Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

 "...a superb blend of horror and comedy..."

With Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre.

Arsenic and Old Lace - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"My favorite scene is the one from the picture Arsenic and Old Lace which begins with Cary Grant making the spine-chilling discovery that his two dear old maiden aunts are poisoners who have murdered some dozen men.  

The old ladies' sweetly matter-of-fact attitude toward their gruesome hobby is a superb blend of horror and comedy, and the scene develops uproariously.  

I was helpless with laughter as I watched Cary change from a normal young man to a decidedly dizzy one, talking to himself, staring into the window seat from which bodies mysteriously appeared and disappeared, and making various wild attempts to cope with the situation."

- Ida Lupino, Saturday Evening Post

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Number 47 - Arsenic and Old Lace (Lobby Card Style)

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None But The Lonely Heart (1944)

   "...plays its ...hero so attentively and sympathetically..."

With Konstantin Shayne.

None But The Lonely Heart - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"None But The Lonely Heart, a story about the education of a young man in London's pre-war slums, is an unusually sincere, almost-good film and was made under unusually unexpected auspices.  Its star, Cary Grant, asked that it be made, and plays its far from Cary Grantish hero so attentively and sympathetically that I all but overlooked the fact that he is not well constituted for the role.  Its most notable player, Ethel Barrymore, seemed miscast too, but I was so soft as to be far more than satisfied by her beauty and authority.  Its director, Clifford Odets, who also turned Richard Llewellyn's novel into the screen play, is still liable to write - or preserve from the book - excessive lines like "dreaming the better man"; he suggests his stage background as well as his talent by packaging his bits too neatly; and his feeling for light, shade, sound, perspective, and business is too luscious for my taste.  But I believe that even if he doesn't get rid of such faults he will become a good director.  I base my confidence in him chiefly on  the genuine things about his faith in and love for people, which are as urgent and evident here as his sentimentalities; on two very pretty moments in the film, one of two drunken men playing with their echoes under an arch, the other of two little girls all but suffocated by their shy adoration of the hero; and on the curiously rich, pitiful, fascinating person, blended of Cockney and the Bronx, whom he makes of a London girl, with the sensitive help of June Duprez.  I suppose I should be equally impressed by the fact that the picture all but comes right out and says that it is a bad world which can permit poor people to be poor; but I was impressed rather because Odets was more interested in filling his people with life and grace than in explaining them, arguing over them, or using them as boxing gloves." 

- James Agee, The Nation

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Number 46 - None But The Lonely Heart (Lobby Card Style)

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The Howards of Virginia (1940)

 "...Grant meets the exigencies of a difficult role with more gusto than persuasion."

With Paul Kelly.

The Howards of Virginia - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Elizabeth Page's best seller of last year, The Tree of Liberty, comes to the screen as The Howards of Virginia.  Although using only a portion of the 985-page novel, Columbia still seems to have tackled a larger canvas than it could paint effectively, with the result that this cavalcade of Colonial and Revolutionary America, while ambitious, expensive, and generally interesting, comes to life all to infrequently. 

Adapted by Sidney Buchman  and directed by Frank Lloyd, the Howard saga is most effective in the sequences that recreate frontier life and manners as seen through the eyes of the woman who loves her husband while rebelling against his democratic ideas.  These sequences are impressive in their homely humor and realism, though much footage otherwise wasted inevitably pulls the emotional punches in the story of Matt's relationship with his wife and children.  

Obviously miscast, Cary Grant meets the exigencies of a difficult role with more gusto than persuasion.  Martha Scott follows her impressive screen debut in Our Town with a sincere if more conventional characterization.  That this history has been staged with exceptional fidelity, is due in part to the fact that its Williamsburg sequences were filmed on location in the historic city which was reconstructed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. as a $20,000,000 project to perpetuate America's past."

- Newsweek

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Number 37 - The Howards of Virginia (Lobby Card Style)

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Blonde Venus (1932)

   "...Grant is worthy of a much better role..."

With Marlene Dietrich.

Blonde Venus - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Marlene Dietrich's latest film, Blonde Venus, over which B. P. Schulberg, until recently head of Paramount's Hollywood studio, and Josef von Sternberg, the director, clashed last spring, is a muddled, unimaginative and generally hapless piece of work, relieved somewhat by the talent and charm of the German actress and Herbert Marshall's valiant work in a thankless role.

It wanders from Germany to many places in America, over to France and then back to New York, but nary a whit of drama is there in it.  There is good photography, and for those who are partial to scenes in a theatre, there are some over which                Mr. von Sternberg has taken no little care.  But the pain of it is the dismal and suspenseless tale of a woman who sinks to selling her favors and finally ends by returning to her husband.  

There is scarcely any simpathy evoked for the characters, except for a little boy.  Most of the scenes are unedifying, without possessing any strength or a common sense idea of  psychology.  It is regrettable that Miss Dietrich, Mr. Marshall and others should have been called on to appear in such a vehicle.  

