Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

This movie was released in 1948, not the 1950s.

Louise Beavers as their maid Gussie was a hoot. Like Hattie McDaniel she took what roles were on offer and made most of them.

My father, a building contractor, always loved the scene in which Lex Barker asks Cary Grant some construction question and Grant, thoroughly confused, gives the wrong answer and a rain of ribbits (or whatever they are) comes down on him and Myrna Loy.

I always loved the scene because Lex Barker never looked more dashing.

Ok, 1958, but still how common was it for families to simply build their own home instead of buying ready made?

Mr. Blandings was in advertising IIRC, did those guys pull that much back then?

One of my all time favorite classics. They even raffled off replicas of the house all over the country to promote the movie...

They built a real house in the movie. I looked it up and saw a picture of it. This is different from the raffle houses.

I was born in 1954, and my parents were in the process of building the house they designed together. I believe it was very common then, unless you wanted a spec box that looked like all the rest.

Suppose building one's own home was common enough at the time for certain families.

In "Father's Little Dividend (1951) upon hearing that Buckley and Kay are going to have a child, the well off Herbert Dunstan summons his architect to draw up blue prints converting entire "west wing" of house into a new home for his son, DIL and baby. Am guessing that Mr. and Mrs. Dunston Sr. had the original home built as well.

OTOH decidedly middle class Ellie Banks takes more practical approach in converting Kay's old bedroom and some other rooms in home to house new baby and parents. Doris Dunstan screeching in horror "a mortgage!" upon hearing Buckley and Kay bought a new home on credit speaks volumes. She obviously finds such things an anathema.

Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white.

"Got that"?

"Yeah, white"!

Again Myra Loy was priceless as slightly scatter brained wife. Her giving the painters a bit of embroidery thread (some random color blue), telling them to match that color and can't go wrong was priceless. Oh and she further instructs workmen not to lose said thread because she had very difficult time finding it in first place.

Maybe this film is why Joey likes blue.

R7

You mean like Levittown?

Couldn't picture the Blandings or their set going for Levittown. Oh the horrors!

If any of you think there still aren't women like Mrs. Blandings out there today, guess again. Speak with some of your interior decorator/interior design friends or contractors. Great thing about such clients is for all the headaches they do spend or cause to lots of money. All that indecision, shopping market, samples, sketches, etc.. eats up time and otherwise costs.

"As you can see, it's practically an apple red—somewhere between a healthy Winesap and an unripened Jonathan."

Thankfully today matching paint colors is decidedly far more simple affair thanks to our friend Mr. Pantone.

Sherwin Williams, Behr and other top or even some middle shelf paint lines will do color matching to produce anything wanted. Thing is you have to go to a real paint store, not HD or Lowes type places.

Friend wanted his apartment done in a lovely shade of deep rich green he saw in a French design magazine. One email later (good thing guy is fluent enough), and they responded with colour formula. One trip to paint store with said information and that was that...

R15

Have always admired WASP women for their knowledge of plants, flowers, etc.. To me a rose is a rose, or a bunch of flowers just that; but those gals can tell you exact names of each.

Clip in R2

Why does Mr. Blandings tell Mrs. Blandings to give Gussie a "$10 raise"? She's standing right there, why doesn't he just tell her himself?

More to the point, why doesn't he just give Gussie his job at the ad company, considering that he's burnt out and she's obviously on fire?

Levittown, begun in 1947 was the first massive postwar suburban housing development and notable then because of its rarity. Two years after the end of WWII there were still serious material shortages, lots of strikes and high inflation as the the US shifted from wartime production to a civilian/consumer economy. It eased for a bit in the late '40's but the Korean War limited a lot of building for a couple of years, too. Far more tract homes were built in the 1950's as developers perfected construction techniques, found the financing and the land to build 'em on and former GI's got jobs, wives, kids and GI loans.

