EVERY GIRL SHOULD BE MARRIED (1948)

Poor Cary Grant.  He's a simple bachelor who just wants to be left alone to his simple life, but oh no!  Once Betsy Drake gets a look at him at the local drug store she begins stalking him.  Literally stalking him.  She initially flirts with him at the store, but he's not interested so she goes to his work, then looks up everything she possibly can about him all the way back to his old yearbooks!  Next she starts showing up at his favorite restaurants.  During one of these restaurant stalking outings she talks to him and leads him to believe that she has a boyfriend in an attempt to make him jealous (he's not), but then the lie backfires when the guy she says she's dating shows up and tries to rape her!!!  Not at the restaurant, but at his house.  In exchange for not calling the cops about the attempted sexual assault (she got away by bashing him in the skull with a shovel and escaping over a fence) he gives her a job in the basement of his store.  What a guy.  Things go on like this for the rest of the movie with Betsy badgering the living hell out of Grant nonstop and even continuing the fake boyfriend charade with the pervert dude and yet another guy! 

I guess the writers found all of this to be very funny (and maybe I'm looking into the story too much) but I found the whole thing depressing.  Poor Grant can't have a moments peace and Betsy, who is clearly mentally deranged, repeatedly places herself in dangerous situations in delusional attempts to get Grant's attention.  If the roles had been reversed and it was a male stalking a female all over the joint he would have been thrown in jail.

Watch if you want, but if want my advise: skip it.  If you need me I'll be in my room watching BRINGING UP BABY.

MR. LUCKY (1943)

Hmmm, well this was kinda disappointing .  With the title MR. LUCKY I was expecting a screwball comedy about a guy who wins the lottery and then has problems finding out if the cute girl he just met is into him or just his money...or something like that.  Instead, MR. LUCKY has Cary Grant as a tough guy gangster (haha...I've never thought of Cary Grant as tough) who's running an illegal gambling set up.  The law is making things tough for him so he gets involved with a War Relief group in hopes that they'll help him set up a big time charity event and then before they know what's going on he'll split with the $200,000.   That's pretty fucking low, but naturally he has a change of heart when he starts to fall for the chick who's running the joint, Laraine Day.  Yawn.

As much as I like the two leads I had a hard time getting through this film.  The story is depressing, the romantic stuff is just ridiculous and the pacing is murder.  I have zero desire to ever watch this ever again.  If you need me I'll be in my room watching THE AWFUL TRUTH or BRINGING UP BABY or both!

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)

"...insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”

Cary Grant lives with his two elderly aunts in a historic district of Brooklyn. He's a dramatic critic and self-proclaimed lifelong bachelor, that is until he secretly marries his beautiful neighbor Priscilla Lane in the opening scene. Cary and Priscilla make a brief stop by home to pack their bags for their honeymoon, when Cary accidentally discovers a dead body! Cary instantly believes this is the doing of his mentally unwell brother Teddy (who believes that he's Theodore Roosevelt), but when he breaks the news to his two dear old aunts they just laugh and tell him no they killed the man he found!!!

At this point Cary is understandably freaking the fuck out and desperately trying to figure out how to fix this situation when out of nowhere his truly psychotic brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) comes home after being on the run from the law for the last 20 years...for mass murder!!!  Add on Grant's problem is a nosy neighborhood policeman (Jack Carson), a drunk underworld surgeon (Peter Lorre), a horny new wife, a pissed off taxi cab driver, a confused sanitarium doctor and twelve more dead bodies!!!

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE is one of the funniest dark comedies of all time. I cannot say enough good things or recommend it enough. Eighty years later and the script is still just as fresh and funny as ever. Pretty much everything about this film is perfect and even after countless viewings I still grin every time I watch it.

Fun fact: even though the movie was filmed in late 1941 it wasn't released until September 1, 1944! This was due to Warner Brothers being contractually required to wait until the play finished it's run. It ran for 1,444 performances.

Leo White. According to IMDb he starred in 439 films (most uncredited, kinda like here) but according to his own personal journal he appeared in over 2,000 films!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is this an inside joke alluding to GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE was filmed on the same interior set? They sure do look a lot alike.