1952
Cary Grant - Ginger Rogers - Charles Coburn - Mairilyn Monroe
in
Howard Hawks
Monkey Business
Perhaps the greatest Hollywood director who ever lived, Howard Hawks knew instinctively how to use certain actors. A year before he made his masterpiece Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, he made this superb comedy starring Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers with Marilyn Monroe in a scene-stealing supporting role that helped establish her screen persona for all time. Grant plays an absent-minded professor who stumbles upon a youth formula that restores vitality but causes you to act silly; both Grant and Rogers get a chance to go crazy. Monroe plays a sexy secretary who goes for a ride in Grant's snazzy new convertible and acts as the object of his desire for an afternoon. Filmmaker Jacques Rivette wrote a great essay about this film, discussing all its underlying Freudian implications, but it's also just great fun. Hawks' voice can be heard during the opening credits saying, "not yet Cary."
A film review by Christopher Null |
Mr. Oxley's been complaining about her "punctuation," so she makes sure she's at her desk by nine. That's about the sum of Marilyn Monroe's contribution to Monkey Business, a screwball comedy (made about 10 years after the real end of the screwball era) featuring a kooky scientist, his patient wife, a brazen and dippy secretary, and of course a chimpanzee who's really calling the shots.
The plot involves the hunt for a youth formula by Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant), which he thinks he has discovered when a self-administered sample drives him to do such crazy things as buy a new car and crash it into a chain link fence with his boss's secretary (Monroe) riding shotgun. The only problem is that the sample hasn't done anything; it's the water, spiked by the chimp when no one was looking.
Hijinks ensue when Fulton's wife (Ginger Rogers) gives it a try (thus putting a fish down the pants of Barnaby's boss). Eventually Barnaby overdoes it, turning into a real baby (or so his wife believes). Oh, the humanity!
Director Howard Hawks knows his way around the screwball, but Monkey Business pales next to his inimitable classics like His Girl Friday. At 41, Rogers was near retirement, and her antics recall Lucille Ball (and not really in a good way). Grant is as wonderful as ever, pulling the film along when its plot drags or his co-stars ham it up too much (which is pretty often). Altogether it's good fun -- good, but not great.
Featured as part of the restored set of Monroe classics in The Diamond Collection II (see links at right).