Like R7, my parents had the house they wanted built by a contractor in 1949 because there weren't many alternatives. Including the land, it cost $12,000 for a four bedroom, two bath Cape with a two car garage on a half-acre lot. Little to no private housing was built in the US from 1941 to 1945, period, so there was a huge construction backlog of homes to start with exacerbated by the growing number of newly formed families.

I was an infant, the third of four kids when it was finished in 1950. Some people couldn't wait.

My dad was a factory worker. Handy guy. He and his brother came home from WWII, found wives, but no houses were to be had. So both couples moved in with his mom and sister. They tried their damnedest to save money while looking for places to live. Five years and three kids later, he bought a nice plot of land, and his brother bought one a few doors up. His brother had an office job, so he could afford to get his house built immediately. He and my dad built it, my mom's little brother the plumber's apprentice did the plumbing.

Two years later (1954), with kid number four on the way, my dad still didn't have enough money to buy enough materials to start his own house and prove to a bank that he could build it, so that they'd give him a mortgage. Asked the one uncle in the family with money for a short-term loan - nope. But by then his little sister was so fed up with the overcrowding and noise, she cashed in her war bonds and loaned him the money. He designed and built the house himself, with mom's brother doing the plumbing again, but dad did everything else. It was a $9000 mortgage for the place.

Decades later, after mom retired, I bought the house from mom. I jokingly offered to buy it for the amount of the original mortgage. The house is built like a fucking tank, btw. I hired a roofer to help me and my brothers re-roof the place, and he was shocked by our dad's "everything worth doing is worth overdoing" approach to home construction. He was sure the house could withstand a hurricane. The downside is, every time I need some repair work I can't do myself, it costs at least twice as much as a typical job, because it takes so damned long to tear out what my dad built.

Anyhow - dad was just a regular joe, but yeah, he and his brother both built their houses themselves, not just to save money, but to get it done. There indeed was a national housing shortage for more than a decade after the war's end. One of my aunts and her husband ended up buying a shed that had been converted into a house, because there just wasn't anything else both available and affordable.

House was built on 20 acres of land owned by 20th Century Fox.

"In 1948, RKO Studios needed a rural setting in which to film exteriors for their comedy “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.” Their neighboring studio, 20th Century Fox, had 2,000 acres of dramatic landscape in the Malibu hills that served as their location ranch, so a deal was made and construction began."

"In 1974, Fox sold the ranch to the state of California. The land is now part of Malibu Creek State Park, and the house is used for the administrative offices for park employees. It looks brown and drab and not at all Blandings-like."

Am going to dig and see what was motivation (if any) for Fox to sell land to state of California instead of dividing it up into lots and selling to for real estate development. Even in 1974 they would have made a killing.

I saw this film as a kid one late night when I couldn’t sleep. I absolutely adored it!

Great story R21, thanks for sharing....

Well, well, turns out M*A*S*H was nearly entirely filmed in said Malibu State Park property sold off by Fox.

Long list of films from "How Green Was My Valley" to "Pleasantville" were shot in on this "ranch" owned by Fox.

Nearly every other major studio at time had similar production ranches used for filming.

Productions shot at Fox Ranch, Malibu Creek State Park

[quote] rain of ribbits (or whatever they are) comes down on him

Rivets?

Carpenter Foreman: On them second floor lintels between the lally columns, do you want we should rabbet them or not?

R4, imdb says Mr. Blandings' yearly salary of $15,000 would be (adjusted for inflation) approximately $160,000 in 2020.

For those of us who don't know what the fuck a lally column is...

Now you can amaze that working class stud you're trying to chat up with your vast knowledge of construction.

Throw in knowledge of "lintels" and you might get lucky....

Muriel Blandings: I refuse to endanger the lives of my children in a house with less than four bathrooms.

Jim Blandings: replies: For 1,300 dollars they can live in a house with three bathrooms and ROUGH IT.

Cary Grant's character makes an off colour remark about gays when Mrs. Blandings mentions a nice young man they met at a party recently. Something about he wore sandals or whatever.

