Quote From Today... Suzy (1936)

"Did I remember"

With Jean Harlow.

Suzy was Cary Grant's 23rd full length feature film.

Andre Charville: Did I remember, to tell you, you're delightful, you're everything I want you to be

[singing]

Andre Charville: You're eyes are lovely, And far beyond comparing, Especially when they're glaring, At me. I can't think up words to say, How swell you are, But I can tell you are, I know so well you are. I started falling, The moment that I saw you, Believe me I adore you, Cherie!

Quote From Today... The Pride and The Passion (1957)

  "That's the part of you that's cheap."

With Sophia Loren.

The Pride and the Passion was Cary Grant's 61st full length feature film.

Anthony: You're living with him. But you don't love him. That's the part of you that's cheap.

Quote From Today... Mr Lucky (1943)

  "Hey, you don't look too bad yourself!"

With Laraine Day.

Mr Lucky was Cary Grant's 43rd full length feature film.

Joe Adams aka Joe Bascopolous: Well, now this is quite a surprise!

Dorothy Bryant: Not particularly. It so happens I rather expected it. And if you think your persistence is going to have any effect on me, you're mistaken.

Joe Adams aka Joe Bascopolous: Well, I can't see how you people can pass up $80,000 for the cause.

Dorothy Bryant: For whose cause? If you're so interested in serving your cause, why don't you join the Army?

Blood Bank Nurse: Next, please!

Joe Adams aka Joe Bascopolous: Oh...

[produces draft card]

Joe Adams aka Joe Bascopolous: 4F.

Dorothy Bryant: You look 1A to me.

Joe Adams aka Joe Bascopolous: Hey, you don't look too bad yourself!

[He chuckle, she stares, he lets out awkward groan]

Joe Adams aka Joe Bascopolous: Well, it's my arteries.

Blood Bank Nurse: Right this way...

Dorothy Bryant: Well, should you be giving blood?

Joe Adams aka Joe Bascopolous: Oh, well... my blood's 1A, just my arteries are 4F.

On This Day (Yesterday!!)...Destination Tokyo(1944)

 Always a challenge to blog a film release on the first day of a new year...But yesterday saw the release of Cary Grant's 44th full length film...Destination Tokyo.

Summary:

During World War II, Captain Cassidy (Cary Grant) and his crew of submariners are ordered into Tokyo Bay on a secret mission. They are to gather information in advance of the planned bombing of Tokyo. Along the way, the crew learn about each other as they face the enemy and some of them lose their lives. After getting the information they need,they face the harrowing task of getting free once their presence is discovered.

"As the Copperfin's captain, Cary Grant gives one of the soundest performances of his career."

- Newsweek

"Certainly, in technical exposition and sheer, harrowing melodrama, the Warner Brother's newest tribute to the armed forces rates very near the top of the list" 

- Newsweek

Cast:

 Cary Grant ... Capt. Cassidy

 John Garfield ... Wolf
 Alan Hale ... 'Cookie' Wainwright
 John Ridgely ... Reserve Officer Raymond
 Dane Clark ... Tin Can
 Warner Anderson ... Andy
 William Prince ... Pills
 Robert Hutton ... Tommy Adams
 Tom Tully ... Mike Conners
 Faye Emerson ... Mrs. Cassidy
 Peter Whitney ... Dakota
 Warren Douglas ... Larry
 John Forsythe ... Sparks
 John Alvin ... Sound Man
 Bill Kennedy ... Torpedo Gunnery Officer

On the set.

Did You Know?

The operation of the submarine as shown in this movie was so accurate that the Navy used it as a training film during World War II.

The appendectomy done in this film actually happened. It was performed on the USS Silversides SS236. Pharmacist's mate Thomas Mooere removed George Platter's appendix 150 feet below the ocean's surface. Photographs of the surgery are on display where this submarine is docked, in Muskegon, Michigan, at the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum.

Posters incorrectly advertised the film as "Destination Tokio", despite "Tokyo" being used in the film's on-screen title. Upon the film's release on DVD, a variation of the poster using the latter spelling was used for the cover. ("Tokio" is not a misspelling, it is an older, less common form.)

