Silver Screen Icons: Cary Grant

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House: Cary Grant is hilarious as a successful New York advertising executive who wants to escape the confines of his family's tiny midtown apartment. So he designs his dream home in the suburbs and discovers the project wasn't as easy as it seemed. The house gets larger. The bills get bigger. The problems just won't go away. Eventually, the whole affair becomes a nightmare a very funny nightmare that left audiences laughing in 1948 and will have you in stitches, too. This is the comedic masterpiece that inspired the popular 1987 movie "The Money Pit." My Favorite Wife: All aboard for a spinning marriage-go-round! Cary Grant, the screen's ideal combination of romantic hunk and comedy buffoon, plays flabbergasted Nick. Radiant Irene Dunne, Grant's The Awful Truth and Penny Serenade co-star, plays the returned wife who cagily sets out to reclaim her former life. And Randolph Scott and Gail Patrick add to the marital mixup as Nick goes from having one wife to two to none to one. The right one. What romantic comedy has joined together let no one put asunder. Of all the giddy screwball comedies ever made, this remains an enduring favorite. Night and Day: Swellegant and elegant. Deluxe and delovely. Cole Porter was the most sophisticated name in 20th-century songwriting. And to play him on screen, Hollywood chose debonair icon Cary Grant. Grant stars for the first time in color in this fanciful biopic. Alexis Smith plays Linda, whose serendipitous meetings with Cole lead to a meeting at the altar. More than 20 Porter songs grace this tale of triumph and tragedy, with Grant lending his amiable voice to You're the Top, Night and Day and more. Monty Woolley, a Yale contemporary of Porter, portrays himself. The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer: Through no fault of his own, artist and ladies man Richard Nugent finds a love-besotted teenage girl curled on his sofa. Through no fault of his own, the teen's sister is a judge who "sentences" thunderstruck Richard to date the girl until her schoolgirl crush wanes. Circumstances aren't kind to Richard. But they certainly are hilarious when Cary Grant plays Richard, Myrna Loy is the judge and Shirley Temple is the teen.