Cary Fucking Grant

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you know what's wrong with him? nothing!

Poll Results

OptionVotes
His Girl Friday 10
North by Northwest 8
Bringing Up Baby 7
Notorious 4
The Philadelphia Story 3
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House 2
Charade 2
Suspicion 1
Holiday 1
To Catch a Thief 1
Arsenic and Old Lace 1
Ladies Should Listen 1
That Touch of Mink 1
The Last Outpost 0
Sylvia Scarlett 0
Big Brown Eyes 0
I'm No Angel 0
Suzy 0
The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss 0
Wedding Present 0
When You're in Love 0
Topper 0
The Toast of New York 0
The Awful Truth 0
Wings in the Dark 0
Enter Madame 0
Sinners in the Sun 0
Singapore Sue 0
Merrily We Go to Hell 0
Devil and the Deep 0
Blonde Venus 0
Hot Saturday 0
Madame Butterfly 0
She Done Him Wrong 0
The Woman Accused 0
The Eagle and the Hawk 0
Gambling Ship 0
Alice in Wonderland 0
Thirty Day Princess 0
Born to Be Bad 0
Kiss and Make-Up 0
This Is the Night0
Gunga Din 0
Crisis 0
People Will Talk 0
Room for One More 0
Monkey Business 0
Dream Wife 0
An Affair to Remember 0
The Pride and the Passion 0
Kiss Them for Me 0
Indiscreet 0
Houseboat 0
Operation Petticoat 0
The Grass Is Greener 0
Father Goose 0
I Was a Male War Bride 0
Every Girl Should Be Married 0
The Bishop's Wife 0
Only Angels Have Wings 0
In Name Only 0
My Favorite Wife 0
The Howards of Virginia 0
Penny Serenade 0
The Talk of the Town 0
Once Upon a Honeymoon 0
Mr. Lucky 0
Destination Tokyo 0
Once Upon a Time 0
None But the Lonely Heart 0
Night and Day 0
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer 0
Walk Don't Run 0


horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

correct answer is Notorious btw

horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

that's not what i picked :D

the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:20 (eighteen years ago)

HIS. GIRL. FRIDAY.
GAME. SET. MATCH.

G00blar, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

I've never seen this Mr. Blandings of which you speak.

horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

TS: hawks vs hitchcock

ghost rider, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

i was torn between his girl friday and charade. i haven't seen notorious in an age--i need to see it again, and probably own it.

JuliaA, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

I do not understand what's so great about Bringing up Baby, but he is beautiful in it.

horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

Watch Morbs get in a tizzy again over my referring to Archie Leach as the greatest film actor ever.

Picks: every film between [i[Holiday[/i] (never sexier) and His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Suspicion, Notorious, North by Northwest, Charade. The rather odd None But the Lonely Heart should be seen once.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:23 (eighteen years ago)

IF YOU AIN'T EATIN' WHAM YOU AIN'T EATIN' HAM

TOMBOT, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:23 (eighteen years ago)

?

horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

i have a perverse desire to vote for "the bachelor and the bobbysoxer," mostly because i think it's the first filmed occurance of the "you remind me of the babe" routine

ghost rider, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

but yeah "his girl friday"

ghost rider, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

TOMBOT 8080

the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

hello, EDITING pls -- i've only seen about 25 of those. And you don't even see his face in Alice in Wonderland.

It's btwn NxNW, His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby.

Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:25 (eighteen years ago)

well, I was afraid that I'd leave out some completist's favorite!

horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:25 (eighteen years ago)

and The Awful Truth (which Eric H. sez ISN'T FUNNY!)

Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:26 (eighteen years ago)

you didn't leave it out!!

the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:27 (eighteen years ago)

horseshoe you really should see mr. blandings. i have an absurd love for the movie that is probably based partially on experience of moving out of a condo and into the suburbs myself but it is really hilarious.

the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:28 (eighteen years ago)

I was shocked by how dull he is in those pre-Sylvia Scarlett films. Clearly he needed androgyne Kate Hepburn to uncork his androgyne apppeal.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:28 (eighteen years ago)

I am totally going to seek out this Mr. Blandings--Myrna Loy!

horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)

"oh, it's nothing, mary. this is just a private joke between me and whoever my therapist is going to have to be"

the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)

this past weekend, that touch of mink was on as one of the TCM essentials, which baffled me. silly silly movie.

mr. blandings is now on my netflix list--what other less-commonly-known cary grant movies are good?

JuliaA, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)

He does a pretty good impersonation of a bored actor in those late period comedies.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:43 (eighteen years ago)

"no no, leave the rooster story alone -- that's human interest."

ghost rider, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:45 (eighteen years ago)

hahaha I think he might be most quotable in His Girl Friday. in Notorious he's amazing but mostly because he stands around and smolders.

horseshoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:47 (eighteen years ago)

i saw penny serenade on amc when i was really young, and it horrified me. their kid dies! they replace it with another one! traumatizing.

lauren, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

I'm tempted to vote for Arsenic and Old Lace, but thinking about it it's Peter Lorre and Raymond Massey who make it a great movie and not Grant.

Billy Dods, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 17:43 (eighteen years ago)

Probably my favourite actor, though three box sets in I think I'm starting to OD on him a bit. I like him best as a straight man - love that panicked outrage steadily turning into a sort of resigned disgust thing he does so well. So I voted for "Bringing Up Baby", but it could've just as easily gone to "Arsenic & Old Lace" or "North By Northwest".

The Cary Grant movies I have seen - let me tell them.

"Gunga Din" - Considering the two massive handicaps the movie starts with (movie based on a poem, movie based on an ultra-offensive poem) it acquits itself well enough. Not boring.

"My Favourite Wife" - Some excessive cuteness in the form of two annoying children and a very precious ending scene, but mostly this is prime screwball gold. Features a great confused judge and lots of "oh dear me, she's in the other room!" type shenanigans.

"The Bachelor & The Bobby Soxer" - Awesome. I like the bit where Cary imitates a teenager best.

"Once Upon A Honeymoon" - Truly bizarre movie starring Grant and Ginger Rogers. Rogers falls for a no good nazi, Grant chases her around Europe to win back her heart. The movie refuses to be anything other than a light hearted comedy, so suddenly you have "hilarious misunderstaings", except instead of the threat being "oh noes my wife will think I'm cheating on her" here it's "we might end up in a concentration camp" and "omg Cary Grant's gonna get castrated!" The movie ends with the main characters laughing hysterically over the probable death of one of the villains (a nazi, but still.) A major headfuck.

"Arsenic & Old Lace" - Truly dark comedy. First time I saw some of it was late at night while lying in bed, and it totally felt like a straightfoward horror movie. Funny, though!

"Night & Day" - Cole Porter biopic, directed by Michael Curtiz. Monty Woolley is great in it. Biopics will be biopics, and much of it is pretty laughable now that we know more of Porter's actual life, but this is still a very entertaining movie, probably better than "Yankee Doodle Dandy". Reccomended if you have some red wine handy. Why aren't there more covers of "You're The Top"?

"North By Northwest" - Amazing and hilarious and thrilling and wonderful. I'm pretty much with the consensus on this one. Great on the big screen!

"Bringing Up Baby" - I don't know why people keep hating on this one. I worship it as the missing link between Jerome K. Jerome and Carl Barks. Also Katherine is swoooon in this.

Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 20:35 (eighteen years ago)

"The Grass Is Always Greener" - Stars Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum, with theme song by Noel Coward. So it'd be very hard indeed for it to stand up to my expectations, but I still feel justified in thinking it didn't have to be quite as rotten as this. I'm not too big on 60's Grant, what I've seen from that time feels a lot smugger and more icky than his earlier stuff. Maybe dating has changed less over the decades than marriage, and that's why his more mature stuff feels more dated? Or maybe I'm just too young to understand it yet.