Included among the American Film Institute's 2001 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.

Quotes:

Reserve Officer Raymond: [Just having come aboard the 'Copperfin'] Uh... How do I get below, sir? I... I've never been aboard a submarine before.
Capt. Cassidy: [Slightly bemused, as he points to the only obvious entry into the submarine] There's the hatch. It goes 'down.'

Reserve Officer Raymond: [during a depth charge attack] Captain, I'm no good.
Capt. Cassidy: Why's that?
Reserve Officer Raymond: I'm scared stiff.
Capt. Cassidy: How do you think the rest of us feel?
Reserve Officer Raymond: You're not scared. I've looked at your faces.
Capt. Cassidy: I've looked at yours, too. It's the same as the others.
Reserve Officer Raymond: You're scared?
Capt. Cassidy: I'll say I am. And so is everybody else.

On the set with Delmer Daves and John Garfield.

Lobby Cards:

Posters:

Italian.

Directed by Delmer Daves.

Produced and Distributed by Warner Brothers.

Running time: 135 minutes.

On This Day...Kiss Them For Me (1957)

 Cary Grant's 63rd film was Kiss Them For Me, and released today in 1957.

Synopsis:

Three decorated Navy pilots finagle a four day leave in San Francisco. They procure a posh suite at the hotel and Commander Crewson (Cary Grant), a master of procurement, arranges to populate it with party people. 

With Ray Walston and Jayne Mansfield.

Lieutenant Wallace (Werner Klemperer) is trying to get the pilots to make speeches to rally the homefront at shipyard magnate Eddie Turnbill's (Leif Erikson) plants, but they're tired of the war and just want to have fun. While Crewson begins falling in love with Turnbill's fiancée Gwinneth Livingston (Suzy Parker), he tries to ignore the distant call of war.

With Suzy Parker.

"Grant, even though a bit old as a dashing pilot, is wonderful, be he romantic, comic, bitter or sad."

- Motion Picture Herald.

With Jayne Mansfield.

Did You Know?

Cary Grant specifically asked that Stanley Donen be hired on to direct the film. Grant had never met or spoken to Donen prior to their collaboration on this film, but he had been extremely impressed by Donen's work on films such as Royal Wedding (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Grant expressed that Donen's light and comedic touch on those films fit the tone of the screenplay for Kiss Them for Me (1957).

Suzy Parker's feature film acting debut.The speaking voice of Suzy Parker is partially dubbed by Deborah Kerr.

This marks the first of four film collaborations between actor Cary Grant and director Stanley Donen. The subsequent films were Indiscreet (1958), The Grass Is Greener (1960), and Charade (1963).

Cary Grant expressed concerns that, at age 53, he was too old to convincingly play a U. S. Navy flier. Producer Jerry Wald encouraged Grant to take the part because his charisma and popularity with the American public far outweighed concerns about his age.

Cast:

Cary Grant ... Cmdr. Andy Crewson
Jayne Mansfield ... Alice Kratzner
Leif Erickson ... Eddie Turnbill
Suzy Parker ... Gwinneth Livingston
Ray Walston ... Lt. (j.g.) McCann
Larry Blyden ... Mississip
Nathaniel Frey ... CPO Ruddle
Werner Klemperer ... Lt. Walter Wallace
Jack Mullaney ... Ens. Albert Lewis

Lobby Cards:

International Posters:

"A Sacred Border" - French

"A Devilish Swing" - Dutch

Directed by Stanley Donen.

Distributed by 20th Century-Fox.

Running time: 103 minutes.

On This Day...Once Upon A Honeymoon (1942)

On this day in 1942, Cary Grant released his 42nd full length film, Once Upon a Honeymoon. His first of two films with Ginger Rogers.

Synopsis:

At the start of WWII, Katie O'Hara (Ginger Rogers), an American burlesque girl intent on social climbing, marries Austrian Baron Von Luber (Walter Slezak). Pat O'Toole (Cary Grant), an American radio reporter, sees this as a chance to investigate Von Luber, who is suspected of having Nazi ties. 

