Let's go back to 1947 for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.
Myrna Loy is Margaret Turner, a no-nonsense court judge and the legal guardian of her sister Susan.
Shirley Temple is Susan Turner, an intelligent 17-year-old high-school student with an number of interests she is passionate about depending on the day of the week.
And Cary Grant is Richard Nugent, a handsome and sophisticated artist who winds up crossing paths with our two female leads. Once in Margaret's court where he is answering charges for starting a fight in a nightclub. It's clear he didn't start the fight, per se; it was two women fighting over him. Margaret dismisses the charges but is wary of men like Richard Nugent and never wants to see him in her courtroom or she may not be so lenient.
Then Richard Nugent is a guest lecturer at Susan's school where Susan develops a deep and passionate love of the arts or more specifically of the artist Richard Nugent.
Susan decides to put her passion into action, puts on a really nice dress, sneaks out of her house and into Richard's apartment.
Richard did not ask her to come to his apartment and does not want her there but everyone is in a tizzy when Margaret discovers where Susan ran off to, enticed by Richard's assumed seduction of this young innocent.
Court psychiatrist Matt Beemish (Ray Collins), who is also Margaret and Susan's uncle, intervenes and figures out the truth. Then he proposes to actually allow Susan to date Richard until the infatuation burns itself out.
Richard doesn't like this plan.
Margaret doesn't like this plan.
Susan likes it plenty fine but Richard is ever so dreamy.
Richard very awkwardly goes to a high school basketball game and hangs out at the malt shop with Susan, all the while reminding her how old he is and trying to steer her towards a more age appropriate paramour.
It ain't working. Susan still has stars in eyes for Richard. So much for Uncle Matt's plan so far.
Meanwhile, Margaret is starting to see what her sister sees in Mr. Nugent, just to complicate things.
Long story short, Susan finally gets her head straight about her future with Richard Nugent and in one last bit of scheming, tricks Margaret and Richard to go on a trip together.
OK, not a big spoiler that Cary Grant and Myrna Loy's characters would wind up together. They've been paired up before in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House .
The film's screenplay won an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay) for Sidney Sheldon, who went on to create TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart.
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer may have a preposterous plot (grown man dates teenage girl to cure her of her infatuation) but it works thanks to the chemistry of the leads. Grant and Loy snap and sparkle like they always do. All I knew of Shirley Temple was a curly haired moppet singing "Good Ship Lollipop" so her work here as a sharp witted teen is a revelation.
Our next entry in today's Cary Grant double feature is a 1952 black and white American screwball comedy film called Monkey Business.
This Monkey Business is completed unconnected to the 1931 Marx Brothers film of the same name which I wrote about here.
Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant) is an absent-minded research chemist for the Oxley chemical company. He is working on a rejuvenating formula, an elixir of youth if you will.
Barnaby's boss, Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn) is really pushing hard for Fulton to deliver on this formula. He says it will make Oxley Chemical a lot of money and it will. But mostly I think Oliver wants to try it himself to put some zing in his step on more time before he dies to make time with his secretary, Lois Laurel (Marilyn Monroe).
Barnaby thinks he's successfully created the formula. He hasn't.
Esther, one of Barnaby's lab chimpanzees, has. She gets loose in the lab, mixes a beaker of chemicals and pours it into the water cooler.
Unaware of what Esther has done, Barnaby samples the formula then washes it down with some water from the cooler. He then begins to act like a 20-year-old and spends the day out on the town with Lois.
Barnaby's wife, Edwina (Ginger Rogers) also samples the formula then washes it down with some water from the cooler. Edwina begins acting like a prank-pulling schoolgirl.
Under the influence of Esther's spiked water, Barnaby regresses further to acting like a school boy.
The "Boy, That Didn't Age Well" Department
While acting like a boy, Barnaby befriends a group of kids playing as make-believe "Indians" (Native Americans). Barnaby's saying things like "We scalp 'em paleface" and stuff like that. They capture and "scalp" Hank, a friend of Edwina's, giving him a Mohawk hairstyle.
Uh, yikes! Awkward much? Yes!
There's more shenanigans and stuff as wackiness ensues. Esther's spiked water is discovered and disposed of. An elixir of youth is not quite the good idea everyone thought it would be.
Monkey Business is directed by Howard Hawks who knows a thing or three about screwball comedies. For example, Bringing Up Baby which I posted about here.
But Monkey Business I think maybe Howard Hawks was not on his "A" game here. The premise of otherwise mature adults acting like immature children demands to be funny but just because something is supposed to be funny doesn't necessarily mean it will be. Everyone involved appears to be trying too hard to make this work.
Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers don't "spark" the same way Grant has with actors like Katherine Hepburn, Irene Dunne or Myrna Loy. The best chemistry he has in this movie is his sequence with Marilyn Monroe during their wacky drive around town.
Despite her presence on the opening title card as a star of the movie, Marilyn Monroe doesn't have a lot to do. What she does is captivating (such as showing off the new space age stockings Barnaby's lab developed). Her presence on the starring title card was a push by the studio to get her name out there to promote her for some bigger movies she had coming out.
Over all, Monkey Business is I think a rare misfire for Howard Hawks and Cary Grant. It is a sentiment shared by Hawks himself who said he thought the film was not as funny as it could have been.
Next week, Cinema Sunday posts another double feature as we move from comedy to film noir and a double dose of Bogie, Humphrey Bogart.
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