"Indiscretion" - Only the second movie with Ingrid Bergman in it that I've seen, and it's odd, her accent feels a lot less harsher in "Casablanca"? I guess because almost everyone in that movie has an accent of some kind. Highlights the virtue of Grant-as-straight-man for me: the movie is nice enough, but the only five minutes where I really laughed were the ones where he was being treated bizarrely by Bergman and coming up with great off-the-cuff zingers in self defense.

"The Philadelphia Story" - A very different beast than yer classic "Bringing Up Baby"/"His Girl Friday"/"Holiday" type screwball comedies, which is why I was disappointed by it the first time I saw it - not enough roffles. But it's a great movie, touching and full of wonderfully OTT dialogue. Mostly Hepburn's show, of course, but Grant is great in it, especially his dramatic speech about the drunken godess.

"Holiday" - Prime Grant/Hepburn. Jerry The Nipper descibes it better than I ever could, search the archives.

"His Girl Friday" - A very cruel movie.

Still haven't seen "Charade", "Only Angels Have Wings" or most of his Hitchcock stuff.

Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 20:35 (eighteen years ago)

daniel that is a BRILLIANT comparison re: bringing up baby and barks. it's totally like one of those 10-pagers where donald gets a job guarding a bank or something and by the end the whole town is invaded by locusts or something.

my fave grant hitchcock is of course notorious but suspicion is better than most people think it is.

J.D., Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:23 (eighteen years ago)

I am really intrigued by the Topper movies - did they ever make it to DVD?

Stevie T, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:26 (eighteen years ago)

"None But the Lonely Heart" is definitely worth seeing, if only to place Dick Van Dyke's accent in "Mary Poppins" in some sort of historical context

Tom D., Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:35 (eighteen years ago)

Only Angels Have Wings is deadly!

Who hates Bringing Up Baby? People are weird.

Like Ally, I have a weird fondness for Mister Blandings. Especially the flower sink and the Zuzz Zuzz water softener.

But His Girl Friday is the yardstick by which I judge people. If you do not love it, I have no time for you.

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:40 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.gonemovies.com/www/topfilms/Grant/GrantSuspicion2.jpg

Tracer Hand, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:13 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews5/suspicion/ttile.JPG

Tracer Hand, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:13 (eighteen years ago)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/Suspicion_car.JPG

Tracer Hand, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:15 (eighteen years ago)

My favorite actor, too. So many favorites, but I've gotta go with Bringing Up Baby. Everyone who likes Mr. Blandings and The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (I just saw that one last year and it made me laff a lot, and I guess not everyone's seen the two of them) is my friend.

If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:26 (eighteen years ago)

Amazon lists the Toppers as being available on disc, though who knows about their quality; they appear to be public-domain releases.

There should be a Constance Bennett boxed set.

If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:30 (eighteen years ago)

arsenic & old lace bcz i rate overacting

fies, Thursday, 12 April 2007 12:16 (eighteen years ago)

"well, for $1300 a bathroom, my children will just have to make do with three bathrooms and ROUGH IT"

the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:47 (eighteen years ago)

Ice Cube is not an acceptable Cary Grant substitute.

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:52 (eighteen years ago)

Arsenic & Old Lace is a Wednesday matinee comedy for bingo/mah jongg ladies. (also, they shoulda got Boris Karloff to redo his Broadway role -- the Massey part -- no matter what)

Only Angels Have Wings is deadly!

Blasphemer!!

Dr Morbius, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:57 (eighteen years ago)

Bingo/mah jongg ladies have great taste then! Also ability to laugh at their demogrpahic being depicted as psycho killers.

Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

Blasphemer!

No, no, "deadly" is a good thing in Dublin. If it was very good, it would be fucking deadly.

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:31 (eighteen years ago)

I kind of hate Cary for making every other person seem so dull because they're not Cary.

Nicole, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:37 (eighteen years ago)

I hate Bringing Up Baby. I don't think it's funny, and I think it's much more "cruel" than His Girl Friday. I really hate watching people be made fools of, especially Katherine Hepburn.

horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:37 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, he does burn a little brighter than everyone else.

horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:38 (eighteen years ago)

Katherine Hepburn is almost never made a fool of in "Bringing Up Baby"! Grant gets a rough deal, yeah, but hey, at least the perpetrator is charming and purdy - in classic comedy land, that's getting off light. He could be getting tormented by the Marx Brothers!