As country after country falls to the Nazis, O'Tool follows O'Hara across Europe. At first he is after a story, but he gradually falls in love with her. When she learns that her husband is indeed a Nazi, O'Hara fakes her death and runs off with O'Toole. In Paris, she is recruited to spy for the allies; he uses a radio broadcast to make Von Luber and the Nazis look like fools.

"Cary Grant is quite believable as the radio news analyst who turns on his French and German dialects and Irish charm with equal facility." - Philip T. Hartung, The Commonweal.

With Ginger Rogers.

Did You Know?

Berlin-born Natasha Lytess, who appears in the small role as the Jewish hotel maid, was Marilyn Monroe's acting coach and friend for many years.

Cary Grant thought the screenplay was rubbish, but agreed to do the film because he had been condemned for allegedly dodging the draft in both the UK and the US.

The question of top billing was resolved by having half of the prints with Cary Grant listed first, and the other half with Ginger Rogers listed first. The TCM print lists Grant first, but the programs distributed for the world premiere at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City listed Rogers first.

O'Toole ends his coerced radio broadcast with the phrase, "Tell it to the Marines." In the English usage of that day, the retort "Tell it to the Marines" meant, "Everything you just said is total bull, and cannot be believed for one minute." So by ending the speech that way, he was telling his American listeners that everything he had just said in the broadcast was untrue. Presumably his Nazi captors did not get the nuance, but the moviegoing audience would have.

With Albert Bassermann.

Cast:

 Cary Grant ... Patrick O'Toole
 Ginger Rogers ... Kathie O'Hara
 Walter Slezak ... Baron Franz Von Luber
 Albert Dekker ... Gaston Le Blanc
 Albert Bassermann ... Gen. Borelski
 Ferike Boros ... Elsa
 John Banner ... German Capt. Von Kleinoch
 Harry Shannon ... Ed Cumberland
 Natasha Lytess ... Anna

Lobby Cards:

Press Stills:

International Posters:

"There Was a Honeymoon" (Spanish)

Directed by Leo McCarey.

Produced by RKO Radio.

Running time: 116 minutes.

On This Day...The Last Outpost (1935)

 The Last Outpost was Cary Grant's 20th full length feature film and was released today in 1935.

Synopsis:

In World War I, British-officer Michael Andrews (Cary Grant) is captured by a band of Kurdish raiders on the Eastern Front, and is rescued by a man calling himself John Stevenson (Claude Rains), although he refuses to tell his name to Andrews. 

The two men form a strange friendship, and help save an entire Kurdish village from a massacre and also avert a surprise attack on the British army-unit stationed there. Andrews suffers a wounded leg and is sent to the British military-hospital in Cairo. He falls in love with a nurse, Rosemary Haydon (Gertrude Michael), and she with him, but she is married although she has not seen nor heard from her husband in over three years. 

It is at this point that the man who saved Andrews' life turns up to claim his wife, who is Rosemary. The latter bids adieu to Andrews who does not know that the man he considers his best friend is also the husband of the woman he loves. But, by pure coincidence and chance, both Andrews and Rosemary's husband come face-to-face again in a remote garrison that is under an attack that appears to have the possibility of no survivors among the fort defenders.

"Mr. Claude Rains as the secret service agent in Turkish uniform and Mr. Cary Grant as the incurably light-minded and rather stupid British officer whom he rescues from the Kurds both act extremely well." - Graham Greene, The Spectator.

"To Cary Grant, Claude Rains and Gertrude Michael fall the assignment of giving life and conviction to the romantic segment of the plot. They all do well by their roles." - Ben Bodec, Variety

Did You Know ?:

Stock footage from Four Feathers (1929) is used to augment the battle scenes in the later half of the film.

Cast:

Cary Grant...Michael Andrews
Gertrude Michael...Rosemary
Claude Rains...John Stevenson
Margaret Swope...Nurse Rowland
Jameson Thomas...Cullen
Nick Shaid...Haidar
Kathleen Burke...Ilya
Colin Tapley...Lieutenant Prescott
Billy Bevan...Private Foster
Claude King...General

Lobby Cards:

International Posters:

Directed by Charles Barton and Lois Gasnier.
Distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Running time: 75 minutes.