Cary Grant Films of the 1950's

The elegant one made 72 feature-length films from 1932 to 1966.  Far more than not were successes.  He retired at age 72, choosing to get out while he still could (he would live 20 more years).  His leading ladies had been getting younger and younger and he thought it was all looking a bit foolish.  But in the 50's he still had some good films to turn out as the following will remind you.

Crisis (1950)
Arguably this is Grant's most unusual film.  That is not to say that the film itself is unusual but that Grant's participation in it is.  It is a hard core drama with a minimum of romance for his character and the actor just didn't make films like this as a rule.  What is interesting is that this is Richard Brooks' first directorial effort (he wrote the screenplay) and he owes that to Grant who insisted he direct.  Brooks had some problems during the shoot and MGM threatened to fire him.  Grant told the studio that if Brooks left, he would leave with him.

He plays an American neurosurgeon traveling through a Latin American country (never named) and is detained and forced to perform a secret brain operation on the country's tyrannical president during a revolutionary time.  In roles clearly patterned on Juan and Eva Perón, Jose Ferrer and Signe Hasso shine as the president and his wife.  Grant's scenes with Ferrer are on fire.



People Will Talk (1951)
A well-named film because the script was one of the most prolix Hollywood had witnessed, it was also a rather daring one for 1951 in that it concerned a young woman who is pregnant and unwed (the father is killed in the war).  Joseph Mankiewicz, a true wordsmith, also directed.  It was not an altogether happy experience because he was adamantly opposed to Jeanne Crain.  I am not sure what his reasons were but I found her to be a little out of her depth in this company.

She and Grant fall in love as a result of her being a student in his class.  He is a doctor who is the object of a witch hunt due to his unorthodox medical views.  The comedy-drama had a great deal to say about the mores of the day and was a hit at the time but has fallen into some obscurity especially when considering Grant's other films.



Room for One More (1952)
This is the first Cary Grant film I saw.  I liked it at the time because it was about kids, particularly one, a bratty orphan (Iris Mann) taken in by a well-to-do couple with three kids of their own.  It is a sentimental comedy chiefly about winning over the girl.

The wife is played by Betsy Drake, more famous as Grant's real-life wife (all throughout the fifties) than for being an actress.  He signed up as a favor to her for a couple of reasons.  She was passionate about children and their problems and the story greatly appealed to her.  Grant knew she wouldn't get it made without him  because she was not very well liked in Hollywood, particularly at her home studio, Warner Bros.



Monkey Business (1952)
This was the second Grant film I saw and I was beside myself with glee.  To this day the wacky comedy still cracks me up.  Grant plays a ditsy, near-sighted research scientist working on a youth pill.  When a laboratory chimpanzee spills the scientist's mixture into the drinking water, Grant becomes like a teenager and when his wife also takes a drink, she becomes even worse.

Grant is more than aided by former screen partner, Ginger Rogers, in one of her best non-dancing roles.  Stodgy ol' Charles Coburn fusses amusingly as the head of the project and Marilyn Monroe in her last days before worldwide fame is a sexy hoot as the office secretary.  It is silly but what a way to go.



Dream Wife (1953)
This film is not up to the talents of Grant and Deborah Kerr nor second lead Walter Pidgeon.  It concerns a battle of the sexes with Grant as a business tycoon who wants a wife who tends to domestic needs while his fiancee, an ambitious U.S. diplomat, has other ideas.  There are some delicious barbs and interest at the beginning of the film but it soon dissolves to mediocrity.

Grant was recovering from a bout of hepatitis as production began and he was out of sorts the entire time.  He argued constantly with director Sidney Sheldon and caused a lot of unpleasantness on the set.  It's a wonder Kerr would work with him twice more (and in far better films).  Grant took a two-year sabbatical from movie-making after this one.



To Catch a Thief (1955)
This romantic thriller filmed on the French Riviera with Grace Kelly is my favorite Grant film, although I confess Ms. Kelly had a lot to do with that.  I wrote about it earlier as part of my all-time 50 favorite films.   I regard this film as the start of Grant's leading ladies being far younger than he.



The Pride and the Passion (1957)
This is a rare Grant misfire... it was a bomb.  For all his talent, Grant just didn't look right in a big lumbering spectacle.  He plays a British captain who is sent to Spain to keep the French from stealing a powerful cannon.  Grant in the Napoleonic Wars... ugh!  And costar Frank Sinatra looked just as ridiculous.

