Some years ago I complained that once World War II ended, Cary Grant was content to settle into inane sitcoms rather than the kind of sparkling entertainments he made during his first golden era (roughly 1937 to 1942). Whatever their virtues, films like The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer or Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House domesticated the Grant persona for a post war audience of war veterans moving to the new suburbs on the GI bill. I use the word "sitcom" with malice aforethought. Grant had become conservative with his choices. He would stretch his persona only very occasionally. One of his co-stars during this period described Grant as "the most nervous actor I ever worked with." It seems that the shadow of Archie Leach, the nobody, dogged Grant to the end of his days. The nadir of Grant's post-war artistic conservatism is Dream Wife (1953, directed by Sidney Sheldon). Sidney Sheldon is a name that should be familiar to audiences of a certain age. He is best known as the creator of the television sitcoms, The Patty Duke Show and I Dream of Jeannie. Certain elements of Dream Wife show up in I Dream of Jeannie, as it happens. Its conception of the Princess Tarji (Betta St. John) in particular is the template for Barbara Eden's Jeannie. Sheldon was very successful as screenwriter, as a television writer, and as a producer. He was even more successful later in his career as the writer of trashy romantic suspense novels with titles like Rage of Angels and The Other Side of Midnight. Sheldon had been successful working with Cary Grant before, having written the screenplay for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. That script won him an Oscar. Dream Wife, alas, was NOT a success for Sheldon and it nearly ended the career of its star. After the film failed to recoup its costs--a rarity for any film starring Grant during his major stardom--the actor considered retirement. He went so far as announcing his retirement in the press. He wouldn't make another film for two years. Dream Wife was a disaster for everyone involved. It's also a dreadful film.
The story follows oil man Clemson Reade to Bukistan, an oil rich country somewhere in the middle east. Read is there to sell the Khan oil-drilling equipment and to ask about oil leases. On his last day in the country, he is feted at the Khan's palace, who introduces him to his daughter, Tarji, with the implication that she would make a splendid wife for Reade. The women in Bukistan are raised with the only goal of pleasing their husbands in any way they can. The unstated sexual implications of that goal are demonstrated in a traditional dance Princess Tarji performs for Reade's benefit. Reade isn't interested, though. He's engaged to be married to Pricilla "Effie" Effington, a state department official in charge of the Middle East and the country's oil interests there. Her office is in the middle of an oil crisis, leaving her no time for Reade when he returns to the United States. They call off their marriage. Reade contacts the Khan to see if the marriage offer for Princess Tarji is still good and soon enough, she arrives in New York. The State Department sees Reade's potential marriage as an opportunity to solve their oil crisis by signing an agreement with The Khan, who would now be Reade's father in law. They assign Effie as the princess's guardian and liaison. The princess learns a degree of western-style independence from Effie, while Effie learns to soften her hard edges from Tarji. When Reade's engagement inevitably blows up, Effie remains to pick up the pieces...
Although Dream Wife nearly brought it to an end, the film represents a milestone in Grant's career. It's the last film Grant made in black and white. It's the first of three films he made with Deborah Kerr. It's also a film that shocked Grant out of coasting on safe, conventional, "Cary Grant" films. He still made some of those after his hiatus--Kiss Them For Me and That Touch of Mink are of this type--but he also made films with Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Donen. Dream Wife, it's fair to say, put the fear of god into the actor.
Dream Wife is rancid from the start. The film opens with a speech directed at the audience by Eduard Franz as the Khan in the language of Bukistan, under which runs a ticker of subtitles. The "language" of Bukistan is a bunch of made-up gibberish. It's not a real language. Within the first twelve minutes of the film proper, we find that the Khan speaks English perfectly well, rendering the need to have him speak in his native tongue to a western audience moot. Moreover, the Asian characters in this film are all played by white actors. This is deeply racist and I can't imagine anyone from the Middle East or South Asia looking kindly on this. The sets designed by the usually reliable Cedric Gibbons seem more like Arabian Nights dream architecture than anything culturally distinct. The idea of Bukistan conveyed by the film is an orientalist fantasy. I mean, the film IS a fantasy, but not all fantasies are equal, and this one is deeply unpleasant to a contemporary sensibility. This might have passed muster if the filmmaking was better. Many golden age of Hollywood films like Grant's own Gunga Din hypothetically get away with confounding elements like this on the strength of the filmmaking.* This one does not. Sidney Sheldon only directed a handful of projects. It's clear from this one that movie directing was not one of his talents. It is a testament to the incompetence of this film that Cary Grant--the showiest clothes horse in the history of male movie stars--is badly dressed throughout. The tan suit and bowtie he wears at the outset of the film look almost as wrong as the buckskins he wore in The Howards of Virginia.
