Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
| Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover | |
| Directed by | H. C. Potter |
| Produced by | Dore Schary Melvin Frank Norman Panama |
| Written by | Eric Hodgins (novel) Melvin Frank Norman Panama (screenplay) |
| Starring | Cary Grant Myrna Loy |
| Music by | Leigh Harline |
| Cinematography | James Wong Howe |
| Editing by | Harry Marker |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release dates | June 4, 1948 |
| Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) is an American comedy film directed by H. C. Potter and starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The film was written and produced by the team of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, and was an adaptation of Eric Hodgins' popular 1946 novel, illustrated by William Steig.
The film was a box office hit upon its release, and has remained a popular film[citation needed] through cable television broadcasts and the home video market. Warner Home Video released the film to DVD with restored and remastered audio and video in 2004. In 1986 the novel was adapted for film again for the Tom Hanks, Shelley Long movie The Money Pit, and in 2007 a loose remake of the 1948 film was released under the title Are We Done Yet?[1]
The house built for the 1948 film still stands on the old Fox Ranch property in Malibu Creek State Park in the hills a few miles north of Malibu. It is used as an office for the Park. Coordinates: 34°5′41.4″N 118°42′43.63″W / 34.094833°N 118.7121194°W / 34.094833; -118.7121194
Contents
[show]Plot[edit]
Jim Blandings (Grant), a bright account executive in the advertising business, lives with his wife Muriel (Loy) and two daughters in a cramped New York apartment. Muriel secretly plans to remodel their apartment. After rejecting this idea, Jim Blandings comes across an ad for new homes in Connecticut and they get excited about moving.
Planning to purchase and "fix up" an old home, the couple contact a real estate agent, who uses them to unload "The Old Hackett Place" in fictional Lansdale County, Connecticut. It is a dilapidated, two-hundred-year-old farmhouse. Blandings purchases the property for more than the going rate for land in the area, provoking his friend/lawyer Bill Cole (Douglas) to chastise him for following his heart rather than his head. (Cole narrates the film, smoking a pipe, an apparent nod to the stage manager character in Thornton Wilder's Our Town.)[citation needed]
The old house, dating from the Revolutionary War-era, turns out to be structurally unsound and has to be torn down. The Blandingses hire architect Simms (Reginald Denny) to design and supervise the construction of the new home. From the original purchase to the new house's completion, a long litany of unforeseen troubles and setbacks beset the hapless Blandings and delay their moving-in date.
On top of all this, at work Jim is assigned the task of coming up with a slogan for "WHAM" Brand Ham, an advertising account that has destroyed the careers of previous account executives assigned to it. Jim also suspects that Muriel is cheating on him with Bill Cole after Bill slept at the Blandingses's alone in the house with Muriel one night due to a violent thunderstorm.
With mounting pressure, skyrocketing expenses, and his new assignment, Jim starts to wonder why he wanted to live in the country. The Blandingses's maid Gussie provides Blandings with the perfect WHAM slogan, and he saves his job. As the film ends, Bill Cole says that he realizes that some things "you do buy with your heart."
Reception[edit]
According to Time magazine, "Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas have a highly experienced way with this sort of comedy, and director H. C. Potter is so much at home with it that he gets additional laughs out of the predatory rustics and even out of the avid gestures of a steam shovel. Blandings may turn out to be too citified for small-town audiences, and incomprehensible abroad; but among those millions of Americans who have tried to feather a country nest with city greenbacks, it ought to hit the jackpot."[2]
Over half a century later, the film placed 72nd on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs list.
Cast[edit]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Cary Grant | James Blandings |
| Myrna Loy | Muriel Blandings |
| Melvyn Douglas | William "Bill" Cole |
| Louise Beavers | Gussie |
| Reginald Denny | Henry Simms |
| Jason Robards, Sr. | John Retch |
| Lex Barker | Carpenter Foreman |
| Connie Marshall | Betsy Blandings |
| Sharyn Moffett | Joan Blandings |
| Ian Wolfe | Real Estate Agent Smith |
| Nestor Paiva | Joe Appolonio |
| Harry Shannon | W.D. Tesander |
| Tito Vuolo | Mr. Zucca |
Promotion[edit]
As a promotion for the film, the studio built 73 "dream houses" in various locations in the United States, selling some of them by raffle;[3] over 60 of the houses were equipped by General Electric, including the ones in the following cities:[4]
Phoenix, AZ, Little Rock, AR, Bakersfield, CA, Fresno, CA, Oakland, CA, Sacramento, CA, San Diego, CA, San Francisco, CA, Denver, CO, Bridgeport, CT, Hartford, CT, Washington, DC, Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, Indianapolis, IN, South Bend, IN, Terre Haute, IN, Des Moines, IA, Louisville, KY, Baltimore, MD, Worcester, MA, Detroit, MI, Grand Rapids, MI, St. Paul, MN, Kansas City, MO, St. Louis, MO, Omaha, NE, Tenafly, NJ, Albuquerque, NM, Albany, NY, Buffalo, NY, Rochester, NY, Syracuse, NY, Tarrytown, NY, Utica, NY, Greensboro, NC, Rocky Mount, NC, Cleveland, OH, Columbus, OH, Toledo, OH, Oklahoma City, OK, Tulsa, OK, Cedar Hills, OR (near Portland),[5] Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Providence, RI, Chattanooga, TN, Memphis, TN, Nashville, TN, Amarillo, TX, Austin, TX, Austin, TX, Dallas, TX, Fort Worth, TX, Houston, TX, Salt Lake City, UT, Seattle, WA, and Spokane, WA.
Locations included Bakersfield, California; Worcester and East Natick, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; and Ottawa Hills, Ohio. Thousands lined up in front of the house in Ottawa Hills, paying admission to view the house at its opening.[3]
In Phoenix, Arizona, the dream house was a ranch house built by P.W. Womack Construction Company in a central city development called BelAir (now part of Encanto Village).[6]
In Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the dream house that was built still stands at 1515 Lafayette Avenue.[7]
Greensboro, North Carolina's dream house was built in the Starmount Forest community.[8]
Related works[edit]
The story behind the film began as an April 1946 article written by Eric Hodgins for Fortune magazine; that article was reprinted in Reader's Digest and (in condensed form[9]) in Life before being published as a novel.[10]
Melvin Frank and Norman Panama adapted the novel of the same name; their script is fairly faithful to the novel, with some dialogue used verbatim.[citation needed] The time frame of the movie is telescoped, and some plot lines are added and removed. The movie omits some troubles contained in the book, such as a feud with the local banker and the hostility with which Blandings is greeted by some local townspeople.[citation needed] The role of Bill Cole is enlarged in the movie, and includes a new subplot related to his wife that is not in the novel. The subplot related to Blandings's job troubles and the "Wham" account is not in the book.[citation needed]
The DVD release of the film includes two radio adaptations, both with Cary Grant reprising his leading role.[citation needed] Irene Dunne played his wife Muriel in the October 10, 1949, Lux Radio Theatre broadcast on CBS (running one hour;[11] Grant's wife Betsy Drake played Muriel in the June 9, 1950, broadcast on NBC's Screen Director's Playhouse (a 1/2 hour version).
Remakes[edit]
Are We Done Yet? (a sequel to the 2005 film Are We There Yet?) starring Ice Cube, was released on April 4, 2007.
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