MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 500 titles—from the silent era through the ’90s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Monkey Business (1952, 97 minutes)
A slight adjustment to the suave character he always played finds Cary Grant fumbling distractedly at his own front door. He’s pondering the lab experiment that occupies his working hours instead of carrying out the simple instructions his wife has given him. Edwina (Ginger Rogers) will warm up the car while Barnaby (Grant) turns off the hall light, then turns on the porch light and locks the front door of their lavish home.
The prototype of the absent-minded professor, Barnaby gets it all wrong, wandering back inside the house while stroking his chin, then locking the front door from inside. Patiently, Edwina knocks on the door until Barnaby opens it. “Oh, it’s you. Come on in,” he says, peering at his wife through horn-rimmed glasses with lenses as thick as a Coke bottle. “Barnaby, we’re going to a dance, and we’re going to be late if we don’t hurry,” she scolds him lovingly. Nowadays, this might be diagnosed as a sign of the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Sixty-five years ago, it was just lovably eccentric behavior of a brilliant mind.
“Barnaby, are you thinking?” she asks in their darkened hallway. “It’s a test we made in the lab today,” he says. “We proved that only 23 percent of the formula is being assimilated by the chimpanzees we’ve been using.” “Oh, the formula,” she says. “Now, you know that means that 73 percent is absolute waste,” he says. “Seventy-three, what happened to the rest of it?” “No, not 73, it’s 77,” he says. “What did I say?” “Seventy-seven,” she confirms. “Being a chemist doesn’t allow you to think,” he says. “Things are not going well at all.”
“Well, what about that one monkey you told me about?” she asks. “Oh, you mean Rudolph. He’s about the equivalent of 84 years old in a human,” he says. “But didn’t you tell me the formula has cured his rheumatism and made his coat much glossier?” she asks. He shakes his head. “Theoretically, it should have had a much greater effect by now.” Jolted back to reality, Barnaby looks lovingly at his wife and says, “Oh, is that a new dress? I like the way it sticks out in the back. Or is that you?” “Well, you ought to know,” she replies, removing her husband’s evening jacket. “You should be going somewhere in a dress like that,” says Barnaby.
Not all sweetness and light, Rogers’ character gets off one of film’s great put-down lines after Barnaby takes the rejuvenating formula, himself. He immediately purchases an MG sports car, gets a trendy college-boy crew cut and spends the afternoon roller-skating with Oxly Chemicals’ secretary Lois Laurel (Marilyn Monroe). Edwina pops her cork, confronting Miss Laurel: “You peroxide kissing-bug, I’ll pull that blond hair out by its black roots!”
