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 (aka #12dCG). 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 – North by Northwest
Dec. 5 – An Affair to Remember
Dec. 6 – Gunga Din
Dec. 7 – The Talk of the Town
Dec. 8 – Crisis
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. Many of these will be readily recognizable. ‘Talk of the Town’ and ‘Crisis’ are being rotated in to get to cover some of the B movies. ‘The Awful Truth’ and ‘Grass is Greener’ are favorites of mine that are largely lost to the generally discussion of Grant and well well well worth the time seeking them out. The huge films don’t need much additional fanfare.
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.
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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- Merry Cary 2023 – The Twelve Days of Cary Grant - December 1, 2023