"His Girl Friday" is much harsher - Grant systematically sabotages Russel's relationship not because he's still in love with her but because he wants his star reporter back. Add to that all the Death Row exploitation, and you've got a pretty dark movie. I don't necessairly mean that in a dismissive way, it's a funny flick, I like it.

Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:52 (eighteen years ago)

no, Hepburn is completely made to look ridiculous in Bringing up Baby. it's normal that Grant be pursued by women rather than the other way around (cf. Pauline Kael), but he seems totally uninterested in her up until the very final scene, and his interest then is unconvincing. it's just embarrassing.

horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:53 (eighteen years ago)

(it's true that Grant's opportunism is central to HGF but he's much more believably in love with Rosalind Russel in that movie than he is with Hepburn in Bringing up Baby.)

horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

I've never looked at the movie like that, for me Hepburn is just insane and awesome and couldn't *give a fuck* whether or not she's being made a fool of because her world doesn't really work like that, and Grant is mostly bewildered, until the end when he's finally gotten a second to think a bit and realise that hell yeah, he's in love with this woman. Grant in HGF is just a weasel, can't muster up any sympathy for him at all. Insert different strokes for different folks cliché here, I guess. :)

Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:01 (eighteen years ago)

Who said Bringing Up Baby had any relation to the real world?

Hawks hated it – probably cuz it made no money.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:06 (eighteen years ago)

I don't buy the idea that she's made to look ridiculous, really. She has the upper hand throughout most of the film, from what I remember (it's a long time since I saw it) and I always got the impression that she could see that he would eventually fall for her, if only she could get his attention. Which a leopard will do.

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:08 (eighteen years ago)

yes, "believably in love" does not relate to Screwball.

Grant's libido is buried under his bone work, Kate digs it out.

Dr Morbius, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:09 (eighteen years ago)

I think I just hate screwball.

horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:10 (eighteen years ago)

Grant's libido is buried under his bone work, Kate digs it out.

She locates his bone. If you will.

You know, that really cheapens it. I'm sorry I even thought that now.

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:12 (eighteen years ago)

I keep hoping that somewhere, on some random channel at some stupid hour on a Saturday, I'm going to run across some fantastic weepy Cary Grant film that I've never seen before and my year will just be made. But I think I've seen them all. Thanks a lot, BBC.

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

speaking of weepy Cary Grant films + Cary Grant films that I don't get: Affair to Remember.

horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

He cries in Penny Serenade!

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:15 (eighteen years ago)

speaking of weepy Cary Grant films + Cary Grant films that I don't get: Affair to Remember.

You're clearly heartless.

He cries in Penny Serenade!

I know. As Lauren points out, it's a really weird film.

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:17 (eighteen years ago)

Even weirder: when Deborah Kerr quietly hushes the insubordinate black children after their minstrel scene.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

You're clearly heartless.

explain it to me!

horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

Dude, she only didn't meet him because she couldn't walk! And he doesn't care, because he is Cary Grant and will carry her around everywhere! (This might not be what happens, but I do remember it being a big OHMYGOD! and sudden weeping from everyone watching).

accentmonkey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 17:29 (eighteen years ago)

horseshoe, do you also dislike the marx brothers? or bugs bunny?

J.D., Thursday, 12 April 2007 18:13 (eighteen years ago)

I kind of hate Cary for making every other person seem so dull because they're not Cary.

-- Nicole, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:37 (3 hours ago)


Quite. He is so great! No other actor begins to compare.

I voted for North by North West, though really I could have picked quite a few of them.

Pashmina, Thursday, 12 April 2007 18:27 (eighteen years ago)

I have never seen a Marx brothers movie. And I like Bugs Bunny just fine. But no, I'm not hating Bringing up Baby to be contrarian. I've tried many times to like it, and I do think Grant is pretty much at his physical peak in it.

horseshoe, Monday, 16 April 2007 00:44 (eighteen years ago)

Who the fuck voted for Ladies Should Listen!?!

