Cary Grant and Myrna Loy re-teamed for Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), a family comedy-drama about the anxieties of the post-war economic boom. Directing is none other than journeyman filmmaker H.C. Potter who is probably best known today for having made the movie musical Hellzapoppin’ (1941). Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a rather cookie-cutter affair that is largely carried by the strength of the acting.
With their daughters growing up fast, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are persuaded to buy a money pit of a home in Connecticut. What follows is a series of mishaps as the couple is forced to tear down and build a new house on their recently acquired property of 35 acres, “more or less”. While this is the primary focus of the film there are two subplots. One involves Grant’s advertising executive trying to come up with a campaign for Wham Ham (which he eventually gets from his family’s Black servant played by Louise Beavers). The other subplot deals with Grant’s insecurities and paranoias as he comes to suspect (wrongfully) that his wife is having an affair with his chum and narrator Melvyn Douglas.
There is a scene early on that follows some nice domestic slapstick where Grant and Loy “bicker, bicker” in front of their daughters. In this scene the daughters voice politically progressive views regarding American capitalism that Grant’s character disputes angrily. This moment encapsulates the entire theme of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. The film suggests that to evade progressive politics one can simply relocate to the country and, once there, realize the American dream.
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a film made in reaction to those social and political changes that took place while so many Americans were overseas fighting WWII. Cary Grant as the title character proposes that an ideal family is one that returns to pre-war normalcy. Thusly the film predicts the ideologies associated with family films of the fifties; a sort of ignorant embrace of the status quo. This reading is reinforced by the screenplay’s cavalier treatment of the Blangings family’s money problems. Grant and Loy are constantly fretting and arguing about costs but the film never dramatizes those realities, those hardships.
The majority of the humor in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House centers on the all too familiar follies and anxieties regarding home ownership and construction. However, with Grant’s slapstick moments aside, the film fails to be all that funny. The tension between Grant, Loy and Douglas is too affecting for any of the tragedies that befall them to be even remotely humorous. So while monetary concerns remain abstract narrative events with no causality the feelings of fear and stress are always palpable.
