A most wonderful day.


Unplanned to say the least but, a wonderful treat nonetheless. Today as I was flipping channels I came upon this unbidden, something which I had caught snippets of before but which I still find gripping and watchable.

Since the weather for the last few and next few days is overcast and miserable, I wound up leaving the television on and what a treat:

Grant plays Admiral Matt Sherman, Commander of the submarine U.S.S. Seat Tiger, which is stationed in the Philippines at the beginning of World War II. Joining him is Nick Holden (Tony Curtis), as his conniving junior officer. The story is narrated by Grant, reading selected logs to us from the U.S.S. Sea Tiger captain's journal, a gimmick that was later used in the TV series, Star Trek.

Then, one of my all time favorites:

A surprise Academy Award® winner for Best Original Screenplay copped by Sidney Sheldon (yes, that Sidney Sheldon, the future best selling author at the beginning of his 50 year plus career), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) delighted audiences who lined up to see it again and again during its enormously successful post Oscar® re-issue.

Followed by something I can easily identify with:

The trials and tribulations of home ownership portrayed in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House resonated with a public living in the post-war housing boom. The premise was reworked later for a radio series in 1949, starring Grant and his future wife Betsy Drake, who also wrote some of the scripts. And over the years, the plot has been reincarnated countless times, most notable in 1986’s Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks.

Finally, if you find yourself up later this evening - these two are some of the most watchable films ever made:

North by Northwest came into existence when Hitchcock and writer Ernest Lehman hit a brick wall while working on the nautical thriller, The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). They messed around for a few weeks while telling the studio the project was going great until one day Lehman thought of creating a pure Hitchcock film.

...and for the night owl:

The film’s ending differs from the ending of the Frances Iles (a pseudonym for author James Hilton) novel on which it was based. In the novel, the character of “Johnnie” kills his wife “Lina” by poisoning her with a glass of milk. In a 1941 New York Herald Tribune interview, director Alfred Hitchcock stated that this ending was unacceptable because the studio feared that an unhappy ending would result in commercial failure and because the Production Code Administration mandated that all screen murderers must be punished.

Two things occur to me today:

First, Cary Grant was a singular movie presence the likes of which we will never see again. The nearest actor today who could even come close to being in Grant’s league would have to be Sean Connery.

Second, I have to admit to thinking of Madame X and Betty, neither of whom wouldn’t have been happier than to make a day of something like this and throw in a little baking (cookies?) as well.