ROOM FOR ONE MORE (1953)

In 1950s Hollywood, even Cary Grant got domesticated.*  Never more so than when paired with spark-free Betsy Drake, his little grey wren of a wife.  (From 1949 to 1962, less time out for Sophia Loren.)  Based on real-life serial foster-child adopter Anna Perrot Rose, the film reduces the troubled family additions she took in from four to two, added to the Rose’s own gaggle of three.  And what casual affairs getting homeless orphanage kids after they had aged passed the cute baby stage seemed to have been at the time, like a Drive-Thru pick up.  A night or two of difficult behavior, a few fits of crying, then a hug from your new ‘mom’ (or a spanking) to make it all better.  Even for a light comedy, this is pretty abbreviated.  Wise dad (that’s Grant) may try to put his foot down (how to afford this on a civil servant’s salary?), but he can’t even stop Mom from taking in a stray dog.  To his credit, kid specialist director Norman Taurog gets some warmth out of the package, and treats foghorn-voiced George Winslow like a child rather than a freak of nature.  (More than you can say about the NINE Elvis Presley pics he made after this.)  But half the time, the situations & relationships make you wonder if anyone involved here ever met a child . . . or an adult.  Little life lessons substituting for plot.  And what gives at the beach between Drake and that obstinate polio-weakened foster kid she drags toward the water without first removing those forty-pound metal braces.  Is she planning on drowning him?  Sure, he’s a pain, but still . . . 

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Not that Grant can’t do light-hearted domestic comedy; see MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE/’48.  

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The big climax at Boy Scout Honors Night is seriously creepy.  All those pledges!  Listen up to the Pledge of Allegiance which in 1952 had yet to add ‘Under God’ to the phrase ‘One Nation, Under God, Indivisible.‘  President Eisenhower allowed it to be added on a few years later as a sop to the anti-Commie Joseph McCarthy crowd. 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF HE DAY:  *Grant knew something had gone wrong and took a couple years of semi-retirement before Alfred Hitchcock tempted him back to the big screen (and his career Indian Summer) with TO CATCH A THIEF/’55.