There was passion, alright, and in came from Sophia Loren at the start of her American career.  She and Grant fell in love, according to her, and even spoke of marriage (despite his still being married to Drake).  She was also in love with Italian producer, Carlo Ponti, and she has said the next year would be one of the most confusing of her life.



An Affair to Remember (1957)
Who doesn't like, if not love, this one?  He and Deborah Kerr (in the best of their three films together and also the best of the three versions of this story) meet on shipboard and fall in love but must be away from each other for a time.  They agree to meet six months later at the top of the Empire State Building but only he shows up.  She is on her way to the rendezvous when she is struck down by a car as she gazes at the top of the famous structure.

She is paralyzed and doesn't see him for a long spell but destiny puts them back together in one of the most touching emotional endings.  He visits her in her apartment and after some bantering, he opens her bedroom door and sees that painting on the wall... and the tears come from Cary, Deborah, me and probably you.  If you can paint, I can walk...



Kiss Them for Me (1957)
Grant's effortless star appeal and suave demeanor are in evidence in this naval comedy but that's about all worth noting.  I still have a difficult time understanding why he made a movie with addle-brained, bosomy Jayne Mansfield.  But here he is with Ray Walston and Larry Blyden as three naval officers in San Francisco at a ritzy hotel for a wild party.  There's really no central point to it and the less said the better.



Indiscreet (1958)
This was the second of five films Grant would make with director Stanley Donen.  Obviously Grant got on well with Donen but the secret to their successes was their mutual love of elegance.  The film would also reunite him with his Notorious costar, Ingrid Bergman, whom he also regarded as a classy creature.  They were friendly on their first film together but became great pals on this one.

It's a wild plot about a wealthy actress in London who has had a life loveless for too long when she falls for the debonair Grant, despite the fact that he is married.  Actually, he isn't married but rather wants to have a love affair without the entrapment.  It is a delightful romantic-comedy performed by two pros and directed by one.



Houseboat (1958)
Before this movie started filming, Grant was in a bad mood because not only had Loren decided to stick with Carlo Ponti but she was no longer seeing the actor.  He was shocked to learn that she had been signed as his leading lady.  (That seems odd to me because I am fairly certain he had approval of his leading ladies.)  Regardless, I thought the comedy had some good moments without endorsing it overall.

Here he is a widower with kids and she is their rather hot nanny and all get in a tangled comedy mess aboard the title star.  Per their biographies, Grant and Loren had a difficult time filming the climactic wedding scene... according to Loren, exactly what she dreamt of with Grant.



North by Northwest (1959)
The fourth and final pairing of Grant with Hitchcock was and remains a very popular film.  The thrust of the spy thriller rests on a case of mistaken identity for Grant as he is pursued across the country by the bad guys who are determined to kill him.  It is a tense opus but with great dollops of humor..

Leading lady Eva Marie Saint was never lovelier (one would have to be  alongside CG) and proves to be an excellent partner.  James Mason is exceptional as the head villain and Martin Landau is wonderfully creepy.  Jessie Royce Landis, who played Grace Kelly's mother in To Catch a Thief, is Grant's mother here, delivering another of her grand performances.  One could never forget the ending of this film either... lurking about that big mountaintop home and then across the top of Mount Rushmore. 



Operation Petticoat (1959)
Here comedy simply triumphs... it is one of director Blake Edwards' earliest efforts.  It was also a triumph for Grant who would only make comedies from here on.  He plays a naval commander during WWII who gets stuck on a submarine that has seen better days.  To add to his woes it comes stocked with a gaggle of nurses.

Grant plays very well off Tony Curtis, at his comedy best and fresh off Some Like It Hot, as the con man executive officer.  Curtis never wanted to be better in a film because he idolized Grant and had wanted to work with him badly.  He also did a drop-dead impression of his idol.  The supporting cast, particularly Joan O'Brien and Dina Merrill, adds the appropriate touches.


And later... By the time of the release of Operation Petticoat, Grant was already talking of retiring.  In 1962 his (longest) marriage to Drake would end and in the coming years there would be two more wives and his first and only child.  After she was born, it was all he needed to draw the curtain on his long career.


If you missed Cary Grant Films of the 1940's, click here.


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A good 50's film