While watching Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, I could not help but feel a kindred spirit with James Blandings (Cary Grant).  Though I am not having a home constructed for me from the ground up, there are aspects of his process with which I can empathize.  I will not get into specifics with my situation, but you will understand it as I summarize the plot.  Aside from the literal nuts and bolts of the process, there are other similarities between James and myself.  We all have dreams that change over time.  They tend to get to be more complicated as we mature.  We can desire to be a firefighter all we want as a toddler, but the adult has to also factor in things like purchasing a domicile.  We have to plan in order to accomplish these things, and we all know what God has to say about our planning.  We have difficulty dealing with alterations to our course of action, and those troubles begin when we do not seek first the Kingdom of God.  Our kingdom, or our idea of it, is usually our sole focus.  This can turn into an obsession, and eventually you forget what is important in life.  As we shall see, this is a rough outline for today’s film.

It is concerned friend and lawyer William “Bill” Cole (Melvyn Douglas) that introduces us to Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.  He is to meet with James later, after James has awakened in his small but upscale Manhattan apartment with his wife, Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy), and two daughters, Betsy (Connie Marshall) and Joan (Sharyn Moffett).  There are able to afford their current surroundings because of James’ success as an ad executive.  Bill arrives as the girls leave for school, and he begins telling Muriel about his thoughts on ideas for renovating the flat.  James is not thrilled with the prospect, not only because of the cost, but also owing to the fact that this is the first he has heard of the scheme. With time, and remembering how he has to share a bathroom and closet space, he comes up with an alternative idea. Instead of spending the money updating their current living space, why not buy a house with all the room they could ever need.  Though Bill preaches caution at each step, he nonetheless puts the Blandings in contact with a real estate agent (Ian Wolfe).  The realtor sees a sucker in the Blandings and he offloads on them a dilapidated structure long on the market.  When Betsy and James see the place, the agent makes up a line about it being important to the American Revolution.  The Blandings are also won over by its location and the amount of land they are getting, not to mention the great price.  As so often happens in these situations, this is when the trouble begins.  Understanding that some refurbishment is needed, every engineer they contact tells them to bulldoze the place and rebuild.  Once they finally make that decision, they have to hire an architect, Henry Simms (Reginald Denny).  His initial blueprints are set to give them a respectable home with plenty of bathrooms and closets.  As they review the document, James and Muriel make additions that significantly expand the square footage and price tag.  Other issues to arise include having to dig down a couple hundred feet for a well only to have water spring from where their cellar is supposed to be; breaking a window to escape from a room in which they get trapped, only to have the door with which they are having trouble pop open immediately thereafter; the previous person to lease the house demanding money for the Blandings’ work since his name is still on the property; being told to move out of their Manhattan apartment before their Connecticut house is finished; and, unrelated to construction, having James become jealous of Bill because of the favor Muriel shows the lawyer.  Bill and Muriel had been an item in college, and she gives him a peck on the cheek whenever they depart.  Between the house and thinking about Muriel, James’ performance at the ad agency is suffering, particularly as he has been tasked with coming up with a new campaign for Wham ham.  I know, this stuff should write itself, yes?  The deadline to have his jingle complete is fast approaching, prompting him to spend an entire night at the office.  As he watches the rain pour down in the city, all he can think about is how much he wishes he could be sitting by the fire of his new abode instead of couped up at his job.  Upon his desk are pictures of his family.  Realizing he would rather be with them, and blaming everything he had been through of late on the builders, he leaves for Connecticut just before the deadline passes without producing a line.  Unfortunately, when he gets there, he finds bills and Bill, and he starts to threaten Muriel that their family is going to have to sell their dream home and begin anew.  There is a perfectly logical explanation for everything, but he is feeling overwhelmed.  It is not until W. D. Tesander (Harry Shannon), the man who dug the well, comes with a little over twelve dollars that James finally calms down.  Mr. Tesander is returning the cash due to oversights he had made in his accounting.  Seeing it, and Mr. Tesander’s words of encouragement, James comes to his senses.  It also helps when their maid, Gussie (Louise Beavers), gives him the inspiration for the Wham ham slogan.  We close with the Blandings sitting outside their house on a beautiful day inviting us to come visit them.

If not the actual family, you can visit homes inspired by Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.  As part of the film’s promotion, the production company partnered with General Electric (GE) to construct dream homes around the United States, putting up over sixty throughout the country.  This is part of the invitation at the end, and it was a hit.  Who does not desire to have their own dream home?  Spiritually speaking, there is nothing wrong with wanting such things.  Indeed, throughout the centuries, the ability to provide for a family, traditionally the role of the father but being updated with modern times, has been a mark of being a good Christian.  To love your spouse and family, and to do what you can to secure it, is good and Scriptural.  Catholicism has had different variations on this theme over the years that encompass the nuclear family as you see with the Blandings, and alternative structures.  Female and male religious have come together to build their communities, ecclesiastically and physically speaking.  What I mean with that last bit, literally speaking, is that there are examples of them providing the labor to put up the edifices in which they pray and sleep.  They do this because they have a vision of what their lives will be like, one dedicated to each other and God.  This is not unlike what James and Muriel have in mind, albeit with the religious connotations.  There is a moment when they are looking at the old construction on the property and imagining the kind of house they can put on that ground.  Further, it is the love that James has for his family (or community, there is really no difference in God’s eyes) that redeems him from his jealousy and stress.  The buildings give a sense of security, but it is God’s love that is the most secure.  The film does not put it in these words, but the lesson is there all the same.

This review of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House might seem a little shorter than my usual fare recently, but that can be explained by the extraordinary lack of dialog in the first twenty minutes or so.  I do not think you would have been too thrilled if I told you every detail about how James and Muriel get out of bed, shower, and eat breakfast with barely a word uttered.  Otherwise, this is a solid piece of cinema that deserves a view.