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 16 April 2007 01:25 (eighteen years ago)

OK, so now we vote between everything that got zero votes the first time?

If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Monday, 16 April 2007 05:12 (eighteen years ago)

Man, Holiday did not get enough love. Maybe it's not the definitve Cary Grant movie, but c'mon people, Grant, Hepburn, and EDWARD EVERETT HORTON.

clotpoll, Monday, 16 April 2007 10:04 (eighteen years ago)

PIKACHU???

Daniel_Rf, Monday, 16 April 2007 13:38 (eighteen years ago)

eight months pass...

Dave Kehr gets all Soto-ish in the NY Times:

In February 1957, when “An Affair to Remember” went into production, Cary Grant was 53 and facing an uncertain future. At the end of World War II he had been able to navigate the difficult transition from dashing, young romantic lead (“Holiday,” “Only Angels Have Wings”) to middle-aged, slightly less romantic husband and father (“Night and Day,” “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”). But now the gray was beginning to appear around his temples (he admirably chose not to cover it up entirely), and wrinkles and crinkles were starting to show where once there had been only smooth perfection.

So far the 50s had not been good to him. With his old associate Howard Hawks (“Bringing Up Baby,” 1938), Grant had made an underrated comedy, “Monkey Business” (1952), that directly addressed the subject of aging and firmly came out in favor of it (even when the enticements of youth were represented by a young Marilyn Monroe).

But Grant’s attempts to move into socially significant drama (Richard Brooks’s 1950 “Crisis,” Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1951 “People Will Talk”) had not proved satisfying, and only Alfred Hitchcock’s self-consciously slight “To Catch a Thief” (1955), with Grace Kelly, had recaptured the old magic.

Coming off Stanley Kramer’s leaden Napoleonic war epic, “The Pride and the Passion,” one of the most difficult shoots and very likely one of the worst films of his career, Grant must have been relieved when another old associate, the director Leo McCarey (“The Awful Truth,” 1937), came to him with a simple proposal: a remake of McCarey’s 1939 film “Love Affair.” Grant would step into the role of a notorious international playboy (originated by Charles Boyer), who during a trans-Atlantic voyage unexpectedly falls in love with a down-to-earth shipmate (Irene Dunne in the original film, Deborah Kerr in the remake). Here was something familiar and comfortable that Grant could have played in his sleep.

That he instead took the opportunity to re-examine and reinvent his screen persona is one of several reasons that “An Affair to Remember,” which Fox Home Video has reissued in a beautifully remastered two-disc 50th-anniversary edition, is one of the best and best-loved films of classical Hollywood. Instead of trotting out the old Cary Grant charm one more time (as he did in the dismal 1953 “Dream Wife,” his first film opposite Kerr), Grant reached inside himself for the performance he had unsuccessfully strained to give in his 1944 Oscar bid, “None but the Lonely Heart.”

A glum tale of a Cockney hustler and his dying mother, “Lonely Heart” had been Grant’s effort to come to terms with his origins as Archibald Leach, the working-class boy from Bristol, England. “An Affair to Remember” would be his reckoning with “Cary Grant,” the personality he had carefully constructed since his arrival in America. “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be,” he said, in a widely quoted remark. “And finally, I became that person. Or he became me.”

From the moment Grant’s Nickie Ferrante makes his entrance in “An Affair to Remember” — he descends a flight of stairs from the ocean liner’s unseen upper deck, into a gaggle of middle-aged women who ask for his autograph — he is portrayed more as a movie star than as the mere gossip-column celebrity postulated by the screenplay. With no visible means of support, other than marrying rich women, Nickie seems a pure abstraction of Grant’s allure: the self-amused smile; the perfectly fitted tuxedo offsetting the easy, relaxed stance; his hands in his pockets or clasped at his waist.

