ALL SCI-FI

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Monkey Business was a 20th Century Fox movie released on September 5, 1952 and starred Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, and Marilyn Monroe.

Directed by Howard Hawks (Red River, Rio Bravo, and who produced The Thing From Another World.)

Writers: Harry Segall, who won an Academy Award for Best Original Story for Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941.) Charles Lederer, I.A.L. Diamond, and Ben Hecht.

Plot: Dr. Barnaby Fulton, an absent-minded chemist who works for the Oxley Chemical Company, is developing an elixir to reverse aging.

One night, Esther, a laboratory chimpanzee manages to get out of her cage and proceeds to mix up a lot of chemicals of Fulton's experimentation. She then pours this concoction into the lab water cooler.

Over time, individuals who drink from the water cooler experience a significant rejuvenating effect with comedic results for all concerned.

Sidebar: This is one of those fun madcap comedies supported by a wonderful cast. Similar in style to 1949's It Happens Every Spring, if you enjoyed that entertaining movie involving another absent minded professor making a wild scientific discovery.

Look for Douglas Spencer and Robert Cornthwaite as lab assistants. They played Scotty & Professor Carrington in the classic SF film The Thing From Another World.

"You're old only when you forget you're young."

_____________ Monkey Business (1952) Trailer


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__________ Monkey Business (1952) full movie


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[Bud Brewster]

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I loved this movie when I first saw it on NBC's Saturday Night at the Moviesback on Februrary 17th, 1962.

According to my comprehensive list of SN@tM's features, that was just two weeks before The Day the Earth Stood Still made its television debut on March 3rd, 1962 — an event which I eagerly awaited from the first moment NBC promoted the upcoming sci-fi classic, four weeks in advance, with the trailer they presented during the commercial breaks for the preceding features, like Monday Business.

Believe it or not, this was the first time I'd ever heard of The Day the Earth Stood Still!

I was dazzled by the scenes of a flying saucer in Washington, a robot with a death ray, and an alien in a strange space suit!







So, my enjoyment of this Cary Grant / Ginger Rogers sci-fi comedy was greatly enhanced during a commercial break when I saw this exciting preview.

_____ Trailer - The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)


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The thing I like best about Monkey Business is the fact that we get a crazy comedy with the "cool" 1950s Cary Grant — the one we loved in To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest — not the hyperactive overacting Cary Grant in Bringing up Baby and Arsenic and Old Lace!

The other comedy with Cary Grant that cast him as being cool under pressure is the delightful WWII comedy, Operation Petticoat.

And finally, there's this.

I've had a crush on Ginger Rogers all the way back to my boyhood days when I saw her on TV in the 1950s, dazzling Fred Astaire with her sparkling smile and her great legs as spun around in elegant dresses and dared to show us her undies . . .

And she shows her undies in Monkey Business too — but in this movie she's married to Cary Grant, and they make it clear that whenever the mood arises (so to speak), they shed their undies and do a bit of . . . monkey business.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Before the TCM, videotapes, dvds, and Youtube we had: Saturday Night At The Movies. Yahhhh!

I remember looking forward to watching SNATM each weekend. I even watched films that I did not have a big, or moderate, interest in. That's because I didn't know what the movie was about. But once I started watching I saw it to the end.

Naturally The Day The Earth Stood Still was one I love seeing to this very day.

The Honeymoon Machine, Three Coins In The Fountain, Niagara, Cheaper By The Dozen, Belles On Their Toes, were just a few of the movies I watched back then on SNATM.

Wonderful memories from back then of watching all of it with my late mom and dad.

[Bud Brewster]

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Amen, Brother Mike!

Back in the first half of the 1960s, SN@tM was a weekly event at our house, and I now have DVDs of about 30 of my most fondly remember features from that period.

But by 1965 I was seventeen and a high school student who had a drivers license, so my Saturdays were divided between family movie nights and dates with lovely teenage girls who succumbed to the charms of a juvenile Romeo . . . who knew just as little about true romance and genuine relationships as I did.

Fortunately, by that time NBC had established Monday Night at the Movies and Wednesday Night at the Movies, so my romantic conquests could share each week with my family's cinematic adventures!

Ah yes, those were golden years . . .
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)