But in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Grant takes his first valiant steps into as yet uncharted ‘Father Knows Best’ land, as the put-upon patriarch of a young family, cramped into a New York apartment. No stranger to domestic roles, the marvelous Myrna Loy plays his wife, Muriel, an ever-so-slightly enterprising sort, at one point, so riotously invested in picking out paint colors for their new home she overlooks the more pressing structural soundness of the love nest, soon to do a number 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 was, arguably, the perfect picture for its time, meant as feather-weight satire to celebrate – and poke holes in - the post-war American pursuit of happiness on its own middle-class terms. Thus, the Blandings depart their inner-city closet for a perceived, expansive oasis of the country. 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 to date. It’s interesting to note the picture immediately to precede it: 1947’s The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer, also to costar Grant and Loy – only this time, as singles on the cusp of a clumsy marriage. Although not a sequel to that movie, in many ways Mr. Blandings plays as a reflection on what likely happened to B&B’s Dick Nugent and Judge Margaret Turner – the characters played by Grant and Loy; the self-professed bachelor, caught in a love-making snare of his own design, and, the seemingly sane woman of substance to rather predictably regress into that slightly complacent and occasionally idiotic feminine vice of accepting her stereotypical duties as wife and mother. The ‘little woman’ here, however, has some very big ideas. And if, as they used to say, behind every great man there’s a woman, this one knows precisely which heartstrings to pluck to get her way. She wants a home in the country, and Jim, rather sheepishly feels compelled to comply. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is hardly progressive film-making. In fact, it feels very much like one of L.B. Mayer’s B-budgeted Andy Hardy pictures from the thirties, while feeding into the steady decline of its distribution company, RKO, as a pseudo-major in Hollywood, merely to tread water as a passable, and occasionally enjoyable exploitation of the vices, as well as some of the virtues of home and hearth, a theme, much later, to be diluted, made utterly absurd, and finally, turned on its head in the Shelly Long/Tom Hanks’ farce, The Money Pit (1986).  

I have always considered this post-war in Cary Grant’s career as something of a fallow period. In the 1930’s and early 1940’s, Grant was prime-chuck, thanks to movies like 1937’s The Awful Truth, 1938’s Holiday, 1939’s Gunga Din, and 1940’s The Philadelphia Story – among many others. But immediately following his intricate, a devastatingly dark performance in Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946 – and one of those rare occasions where the highly-guarded Grant allowed for that hand-crafted façade to slip just a little, giving us a peak at the real Cary Grant…or, at least, another variation), Grant seemed contented to regress into feather-weight, familial comedies, some – like 1949’s I Was A Male War Bride, and 1953’s Dream Wife –  to awkwardly return Grant to the milieu of the classic screwball. The problem here was that Grant, while as handsome and charming as ever, was nevertheless past his prime for playing those romantic stooges and, if anything, seems ill at ease bidding re-entry into that once familiar territory. It would take Hitchcock again to rescue Grant from such pabulum, casting him in the marvelously chic and ultra-high-gloss thriller, To Catch a Thief (1955) – a movie to temporarily hit the reset on Grant’s public image as a classy and mature lover, thereafter showcased in such memorable fare as 1957’s An Affair to Remember, 1958’s Indiscreet, 1959’s North by Northwest, and finally, 1963’s Charade. The Cary Grant we get in Mr. Blandings is stressed, but never silly. He wants to provide for the luxuries his wife and family deserve, but finds this desire repeatedly supplanted by one insanely ill-timed roadblock after the next. My personal favorite moment in the picture comes when home improvement project manager, Mr. Zucca (the joyously obtuse, Vito Vuolo) discovers a rather large boulder directly in the path of his laying a new foundation. Informed they will have to blast in order to remove this impediment, Mr. Zucca then proceeds to outline all of the costly steps required to achieve their mutual goal – the boulder’s removal – as Jim Blanding’s eyes ignite with sweat-inducing fear at his rising investment and debt. “Mr. Zucca!” Blandings declares, “Do you have any idea what this means?” Perplexed by the question, Zucca merely shrugs his shoulders and adds, “Means we got to blast!”  Indeed.

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 Wham! – 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 as the family has begun to grow up. Former school mate and the family’s financial advisor, Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas) agrees with Muriel. She and Jim need to look for a bigger place – perhaps away from the stresses of the city. However, not even Bill can assess how far Jim will go when pressed on a whim. And Bill, far from harboring entirely altruistic motives, is perhaps modestly interested to see if Jim will fall flat on his plans to will this grand illusion into reality, as he, Bill, has always harbored something of a yen for Muriel. This lit torch will be explored later on. But for now, Jim has discovered a dilapidated farm house on a few acres of land in Connecticut. He 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 haughty 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. Of course, some of these overruns could be assuaged, if only Jim could put on his creative thinking cap and secure the ad campaign for Wham.

