Merry Cary, 2018

By December 1, 201812dCG
12dCG

I celebrate the onset of the holidays every year at the beginning of December with a crawl through a dozen Cary Grant movies, so called The Twelve Days of Cary Grant.  There are many exceptional movies to draw from and it’s an opportunity to indulge in the golden age of the cinema and share a drink with one of its smoothest operators.

Selections for this year’s #12dCG are:

Dec. 1 – Topper
Dec. 2 – Suspicion
Dec. 3 – The Awful Truth
Dec. 4 – Only Angels Have Wings
Dec. 5 – An Affair to Remember
Dec. 6 – Gunga Din
Dec. 7 – Male War Bride
Dec. 8 – Amazing Adventure (I’ve never seen this)
Dec. 9 – None but the Lonely Heart
Dec. 10 – Bishop’s Wife
Dec. 11 – Grass is Greener
Dec. 12 – To Catch a Thief

I generally try not to duplicate films from the year before.  NxNW is taking a year off.  I’m fine with that.  Either Penny Serenade or Bishop’s Wife swing in towards the end with a strong morality play for the holidays.  Among the rest are a balance of black-and-white vs Technicolor; serious vs frivolous.  There are many different Carys.  It’s best to remember them all.

Feel free to play along at home.

And thanks, Cary.

 

E. Tage Larsen

E. Tage Larsen is an artist, designer and dog robber. You may encounter him as an art gallery director, branding designer or illustrator. His work has received awards from "Society of Illustrators", "American Illustration", 'Print' magazine annual as well as the LogoLounge and LogoLounge 'Master Series' annuals. Essays on design and fine art have appeared in numerous magazines and web sites.

Among his less savory qualities, he's a poor sport, a sore loser and ill fitted for honest labor. He makes bad friends and worse decisions. Animals avoid him and children despise him. He's been known to drink to excess, carry on with seditious talk and leer at women. He's a coward, a card cheat and a known liar.

Mrs. Call's second grade class said perhaps all that needed to be said about Larsen.In a moment of vindication and possibly clarity, Call would add to Larsen's permanent record that he was a bit of a dreamer and that Larsen was "an excellent student but his grades trailed off in the final semester."True, Larsen was filled with promise and saddled as starry-eyed but one can't help but notice that Call's inability to chisel this raffish diamond-in-rough wasn't also a clerical trick to distance herself from the responsibility of the 'Nurture' debate.She also said he was "prompt".She wasn't wrong.

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