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Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
An advertising executive dreams of getting out of the city and building a perfect home in the country, only to find the transition fraught with problems.
1948 · Directed by H. C. Potter · 94 min · Comedy · Screenplay in the scene database · 6 frames
Tagline
Looks like the Blandings will have no heating problem!
Plot
In the late 1940s, Jim Blandings, a successful account executive in the advertising business, lives with his wife Muriel and two daughters, Betsy and Joan, in a cramped New York apartment. Muriel secretly plans to knock out a wall and remodel their apartment for $7,000. After rejecting this idea, Jim comes across an ad for new homes in Connecticut and they get excited about moving. Planning to purchase and "fix up" an old home, they contact a real estate agent, who persuades them to buy "the old Hackett Place" in (fictional) Lansdale County, Connecticut—a leaning, dilapidated, nearly 200-year old farmhouse on some 35 acres where, they are told, General Gates stopped to water his horses during the Revolutionary War. They buy the property for five times the going rate per acre for locals, provoking Jim's friend and lawyer Bill Cole to chastise him for following his heart rather than his head.
The old house turns out to be structurally unsound and must be torn down before the previous owner's mortgage is paid off. The Blandings hire architect Henry Simms to design and supervise the construction of a new home for $18,000, which Muriel insists must have four bedrooms and four bathrooms. From the original purchase to the completion of the new home, a long litany of unforeseen troubles and setbacks—including digging a deep well only to find a spring just a few feet under the foundation—beset the hapless Blandings. The demolished house's owner also sues them for the balance of his mortgage. Meanwhile, back in the city, Jim is assigned the task of creating an advertising slogan for a Spam-like product called WHAM, an account that has destroyed the careers of the previous executives assigned to it. Jim also suspects that Muriel is cheating on him when Bill spends a night in the house during a violent thunderstorm, with Muriel being the only other person present.
With mounting pressure, skyrocketing costs, and the encroaching deadline for his assignment, Jim starts to wonder why he wanted to live in the country. Bill observes that although he has been the voice of doom, pointing out all the ways they were being cheated, when he looks at what they have finally built, he realizes that some things "you do buy with your heart and not your head. Maybe those are the things that really count.” Gussie, the Blandings maid and cook, provides Jim with the perfect WHAM slogan—"If you ain't eating WHAM, you ain't eating ham"—and saves his job. The Blandings reward her with a $10 raise, and her likeness is used in the WHAM ad campaign. The film ends with the family and Bill enjoying the beautiful front yard. Jim, who is seen reading the book Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, invites the audience to “drop in and see us some time.”
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Norman Panama, Melvin Frank
- Cinematography: James Wong Howe
- Edited by: Harry Marker
- Music: Leigh Harline
- Produced by: Norman Panama, Melvin Frank
Cast
- Cary Grant as Jim Blandings
- Myrna Loy as Muriel Blandings
- Melvyn Douglas as Bill Cole
- Reginald Denny as Simms
- Sharyn Moffett as Joan Blandings
- Connie Marshall as Betsy Blandings
- Louise Beavers as Gussie
- Ian Wolfe as Smith
- Harry Shannon as Tesander
- Tito Vuolo as Mr. Zucca
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: RKO Radio Pictures, Selznick Distribution Corporation
- Themes: home ownership, advertising executive, building a house
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