The HGTV programming got stale, so I channel-surfed and came upon one of my favorite movies, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) on TCM.
It’s an old movie. It stars Cary Grant.
But before you scoff and consider this review coming from an old man yelling at kids on his lawn, I really hope you give this movie a try. It holds up for homebuyers of any age and any era. It’s the never-ending tale of urbanites wanting to escape to the suburbs.
In the case of the Blandings family, it’s to get away from the claustrophobic existence of Manhattan for more elbow room in Connecticut.
If the plot sounds familiar, it’s because sequels have been tried. But they come up short. Tom Hanks and Shelly Long gave it a decent shot in a 1986 remake called The Money Pit. Even worse, much worse, Ice Cube starred Are We Done Yet? (2007).
Those remakes — reliant on cheap pratfalls and chaos — didn’t capture the sophisticated, subtle, nearly droll, humor of the Cary Grant-Myrna Loy-Melvyn Douglas dynamic. Loy played Grant’s wife, Muriel. Douglas, a two-time Oscar winner, played Bill Cole, Grant’s longtime friend and lawyer.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead On a 74-Year-Old Movie!
To set it up, Blandings is a $15,000-a-year (big money in 1948) advertising account executive in New York. He and his wife and two daughters live in a cramped New York apartment that has little privacy. Bathrooms are shared. Boxes are falling on their heads as they open closets.
Rather than pay $7K for an apartment remodel, Jim Blandings gets excited about a fixer in Connecticut. It’s a 200-year-old farmhouse on 35 acres (more or less) where they are told Gen. Gates stopped to water his horses during the Revolutionary War.
They buy the property for several times the going rate for locals, prompting Bill Cole to chastise Jim for following his heart rather than his head.
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House Turns Into a Nightmare
Jim goes ahead with the purchase. They’re forced to tear down the house. They pay an architect $18K to make it a custom home. The old house is torn down but the mortgage holder sues them for the balance of the loan, creating more unexpected expenses (we’ve been there, right?). During construction, builders find a spring under the foundation, which means more expense.
There’s also the matter of commuting. As DART commuters know, you’re at the mercy of schedules.
Mixed in, Jim suspects his wife of cheating on him, a belief that quickly resolves over deeper friendships between the three.
Meanwhile, Jim’s career is going south. He must come up with an ad slogan for some kind of ham or ham product called WHAM.
It all turns out in the end. I even got to learn what is a lintel and a lalley in housebuilding terms.
And as it turned out, Mr. Blandings’ house is the house of everyone’s dreams.
Catch Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House on TCM this month. It’s also available for rent on YouTube.
