Friday Flic!

1948's Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House is one of the funniest movies of all time. When ad man Mr. Blandings decides that a quaint country house is the answer to his family's New York cracker box apartment chaos breaks out with hilarious results. There's something for everyone, whether you've built a house or are cramped in your current one. Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are wickedly spot on. The film gets bonus points for being an excellent time capsule of life and design in the 1940s.

Myrna Loy as Muriel Blandings to her designer: "I want it to be a soft green, not as blue-green as a robin's egg, but not as 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. It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green. Now, the dining room. I'd like yellow. Not just yellow; a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshine-y. 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! Now, 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 of the colors of the flowers. There's some little dots in the background, and it's these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear? 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. Now for 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."

What a gem.

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