Cary Grant and the Cult of Beauty
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
UPDATE:
Posteritati Gallery is showing vintage Cary Grant movie posters from February 14 to April 15; readers who live in or around New York city might like to check it out. The name of the show, "Cary Grant: The Man From Dream City" is taken from a 1974 Pauline Kael essay published in the
New Yorker. You can read it online:
Cary Grant: The Man From Dream City: Part 1
Cary Grant: The Man From Dream City: Part 2
And now for something completely trifling:
Kiss and Make Up (1934), this week's DVD Tuesday featured film, is a short, sweet soufflé of a romantic comedy that rests lightly on the shoulders of handsome Paramount contract player
Cary Grant. It pokes fun at such then-timely pop-cultural concerns as fad dieting, cosmetic surgery, society-girl hijinks, serial marriage and shameless cross-platform self-promotion. Yes, 1934 - can you say
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?
In real life Grant was a transplanted Englishman from a poor and troubled family - his mentally ill mother was institutionalized when he was 9, though his father insisted that she was on an extended vacation. Grant, still burdened with his prosaic real name, Archibald Leach, joined an acrobatic vaudeville troupe when he was 14. After the group finished a U.S. tour in the early 1920s, the ambitious young performer decided to stay, making his way to Hollywood in 1928.
Rechristened "Cary Grant," he began getting film roles in 1932 and had already amassed more than a dozen credits by the time he made
Kiss and Make Up. But he hadn't yet found his groove: That happened after Paramount cut Grant loose in 1937 and he shrewdly parlayed his sleek good looks, world-class comic timing, crisp yet unaffected diction and physical dexterity into a berth as the once and future king of screwball comedy. I always thought the elusive
Kiss and Make Up sounded cool but didn't catch up to it until Universal finally put it out on DVD as part of the five-film Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection. I don't want to oversell a charming trifle, but it was worth the wait.
Grant plays Dr. Maurice Lamar, a brilliant surgeon who sold out his youthful ideals for the big bucks, presiding over a chichi one-stop vanity shop - the
Temple de Beauté - in Paris. Lamar peddles exercise classes, spa treatments, makeovers and a little strategic nip/tuck to well-heeled wives, while offering advice to the imperfect via his popular daily radio show and peddling his own line of high-priced beauty products. He relies on his smart, loyal secretary (
Helen Mack) to keep his interlocking businesses humming along like well-oiled machinery. Naturally, she also adores him, but Lamar is blinded to her fresh-scrubbed charms by Franken-beauty Eve (
Genevieve Tobin), whom he's personally remade from peroxide-blonde head to perfectly manicured toe - much to the dismay of her husband (classic comic actor
Edward Everett Horton) who liked Eve better when her knees were ever-so-slightly dimpled. Cue the complications: Eve leaves her husband for Dr. Lamar, and Dr. Lamar gets a rude awakening on his tropical honeymoon. His high-maintenance Galatea isn't a whole lot of fun, between her shunning the sun and surf (ruins the complexion), forswearing gourmet dining for lettuce and mineral water (a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!) and taking hours to get dressed because fabulosity doesn't just
happen. The jilted husband, meanwhile, and the overlooked secretary bond over their mutual appreciation of the simple things in life.
All this, plus music: Grant sings a romantic ditty called "Love Divided by Two," while Mack and Horton drown their respective Lamar-related sorrows in a solid meal and a heartfelt duet in praise of honest, down-home vittles: "Corned Beef and Cabbage: I Love You." Paeans to the cuisine of my forebears are few and far between!
Things to consider:
What part do movies themselves play in perpetuating the artificial standards of beauty at which
Kiss and Make Up pokes fun?
Remember: Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This week's new DVD releases
