In the late 1940's, 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 convinced 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, dating from the Revolutionary War era, 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.[6][7] 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.”
According to Time magazine, "Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas have a highly experienced way with this sort of comedy, and director H. C. Potter is so much at home with it that he gets additional laughs out of the predatory rustics and even out of the avid gestures of a steam shovel. Blandings may turn out to be too citified for small-town audiences, and incomprehensible abroad; but among those millions of Americans who have tried to feather a country nest with city greenbacks, it ought to hit the jackpot."[8]
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that "as straight entertainment, this ambling and genial report on a young advertising man's disasters (and final triumph) in becoming a country squire is as much casual fun as can be looked for on our sparsely provided screen."[9]
Variety called it "a mildly amusing comedy" with Grant "up to his usual performance standard," but found the script to be flawed when an "unnecessary jealousy twist is introduced, neither advancing the story nor adding laughs."[10]
Harrison's Reports called the film "a first-rate topical comedy farce ... The story itself is a flimsy affair, but it is so rich in witty dialogue and in comedy incidents that one is kept laughing all the time."[12]
While quite popular, according to one source the film actually recorded a loss of $225,000 during its initial theatrical release.[13]
As a promotion for the film, the studio built 73 "dream houses" in various locations in the United States, selling some of them by raffle;[15] over 60 were equipped by General Electric.[16][17] Thousands lined up in front of the house that was built in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, paying admission to view it at its opening.[15]
The home that was built in Omaha, Nebraska still stands. It is located at 502 North 72nd Ave and retains the original look even today. Approximately 30,000 people toured the home before it was raffled off.[21]
Related works
The story behind the film began as an April 1946 article written by Eric Hodgins for Fortune magazine. It was reprinted in Reader's Digest and (in condensed form[22]) in Life before being published as a novel.[23]
A half-hour radio adaptation of the movie was broadcast on NBC's Screen Directors Playhouse on July 1, 1949.[24] Grant reprised his role as Jim Blandings, and Frances Robinson played his wife Muriel.[25] On October 10, 1949 CBS's Lux Radio Theatre presented a one-hour adaptation,[26] with Irene Dunne as Muriel.[27]Screen Directors Playhouse gave a second performance of its half-hour version on June 9, 1950, this time with Grant's wife Betsy Drake as Muriel.[28]
On January 21, 1951, Mr. and Mrs. Blandings, a weekly comedy radio series starring Cary Grant and Betsy Drake, premiered on NBC.[29] Sponsored by Trans-World Airlines, it followed the adventures of the Blandings family after their move into their dream house.
An episode of the 1950s television anthology series Stage 7, titled The Hayfield, aired on September 18, 1955, and was based on the Blandings characters. The episode was a television pilot produced by Four Star Productions for a planned but ultimately unproduced weekly series, Blandings' Way.[30]Macdonald Carey and Phyllis Thaxter played the Blandings in this version. In the episode, Mr. Blandings attempts to clear a hayfield on his property by burning it off, with predictably disastrous results.
In the late 1950s, Screen Gems Productions also proposed The Blandings, a weekly TV series featuring the family.[31]Robert Rockwell was considered for the lead,[32] but the pilot featured Steve Dunne instead, with Maggie Hayes. The series was never produced, but the pilot ran on April 27, 1959 as an episode of Goodyear Theatre titled A Light in the Fruit Closet.[33]
In a promotion for the film, RKO built 73 replica houses around the US, such as Spokane in Washington;[39] Hartford, Bridgeport, Trumbull and Wethersfield in Connecticut;[40] Warwick in Rhode Island;[40] Worcester, Natick, Newton and Springfield in Massachusetts;[40] and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.[citation needed] They were sold by raffle contests and other methods, with General Electric.[41][42][43]
In 1950, after seeing the film at a local theater, dentist Luther Werner Fetter and his wife Mary purchased the plans for the house from RKO, which produced the film, and built a complete replica of it on Mt. Joy Street in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. They moved into the house that Christmas. After Mary Fetter died in an automobile accident in 1960, Dr. Fetter remained the house's sole occupant until his death in 2002.[44]
In real life, the family of the author, Eric Hodgins, built their house in the Litchfield County town of New Milford, Connecticut.[45] In 1945, Hodgins sold, for $38,000, to John Allard, a retired Air Force general.[46] In 1953, for $40,000, Ralph Gulliver, a New Milford fuel dealer, bought the property.[46] In 1972, his son, Jack and Jill Gulliver lived there.[46] It was sold in 1980 for an undisclosed amount,[34][45] and 2004 for $1.2 million.[40]
George Washington Slept Here, a 1942 film based on a 1940 play about a couple who refurbish a broken-down old house of some possible historical significance
^Regester, Charlene B. (14 June 2010). African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900–1960. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 103. ISBN978-0253221926.
^Palmer, Phyllis (8 August 1991). Domesticity And Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945. Women In The Political Economy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. p. 40. ISBN0877229015.
^The Oregonian (January 17, 2012). "Mr. Blandings' Dream House, 1948". Vintage Portland. vintageportland.wordpress.com. Archived from the original on September 23, 2012. Retrieved 2012-11-04. The Portland-area house was built in the Cedar Hills area of Beaverton... on the northwest corner of SW Walker Road and Mayfield Avenue.
^Susie Steckner (August 2008). "Arizona Dreamin'". Phoenix magazine. Archived from the original on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2011-03-19.
^Benjamin Briggs (October 2012). "Secrets of Hamilton Lake". Preservation Greensboro blog. Archived from the original on 2013-09-28. Retrieved 2013-07-19.
^ abGrandjean, Patricia (24 May 1992). "From Mr. Blandings's Nightmare, a Couple's Dream House Stirs". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 June 2023. And to the left of the entrance hall, where one would normally expect to find a closet, one sees a small liquor cabinet and bar instead -- decorated with ribald murals by The New Yorker cartoonist Mimoucha Nebel.
