In Defense Of Urban Flight-Cary Grant and Myra Loy’s “Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House” (1948)-A Film Review

DVD Review

   

By Sandy Salmon

Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House, starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy,  

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

********

Nowadays the great flight from the big cities started in the immediate post-World War II period with the construction of Levitttown-type suburbs has run its course and there is a creep back to the cities by the non-auto hungry Generation X. Maybe it is the economics of purchase but I have listened in disbelief as father after father of my acquaintance has told me that their young charges do not own, do not lust after their won automobile. In some cases do not have a driver’s license at twenty-something. Heresy, sheer heresy to our generation hitting the road at sixteen and at least pining for an owned automobile around the same time. That strange sociology phenomenon aside back then every even marginally prosperous family was itching to join the exodus. (And maybe from smaller town too when you remember back to the days when places like downtown Mill Valley outside of Trenton, New Jersey where I grew up in the 1950s used to be thriving places where you would spent plenty of time doing this and that before the big malls sucked the life out of basically Mom and Pop Main Street operations.)  That is the working premise of the film under review, Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House, as Cary Grant and Myra Loy go through their paces trying to make the damn thing come true without bankrupting them and not without seemingly every pitfall known to house-building man (and woman).

Mad man, you know Madison Avenue, New York City upwardly mobile advertising man fresh for the war, World War II, Mr. Blanding, played by versatile Cary Grant who could play for laughs or suspense at the flip of a coin, is sick and tired of his cramped quarters in an apartment in the city and dreams of getting out in the great fresh suburban, or what will be suburban air of Connecticut. Housewife and good mother Mrs. Blanding, played by equally versatile Myra Loy couldn’t agree more, as long as the operation doesn’t set them “underwater” as the more recent expression post-2008 housing bubble burst would have it. The problem, serious problem is that these city slickers don’t know from nothing about such things as old time Victorian houses and farms, allegedly cheap ones to fix up, which is what they have their ignorant little hearts set on to be able to bring up their two precocious young daughters in a non-city environment.  

Naturally not knowing anything about rural real estate markets they grab a nice old place on the cheap. No, not on the cheap when the hi-jinx are through since this place is a “lemon,” a dead-end which has to be torn down and another mighty dwelling put in its place which really does almost bankrupt the pair especially when Mad man Mr. Balnding can’t come up with some hammy slogan to sell, well, hams in order to keep his job and keep from going under water like a million other people before and after them. Not Cary or Myra’s best work which has to do with the limits of the story-line after all how many pratfalls and exasperating experiences can you work out, or get worked up about, over your so-called dream house before you simply don’t care anymore. Or we in that Saturday movie audience or now DVD home watching crowd either.