Tonight's Movie: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) - A Warner Archive Blu-ray Review

The trio of Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Melvyn Douglas star in MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948), which will be released on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive later this month.

I've loved catching up with old favorites thanks to the Warner Archive's Blu-ray releases, which recently included another Grant film, ROOM FOR ONE MORE (1952). MR. BLANDINGS was another opportunity to revisit a film for the first time in a number of years.

Grant and Loy play Jim and Muriel Blandings, who are squeezed into a New York City apartment with their daughters Betsy (Connie Marshall) and Joan (Sharyn Moffett), not to mention their cook, Gussie (Louise Beavers).

(Why a homemaker in a tiny apartment needs a cook is beyond me, but such is life in 1940s movies...)

One fine day Jim and Muriel decide it's time to leave the big city behind and buy a more spacious home, and they fall in love with a decrepit old house in Connecticut. They buy it, little understanding that they are going to need to tear down the home and rebuilt from scratch, dig a well, and a million other increasingly expensive things that go with building a new house.

Hovering in the background as narrator is old family friend Bill (Douglas), an attorney who regularly tells Jim he's making mistakes, and whose attention to Muriel is starting to bother Jim.

That's pretty much the entire plot of the movie, but it's a lot of fun. As a young film viewer I think I found the movie a little edgier than I'd hoped -- the girls, in particular, spend the entire movie pouting, and Bill is a little too "present" in the Blandings home -- but watching it now gave me a lot of chuckles. Part of that might be because I've been through a home remodel myself!

The thing that gives me the greatest pleasure about the film is Myrna Loy, who is just a stitch, whether she's painstakingly describing the shades of paint she wants to an increasingly bewildered painter or protesting her innocence when it comes to an expensive change order regarding flagstones. I recall that Frank Capra described Jean Arthur's voice along the lines of being "a thousand tinkling bells," and surely that description applies to Loy, as well. Just listening to her in this film makes me chuckle.

Grant does a good job walking the line between being a man in love with his wife and the idea of a new house and someone completely exasperated with the problems which come his way before he and said wife can live in their new home.

Douglas also nails his slightly smarmy role; I use that adjective as he clearly enjoys the moment when a neighbor catches him alone in the house with Muriel, wearing a bathrobe. (There was a rainstorm involved...)The scene where Jim arrives home the following morning and Bill again walks in in his bathrobe, and Grant's slow double-take and burn as he stares at his friend, is perfectly played.

Bringing sunshine into every scene she's in is wonderful Louise Beavers as Gussie. I would have been happy to see more of her in the movie. The supporting cast also includes Reginald Denny as the Blandings' long-suffering architect, Lex Barker as a construction worker, Lurene Tuttle as Jim's secretary, and Tito Vuolo, Ian Wolfe, Harry Shannon, Nestor Paiva, Jason Robards (Sr.), Emory Parnell, and Don Brodie.

The movie was directed by H.C. Potter and crisply shot in black and white by James Wong Howe. The script of this 94-minute film is by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, based on the novel by Eric Hodgins.

The Warner Archive Blu-ray is a 4K scan of the original nitrate camera negative. It may not be absolutely perfect but it's very good, surely the best the film has yet looked for home viewing, and it sounds terrific.  I was quite pleased with it.

Extras carried over to the Blu-ray from the original DVD release are the Tex Avery Cartoon "THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW" (1949) and two radio productions, a Lux Radio Theater (1949) show with Grant and Irene Dunne, and a Screen Director's Playhouse (1950) version with Grant and Betsy Drake. I love the "alternate casting" we get to experience thanks to old time radio shows and appreciate the Warner Archive including these programs in several recent releases.

Thanks to the Warner Archive for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray. Warner Archive Blu-rays may be ordered from the Warner Archive Amazon Store or any online retailers where Blu-rays are sold.

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