“I’ve read so much about you in Life and Look,” says Kerr’s Terry McKay, a professional singer, with just enough mockery in her voice to let him know that she is aware of his pose and sees through it.

Only one other woman can make that claim: Nickie’s charming, birdlike grandmother (Cathleen Nesbitt), whom Nickie and Terry visit when the ship briefly docks at Madeira. Terry prays in the grandmother’s small private chapel — a key scene for McCarey, a deeply committed Roman Catholic for whom marriage was a sacrament — and later listens as the old woman describes her beloved grandson as a talented painter, whose restlessness has prevented him from fulfilling his talent.

As in “Love Affair,” in which the Catholic theme is even more pronounced, McCarey depicts the relationship between his characters as a step-by-step development from a casual sexual attraction to a sanctified union, a transformation that must be earned through sacrifice and suffering. “An Affair to Remember” evolves effortlessly, almost invisibly, from light romantic comedy to a kind of spiritual drama, as the characters cast off their public identities (they are both performers: he in the tabloids, she on nightclub stages) and approach their essences: Nickie as a practicing (though still unsuccessful) painter, Terry as a singing teacher who now must use a wheelchair.

Is there another line of dialogue in American movies as gloriously absurd, as heart-stoppingly direct, as Terry’s climactic expression of faith, “If you can paint, I can walk”?

“Yes, darling, yes, yes, yes,” replies Nickie, in a burst of affirmation that constitutes the couple’s true marriage vow. The words burst out in a spontaneous rush (as they may well have on the set: McCarey always left ample room for his actors to improvise), without protective varnish. Grant attains another level here, confounding the melodramatic and the sublime.

Grant continued to explore “Cary Grant” in several films after “An Affair to Remember.” Four, independently produced or co-produced by Grant, have been reissued in a disappointingly cheap collection from Lionsgate, inelegantly titled “Cary Grant 4-Disc Collector’s Set.”

Here, in ancient and muddy letterboxed transfers, are two romantic comedies of unusual emotional and moral complexity, directed by Stanley Donen, “Indiscreet” (1958) and “The Grass Is Greener” (1960), which reveal a frightened, lonely man behind the impeccable Grant exterior; Blake Edwards’s raucous war comedy “Operation Petticoat” (1959), in which Grant concedes his fatal charm to a young upstart played by Tony Curtis; and Delbert Mann’s tasteless and mirthless “That Touch of Mink” (1962), with Grant as a chilly, remote financier who tries to hire Doris Day as his mistress.

“We didn’t expect emotional revelations from Cary Grant,” Pauline Kael wrote, in apparent praise of the actor she called “The Man From Dream City”: “He appeared before us in his radiantly shallow perfection, and that is all we wanted of him.” But it is enough to look at these late films to realize what a supremely accomplished, subtly expressive and emotionally revealing performer Grant was — one of the greatest artists the movies have produced.

Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 21:53 (seventeen years ago)

Oh, so this isn't a Mythbusters thread?

Ol Bertie Dastard, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 21:58 (seventeen years ago)

lol all those early poll threds r coming back to roost

Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:01 (seventeen years ago)

nevermind u_u

Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:01 (seventeen years ago)

haha IIRC kehr once called "monkey business" "one of the greatest works of the american cinema" or somesuch.

J.D., Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:01 (seventeen years ago)

It has its champions.

Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:02 (seventeen years ago)

An Affair to Remember is overstarched kitsch.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:06 (seventeen years ago)

I'm sad that <i>I Was A Male War Bride</i> and <i>Only Angels Have Wings</a> didn't get at least one vote.

Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:12 (seventeen years ago)

fucking bbcode

Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:13 (seventeen years ago)

Even HTML can't fix italics tags terminated with anchors.

libcrypt, Tuesday, 8 January 2008 22:30 (seventeen years ago)

ten years pass...

i think i should've bumped this one re Doc Casino's sniff at To Catch a Thief

a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 15:48 (seven years ago)

the seething contempt of notorious is burned into my brain and would be my vote

devvvine, Monday, 19 November 2018 15:52 (seven years ago)


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