This is a shockingly sexless sex comedy, in part from the ick factor of a 48 year old man potentially marrying a teenager, in part because the battle of the sexes politics of the film are hopelessly dated. It does not speak well of Clemson Reade that he cannot relate to a woman as an equal. It does not speak well of Effie that she feels she has to sublimate her own agency to the insecurities of Reade. Especially when Reade is such a godawful misogynist. This is the most unsavory version of the Cary Grant persona, one frustrated by all the thankless little courtesies he's expected to perform for uncaring women. A lot of his woes are self-inflicted. The scene in the elevator near the start of the film is a good example of what I mean. Reade's arms are full and he struggles to doff his hat for the woman who steps on in front of him. I doubt the woman would even care, but he goes through his little struggle to remove his hat only to have her step off once he manages it. Thankless! The date he's arranged that night is similarly skewed to elicit sympathy for Reade even though his frustrations with Effie are all mostly expressions of his own entitlement. How dare she bring home her work, particularly at a crisis point! How dare her boss show up! How dare they turn up their noses at his extravagant dinner! The rest of the movie is more of the same, with Reade being discomforted by his own expectations, and the comedy turns on those expectations being met to the letter by a woman whose upbringing has created a wife that would have been the envy of the men of Stepford, Connecticut.
The galling thing about Dream Wife is that it's a pretty good showcase for the technical elements of Grant's acting. His movements in the gags are precise and his timing is as impeccable as ever. The elevator scene I mentioned above is a splendid example of what I'm talking about. It's close-in, detailed comedy of the sort pioneered by Harold Lloyd or Harry Langdon. Even in the inane brawl in the third act, Grant was precise in his performance, even in a broadly conceived slapstick sequence. Grant would have feasted as a silent comedian if he could have found a character to play. I don't know if "Cary Grant" would have been that character, but I suppose it could have been. All of the good things about Grant the actor are wasted here on a character who is a twit. Moreover, that he has almost no chemistry with Deborah Kerr in this film is astonishing, and not in a good way. Both actors could manage it, as evidenced by An Affair to Remember, but in this film no sparks come off the flint. No fire is kindled. Admittedly, that's part of the plot, but still...many other films without a Grant or a Kerr in the lead manage the same tropes with more aplomb. Kerr, it should be mentioned, is also good in a thankless role. She's the secret heart of the film and it hurts to watch the film do her character so, so very wrong. In all, this is a huge waste of resources and effort.
I don't know if Dream Wife is my least favorite Cary Grant movie or not--ask me again when I get around to writing about The Howards of Virginia--but it's near the bottom even if there's another film I like less. Certainly, Grant himself did not view the film kindly. It knocked him off his game. It made him look bad. It lost money. He could never forgive that last part. If ever there were an actor chasing a payday, it was Grant. If he wasn't worth his quote going forward, what then was the point of making movies in the first place?
*I'm not going to argue that a contemporary viewer should bestow films like Gunga Din or The King and I or Gone With the Wind the benefit of clergy for their filmmaking acumen. That very filmmaking acumen is what makes some varieties of classic films into insidious apologists for rotten cultural norms. If it's a deal-breaker for some viewers, then so be it. They have every right to object to and reject those films wholesale. It's the right of every new generation to tear down the culture that came before them and erect something new in its place. There are no sacred cows.
My other posts about Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
This is the Night (1932)
She Done Him Wrong (1932)
The Eagle and the Hawk (1933)
Thirty-Day Princess (1934)
Enter: Madame (1935)
The Last Outpost (1935)
Wings in the Dark (1935)
Suzy (1936)
In Name Only (1939)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Penny Serenade (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
North by Northwest (1959)
Operation: Petticoat (1959)
Charade (1963)
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