Cary Grant

  • Norman Z. McLeod – Topper (1937)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyNorman Z. McLeodScrewball ComedyUSA

    Quote:
    Thorne Smith is a name one hardly ever hears these days, and that’s a shame. In the 1920s and early ’30s, he was the popular author of a genre-defining series of novels in which mortal men broke out of their humdrum lives to embark on comic-erotic, supernaturally tinged adventures in the company of an exciting woman (or women). The most popular of these, Topper, was filmed in 1937, three years after Smith’s death. (Smith’s novel The Passionate Witch also became the basis for a classic film comedy, I Married a Witch (1942), and later the TV series Bewitched.)Read More »

  • George Cukor – Holiday [Criterion] (1938) (HD)

    USA1931-1940ComedyGeorge CukorRomanceScrewball Comedy

    Free-thinking Johnny Case finds himself betrothed to a millionaire’s daughter. When her family, with the exception of black-sheep Linda and drunken Ned, want Johnny to settle a career in finance, he rebels, wishing instead to spend the early years of his life on “holiday.” With the help of his friends Nick and Susan Potter, he makes up his mind as to which is the better course, and who he’d rather take the leap with.Read More »

  • Harlan Thompson – Kiss and Make-Up (1934)

    1931-1940ComedyHarlan ThompsonRomanceScrewball ComedyUSA

    Dr. Maurice Lamar is a noted plastic-surgeon who makes his rich clients beautiful. He makes Eve Caron, the wife of Marcel Caron, so satisfied with his skilled hands that she leaves Marcel and marries Maurice. They go on a Mediterranean honeymoon, where he soon finds the effects of his own beauty regulations are more than he can handle. He bids adieu to his new bride, wings it back to Paris with the intention of giving up his practice and becoming a scientific researcher…after winning back the love of his simple, unadorned secretary, Anne.

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  • Leo McCarey – Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

    USA1941-1950ComedyLeo McCareyScrewball Comedy

    At the start of WWII, Katie O’Hara, an American burlesque girl intent on social climbing, marries Austrian Baron Von Luber. Pat O’Toole, 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.Read More »

  • George Cukor – The Philadelphia Story (1940) (HD)

    1931-1940ComedyGeorge CukorRomanceScrewball ComedyUSA

    Quote:
    With this furiously witty comedy of manners, Katharine Hepburn revitalized her career and cemented her status as the era’s most iconic leading lady—thanks in great part to her own shrewd orchestrations. While starring in the Philip Barry stage play The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn acquired the screen rights, handpicking her friend George Cukor to direct. The intoxicating screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart pits the formidable Philadelphia socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn, at her most luminous) against various romantic foils, chief among them her charismatic ex-husband (Cary Grant), who disrupts her imminent marriage by paying her family estate a visit, accompanied by a tabloid reporter on assignment to cover the wedding of the year (James Stewart, in his only Academy Award–winning performance). A fast-talking screwball comedy as well as a tale of regret and reconciliation, this convergence of golden-age talent is one of the greatest American films of all time.Read More »

  • George Cukor – Holiday (1938) (HD)

    USA1931-1940ComedyGeorge CukorRomanceScrewball Comedy

    Quote:
    Two years before stars Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant and director George Cukor would collaborate on The Philadelphia Story, they brought their timeless talents to this delectable slice of 1930s romantic-comedy perfection, the second film adaptation of a hit 1928 play by Philip Barry. Grant is at his charismatic best as the acrobatically inclined free spirit who, following a whirlwind engagement, literally tumbles into the lives of his fiancée’s aristocratic family—setting up a clash of values with her staid father while firing the rebellious imagination of her brash, black-sheep sister (Hepburn). With a sparkling surface and an undercurrent of melancholy, Holiday is an enchanting ode to nonconformists and pie-in-the-sky dreamers everywhere, as well as a thoughtful reflection on what it truly means to live well.Read More »

  • Delbert Mann – That Touch of Mink (1962)

    1961-1970ComedyDelbert MannRomanceUSA

    Quote:
    A rich businessman and a young woman are attracted to each other, but he only wants an affair while she wants to save herself for marriage.Read More »

  • George Stevens – Gunga Din [+commentary] (1939)

    USA1931-1940AdventureGeorge Stevens

    Quote:
    Based loosely on the poem by Rudyard Kipling, this takes place in British India during the Thuggee uprising. Three fun loving sergeants are doing fine until one of them wants to get married and leave the service. The other two trick him into a final mission where they end up confronting the entire cult by themselves as the British Army is entering a trap. This is of the “War is fun” school of movie making. It has the flavour of watching Notre Dame play an inferior high school team.Read More »

  • George Fitzmaurice – Suzy (1936)

    Drama1931-1940ClassicsGeorge FitzmauriceUSA

    Synopsis:
    When American showgirl Suzy (Jean Harlow) finds herself in London without work, she plans to leave her career behind and find a rich husband. Instead, she falls for brilliant but broke inventor Terry (Franchot Tone), who is developing an airplane stabilizer. When Terry is mistakenly shot by a spy, Suzy fears she will be blamed and flees to Paris, where she returns to a life of singing and marries flyboy Andre (Cary Grant). But things get complicated when Suzy learns that Terry has survived.Read More »

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