When there is any attempt at levity it is silly, and one lengthy episode might better have been left to the imagination, for it never for a moment is anything but dreary and dull.  

There are good portraits of Miss Dietrich, who sings two or three songs.  Mr. Marshall does as well as his lines and the situations permit.  Cary Grant is worthy of a much better role than that of Townsend, and little Dickie Moore gives a suggestion of brightness to the unhealthy scenes in which he is sometimes beheld."

- Mordaunt Hall, The NewYork Times

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Number 5 - Blonde Venus (Lobby Card Style)

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Monkey Business (1952)

    "Grant has never been better..."

With Marilyn Monroe.

Monkey Business - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

" Grant has never been better than in his part as the absent-minded professor in search of the elixir of youth.
His extraordinary agile and amusing performance is matched to the hilt by that of Ginger Rogers as his long-suffering wife. And those who recall that Miss Rogers was once a famous dancing star, will find that she excels in that department. She obviously delights in her part, which is a demanding one.
Throughout, director Hawks has seen to it that Monkey Business doesn't become static. Grant's wild car ride with Marilyn Monroe is pure farce in the great tradition of the screen and some other climactic sequences come across with the same explosive effect." 

- Motion Picture Herald

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Number 58 - Monkey Business (Lobby Card Style)

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People Will Talk (1951)

   "...turns in one of the most intelligent performances of his nineteen-year Hollywood career."

With Walter Slezak.

People Will Talk - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"And once again, Hollywood's ranking "genius" - the only man to win four Academy Awards in two years - has something to say and says it frankly and funnily.  

The film, which has a three-way plot, concentrates on one of the strangest and most adult love affairs ever to emerge from Hollywood.   The wedding between                  Dr. Praetorius and Deborah Higgins takes place when the doctor knows she is more than a month pregnant, although he is not responsible - a situation handled in perfect taste, and resulting in an exceptionally happy union.  

These heterogeneous plot strands are welded together by Grant, who turns in one of the most intelligent performances of his nineteen-year Hollywood career.  And       Miss Crain proves, as she did in Pinky, that she is ready to graduate from her usual pigtail roles.  Much of the credit for an impressive film goes to the very adult and literate writing of Mankiewicz."

- Newsweek

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Number 56 - People Will Talk (Lobby Card Style)

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I Was A Male War-Bride (1949)

   "...a past master at playing the handsome      he-man thrown for a loss by a difficult dame..."

I Was A Male War-Bride - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"A temperamental French army captain and a strong-minded WAC lieutenant stationed in Occupied Germany spend the first half of this comedy hating each other and the second half trying to find a way for the captain to emigrate to the United States.  There is a short intermission between halves in which the two sparring partners get married.  

The film is poorly paced.  By the time Captain Rochard and Lieutenant Gates get to the altar, it seems as if we've had our money's worth.  But, no - complications are barely beginning.  It appears that the only provision under which Rochard may accompany his wife back to the States is the law regulating the immigration of war brides.  It is with this embarrassing predicament that the film finally gets down to the business announced in the title.  

The comedy has its share of bright and breezy moments.  Cary Grant is a past master at playing the handsome he-man thrown for a loss by a difficult dame or an undignified situation.  But none of the boy-girl situations in this opus is original enough to stand being spun out for two hours."   

- Scholastic Magazine

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Number 54 - I Was A Male War-Bride (1949) (Lobby Card Style)

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The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)

   "...poor Mr. Grant finds himself doing many things that hardly fit his age."

With Shirley Temple.

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Without taxing or insulting your intelligence, some new comedies are providing some hearty laughs and a good excuse for timely escape into air-cooled cinema palaces.  The plot of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer won't solve any major problems about the younger generation, but its lines are amusing and the members of its handsome cast are bubbling with anxiety to entertain.  Cary Grant is pleasantly coy as the artist-playboy who finds himself squiring a love-sick seventeen-year-old in order to avoid a more trying sentence.  Because Shirley Temple is such an attractive young actress, the task should be considerably lightened for him; but high-school girls these days have extraordinary ideas about how their knights in shining armor should behave and poor Mr. Grant finds himself doing many things that hardly fit his age.  He's a good sport about the whole thing (even during the obstacle race at the picnic) until he realizes how much he prefers Shirley's older sister, played by Myrna Loy, who looks lovely but acts like a cold tomato because she's a female judge who takes herself very seriously indeed.  Rudy Vallee, in another of his clever portraits of a stuffed shirt, is more to her liking - until she too sees Cary lustrous in armor.  Irving Reis has directed his cast for laughs and succeeds in getting them.  Ray Collins, as a court psychiatrist, tries to inject a serious note on the behavior of adolescents who have crushes; but even he succumbs to the spirit of this playful comedy."

- Philip T. Hartung, The Commonweal

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Number 50 - The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Lobby Card Style)

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