By late 1980's we only went across Greenwich Village (8th street usually) to get between Boy Bar and Uncle Charlies, or some other spot in West Village.

R35

Posted response in wrong thread.

Disregard and carry on...

You aren't building a house today on $160k a year in most areas of USA. Well not unless taking out a serious loan.

But then again I don't know.. Like the Blandings largest cost would be land in most parts of USA. So if you buy a house as a tear down that solves one problem. But building new is pricey no matter how you slice things.

I make around that and I'd definitely think twice about buying property in Connecticut and building a roomy, well-made house there while also supporting a spouse, two children, and a maid (not to mention moocher Mel Ferrer). Something tells me that $15,000 in 1948 went farther than $160,000 in 2022 money.

Mr Blandings wasn’t building a dream house, he was restoring one! Every Manhattanite dreamed of that little place in the country within an easy commute.

CT didn't impose a state income tax until 1991, and it's been off to races ever since.

To be fair, CT like NJ saw less need for state income taxes long as they could pick pockets of manufacturing and other sources. NJ for instance taxed the fuck out of railroads which ran huge amounts of passenger and freight service through state and interstate, in particular coal. Once railroads went belly up, NJ had to find someone else's pockets to pick....

Love that scene, R12.

[quote]Now, Mr. PeDelford, we'll discuss painting.

[quote]I had some samples. Here we are.

[quote]Now first the living room. I want it to be a soft green,

[quote]Not as blue as a robin's egg.

[quote]But not a yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow, but don't let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue.

[quote]It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green.

[quote]Now, the dining room. I'd like yellow. Not just yellow, a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshiney. I tell you Mr PeDelford, if you'll send one of your men to the grocer for a pound of their best butter, and match that exactly, you can't go wrong!

[quote]This is the paper we're going to use in the hall. It’s flowered. But I don't want the ceiling to match any colors of the flowers. There's some little dots I want you to match. Not the greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear?

[quote]Now the Kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white.

[quote]A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white.

[quote]Now the Powder Room in here, I want you to match this thread, and don't lose it. It's the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it! As you can see, it's practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy Winesap and an unripened Jonathan."

I wonder what shade of blue the "little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom" was.

Levittown et al were all built to accommodate the truly massive influx of returning soldiers from WWII. There was also, at that point, a huge transition in that most young couples had started in apartment settings, and now wanted the "American dream" and a single family home. After a decade plus of the depression and four years of war, the growth fueled the entire country until the early 70s.

The Blandings would have been the more upscale version of buying in a preplanned area.

Thing is during entire conversation that contractor doesn't say anything but makes various "um-hum, ah, ohh". Once Madame Blandings is out of earshot Mr. Delford turns to his painter sub contractor and says "got that....". No doubt one or both have dealt with women like Mrs. Blandings before, and know just how to handle her.

Myrna Loy likely is best remembered from Thin Man film series where she played Nora Charles, wife of private detective Nick Charles.

Sort of same role as Mrs. Blandings, but Nora Charles wasn't scatterbrained as such, just a woman brought up in a world totally removed from her husband's.

More...

Love that movie, just for Grant and Loy! They're wonderful together, I wish they'd partnered in more films.

Anyway, I think it was common for people to build their homes in the US at that time, that was around the time people started leaving the big cities en masse, and suburbs were spreading over the land like toxic mold. But I don't think it was common in the rich end of Connecticut, which had been full of low-density residential housing ever since the first commuter trains made it possible to live there and work in NYC.

As for whether an advertising man could afford that house... borderline. It was made very clear through the movie that the family were stretching their resources and couldn't really afford the dream house they ended up with... but seriously, they could hardly have made a better investment!

No one who has discussed or quoted the painting scene has quoted the punch line. After Loy leaves, the painter turns to his assistant and says "Did you get that?" and the guy says something like "Yeah, yellow, blue, red, green."