Almost immediately after the original purchase of the property the Blandings are swamped by unforeseen delays. Muriel insists on having four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Meanwhile, the demolished house’s original owner sues the Blandings for the balance on his mortgage. Removing himself from the rigors of this bucolic disaster, Jim begrudgingly begins to suspect Muriel of an affair with Bill after he has spent the night during a violent thunderstorm, also to leave Jim stranded at his office back in town.  While Jim reassesses what really matters in his life, Muriel gets busy driving the painters mad with her convoluted color choices.  At one point, Jim even briefly entertains letting the family’s domestic, Gussie (Louise Beavers) go – to save a little money. Mercifully, Gussie is just what the doctor ordered, coming to the rescue with Blanding’s slogan, “If you ain’t eatin’ Wham, you ain’t eatin’ ham!” She is rewarded with a $10 raise and her likeness, in full chef’s regalia, plastered on the front of the ad. With the money acquired from securing this major advertising account, Jim is given a promotion – enough, to shore up the debts incurred. Recognizing Muriel loves Jim, Bill quietly reassesses his own desires towards her, adding "You do buy some things with your heart…not your head. Maybe those are the only things that really count.”  The picture ends with Bill, quietly reading a copy of author, Eric Hodgens’ Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, addressing the audience directly and inviting them to “Drop in and see us some time.” Aside, and, for the record; Hodgens’ original novel was entitled, “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream Castle.”

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House clings together, thanks to a series of truly amusing vignettes. And while our hero finally fulfills his reverie in home ownership in post-war America, the battle is hard won. Cary Grant and Myrna Loy make for a most appealing married couple – slightly frazzled, occasionally at odds, though nevertheless, deeply in love. Melvyn Douglas is an amusing third wheel here. But the entire plot is put slightly off kilter by the casting of both Grant and Douglas. Each actor, in their youth, had been presented to the American public as the epitome of that rarified, well-tailored and immaculately put-together leading man. That air of sophistication definitely stuck to their ribs as well as their reputation. So, it is difficult, if not entirely impossible, to set aside those signifiers now, even as each man appears in nothing more formal than a cardigan, and accept Cary Grant as just an ‘average Joe’ or Melvyn Douglas as that casually situated guy on the side. Interestingly, Loy’s early career was as ‘the vamp’. Loy, however, had the good sense to recognize such is a short-lived tenure in Hollywood. And thus, she campaigned heavily to co-star opposite William Powell in The Thin Man (1934) – the movie that completely rewrote the rules of her on-screen persona as the trademarked woman of rare qualities, to which any man fortunate enough to have put the ring on her finger, would now thank his lucky stars to be coming home to. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House plays rather fast and loose with all of the obstacles briefly set before our happy – if slightly beleaguered – couple. Precisely how Jim eventually covers all of his debts, even with a raise, remains open for discussion. But it really doesn’t matter. Our story is not about pragmatic achievement, rather, the aspiration to have an intangible ‘dream’ – truly, to chase after what you really want out of life and actually get it in the end!  

The Warner Archive’s new-to-Blu of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House illustrates the need for more film preservation. First, the pluses – the restored ‘Selznick Releasing’ logo to precede the movie. After Selznick’s demise, the RKO studio logo was substituted on all general release prints to eventually find their way to home video. WAC has advertised this as another 4K remaster from the best surviving materials. That said, grain is very wonky at best, veering toward a decidedly thick overview that intermittently snaps back as it should. The toggling between these relatively smooth and refined images and those in much rougher shape represent a real curiosity. Contrast appears ever so slightly boosted in spots. Fine details are present, though occasionally obscured by the aforementioned patina of heavier than normal film grain. I won’t even try to explain this one. Suffice it to say, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House falls a little short of expectations. The DTS 1.0 mono audio is just fine. And age-related artifacts are a non-issue. Apart from a radio adaptation, 1949’s Tex Avery cartoon short, The House of Tomorrow and theatrical trailer – all, holdovers from the original DVD release – there are no new extras. Bottom line: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a better than average movie given with an adequate, if unremarkable Blu-ray release. I suppose I have become quite spoiled by WAC’s commitment to hi-def remastering. But Mr. Blandings isn’t up to scratch – though not for lack of trying. Judge and buy accordingly.

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

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

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