Favorite Cary Grant Film

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On the outside looking in.
CHARADE would have to be near the top of the list (you simply don't see such star power in films today), and NORTH BY NORTHWEST remains a thrilling and amusing entertainment. A real charmer I haven't seen mentioned yet would be HOUSEBOAT with Sophia Loren.
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Tough stuff. I can't think of anything I have seen with Grant in it that I dislike, that's for sure.

Probably a tie between Notorious and His Girl Friday. I have seen both again fairly recently, and I adore them both!
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Tough stuff. I can't think of anything I have seen with Grant in it that I dislike, that's for sure.

Probably a tie between Notorious and His Girl Friday. I have seen both again fairly recently, and I adore them both!



One of my all-time favorites too. But I'm willing to concede that, in his early films he was really quite ... bad. But back then, the studios picked them for looks, and made them work in movie after movie. And they developed their craft. I was lucky enough to see Arsenic and Old Lace in a remodeled movie palace (Stanford Theatre, Palo Alto, California). Sure, he does a lot of mugging, but on the big screen the expressiveness in those double-takes had me constantly chuckling. And it was one of the first times when I really began to appreciate him as a craftsman actor and understood why he was called a genius of comic timing. Who couldn't like him in movies like North by Northwest, His Girl Friday, and To Catch a Thief. But I also liked him as something of a hard case in Notorious and Only Angels Have Wings. My absolute favorite, though, is a sentimental pick, Father Goose. It was charming from the opening song ("If ya don't happen to like it, pass me by!") all the way through, and I remember reading it was one of his favorites too because he got to play a very unkempt, un-Cary-Grant-like character. I'll always give it another viewing.
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Arsenic and Old Lace and His Girl Friday


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One of my all-time favorites too. But I'm willing to concede that, in his early films he was really quite ... bad. But back then, the studios picked them for looks.
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My favorite Cary Grant movie is An Affair to Remember (1957), followed closely by Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and North by Northwest (1959).


Some of my other favorite Cary Grant movies are:

That Touch of Mink (1962)
Charade (1963)
People Will Talk (1951)
His Girl Friday (1940)
The Awful Truth (1937)
Topper (1937)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Wings in the Dark (1935)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
My Favorite Wife (1940)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Mr. Lucky (1943)
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So many excellent titles, but for my favourite I'll say Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). Followed by Bringing Up Baby (1938) and None But The Lonely Heart (1944) - quite a different sort of role for him.



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
Did Cary Grant even make any bad films? Seems that they are all pretty good.

It's been a while since I've seen these, but as I recall, I didn't care for The Howards of Virginia (1940) or Born to Be Bad (1934), and I thought Once Upon a Time (1944) was kind of childish and silly.



It's been a while since I've seen these, but as I recall, I didn't care for The Howards of Virginia (1940) or Born to Be Bad (1934), and I thought Once Upon a Time (1944) was kind of childish and silly.
I don't think I've seen any of those or even heard of them.



Arsenic and Old Lace is one of his funniest roles. The whole film is meant to be campy, funny, over-the-top, what have you. He nailed it as he was slowly losing his s***, especially when he was on the stairs talking to himself near the end as the police were fighting (offscreen) with his "brother." Some of his best acting.

Father Goose
Charade
That Touch of Mink
North by Northwest
To Catch a Thief
People Will Talk
My Favorite Wife
The Awful Truth
The Philadelphia Story
Notorious
His Girl Friday
Houseboat
Operation Petticoat

Hell, all of them!
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My favorite is Operation Petticoat. My least favorite is Arsenic and old lace. There's something about his style of speaking that I just don't like. It's close to manic, but not quite.

Honestly, Operation Petticoat would have been much better without him. Maybe recast him with Bogart.



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
It's been a while since I've seen these, but as I recall, I didn't care for The Howards of Virginia (1940) or Born to Be Bad (1934), and I thought Once Upon a Time (1944) was kind of childish and silly.
I don't think I've seen any of those or even heard of them.

You're not missing much with these three movies, but some of his lesser known early movies are worth watching, even though they'll never make his best movies list. There's a Cary Grant DVD set called "The Vault Collection" that has 18 of his movies from the 1930s. It's worth checking some of those out if you have a chance. (My favorite from that set is Wings in the Dark.)