R46

Yes, response from painter sub was mentioned in thread. Maybe not verbatim correct, but never the less it is here somewhere.

The story behind the house that the author of the novel built in New Milford:

The short story and novel were based on the author Eric Hodgins's experience with buying property and building a house in the Merryall area of the town of New Milford, Connecticut. The real house was completed in 1939, but was so expensive — his original budget was $11,000 but the final cost was about $56,000 — that Hodgins was forced to sell it. It was sold in 1945 for $38,000 to John Allard, a retired Air Force general. Hodgins unsuccessfully tried to buy the house back after receiving $200,000 in movie rights to the book. In 1953, the house was sold to Ralph Gulliver, a fuel oil dealer in New Milford, who gave it to his son, Jack, in 1972.[2] In 1980, the house was sold to the author and composer Stephen Citron and his wife, the biographer and novelist Anne Edwards.[3] In 2004, the house was sold for $1.2 million.

Unlike in the book and the movie, Hodgins did not tear down the old farmhouse, but built the new house next to it. The farmhouse remained until at least the 1970s.

R18 the woman was in charge of her domicile. Husband would give her the money to run as she saw fit.

The man had no right to tell her to hire, fire or pay any rate to the domestic staff under her charge.

Nor should he ever interfere in the running of the household, unless it is a request to accommodate his own specific convenience.

So Mr. Blandings is basically saying that they should pay the servant more but can't demand it.it also somewhat implies he will be willing to increase the domestic allowance to accommodate said raise.

Myrna Loy is probably one of the Hollywood stars whose appeal is least understood today relative to what it was at the time. She was FDR's favorite movie star (a fact that was well publicized during his presidency), and was such a huge sensation that when readers of one of the most popular movie star magazines of the late 30s voted Clark Gable the title of "King of Hollywood" (which everyone remembers), she was voted "Queen of Hollywood."

She started as an exotic beauty, and was often cast in Asian roles (like Fu Manchu's daughter), even though she wasn;t Asian herself in ancestry. the Thin man movies (which are on then whole terrific, if individually uneven--the best are the first two and "The Thin Man goes Home") allowed her to play more than just sexpots. She was very good in almost everything she did, and could do comedy and drama equally well.

After Barbara Stanwyck, she is the one Golden Age star who most deserved an Oscar, even before Deborah Kerr (whom I would put at #3)

Surprisingly, she is one of two major Golden Age stars (along with Gary Cooper) born in Helena, MT--where the local movie theater is named after her.

R45 is right that the couple's budget had to be stretched to build their dream house.

When the foreman asked Mr. B about the lintels between the lallies -- "You want they should be rabbeted?" -- Mr. Blandings replied "No, no, I guess not".

The foreman then calls to his crew: "Hey fellas. If you got any of them rabbeted lintels set, rip 'em out." Followed by destruction noises and pieces of wood being thrown from the second floor onto the ground around Mr. & Mrs. Blandings. Whereupon, husband explains to wife that "It sounded less expensive to say, No!"

It's a great, classic film. And then came "The Money Pit". Also great.

R38, Mel Ferrer wasn't in the "Mr Blandings" movie. Do you mean Melvyn Douglas, who played the family friend?

Re "Give Gussie a $10 raise!".

A man would give his wife "housekeeping money", and she was supposed to use that money to buy the family's groceries and keep up the home, including paying domestic servants, and to use as her own spending money. By telling Mrs. Blandings to give Gussie a raise, he was telling her to take a good chunk out of money out of the household expenses and her own spending money - not his personal funds!

Seriously, a $10 raise was a big raise for a maid who'd have been paid less than minimum wage, but considering that she saved his career and the family home, he'd have been an asshole if he didn't give her a HUGE bonus as well. I just hope she got paid big bucks for posing for all those ads, but what are the odds...

From New England Historical Society....

More about the real Eric Hodgins house in New Milford, CT