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Monkey Business (1952 film)

 

 
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Monkey Business (1952 film)
 
 
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Monkey Business is a 1952
1952 in film

The year 1952 in film involved some significant events....
 screwball comedy
Screwball Comedy

Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums....
 film directed by Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks

Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, Film producer and writer of the Classical Hollywood cinema. He died in Palm Springs, California, California, after a fall....
 and starring Cary Grant
Cary Grant

Archibald Alec Leach , better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American actor. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming....
, Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers was an Academy Awards-winning United States film and stage actor, dancer and singer. In a film career spanning 50 years, she made a total of 73 films, and is now principally celebrated for her role as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre....
, Charles Coburn
Charles Coburn

Charles Douville Coburn was an Academy Award-winning United States film and theater actor....
, Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
, and Hugh Marlowe
Hugh Marlowe

Hugh Marlowe was an American film, television, stage and radio actor.Marlowe was born Hugh Herbert Hipple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California....
. To avoid confusion with the famous Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers were a popular team of sibling comedians who appeared in vaudeville, stage plays, film, and television....
 movie of the same name
Monkey Business (1931 film)

Monkey Business is the third of the Marx Brothers' movies and the first not to be an adaptation of one of their Broadway theatre shows. The film stars the four brothers: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, and Zeppo Marx, and screen comedienne Thelma Todd....
, this film is sometimes referred to as "Howard Hawks' Monkey Business."

lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m4135580",this)' onMouseout='hide("m4135580")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Cary_Grant">Cary Grant
Cary Grant

Archibald Alec Leach , better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American actor. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming....
 plays Dr. Barnaby Fulton, an research chemist working on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company, who is trying to develop an elixir of youth
Rejuvenation (aging)

Rejuvenation is the hypothetical reversal of the Senescence.Rejuvenation is distinct from life extension. Life extension strategies often study the causes of aging and try to oppose those causes in order to slow aging....
, urged on by his commercially minded boss Mr. Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn
Charles Coburn

Charles Douville Coburn was an Academy Award-winning United States film and theater actor....
).






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Monkey Business is a 1952
1952 in film

The year 1952 in film involved some significant events....
 screwball comedy
Screwball Comedy

Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums....
 film directed by Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks

Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, Film producer and writer of the Classical Hollywood cinema. He died in Palm Springs, California, California, after a fall....
 and starring Cary Grant
Cary Grant

Archibald Alec Leach , better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American actor. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming....
, Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers was an Academy Awards-winning United States film and stage actor, dancer and singer. In a film career spanning 50 years, she made a total of 73 films, and is now principally celebrated for her role as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre....
, Charles Coburn
Charles Coburn

Charles Douville Coburn was an Academy Award-winning United States film and theater actor....
, Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
, and Hugh Marlowe
Hugh Marlowe

Hugh Marlowe was an American film, television, stage and radio actor.Marlowe was born Hugh Herbert Hipple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California....
. To avoid confusion with the famous Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers were a popular team of sibling comedians who appeared in vaudeville, stage plays, film, and television....
 movie of the same name
Monkey Business (1931 film)

Monkey Business is the third of the Marx Brothers' movies and the first not to be an adaptation of one of their Broadway theatre shows. The film stars the four brothers: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, and Zeppo Marx, and screen comedienne Thelma Todd....
, this film is sometimes referred to as "Howard Hawks' Monkey Business."

Plot

Cary Grant
Cary Grant

Archibald Alec Leach , better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American actor. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming....
 plays Dr. Barnaby Fulton, an research chemist working on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company, who is trying to develop an elixir of youth
Rejuvenation (aging)

Rejuvenation is the hypothetical reversal of the Senescence.Rejuvenation is distinct from life extension. Life extension strategies often study the causes of aging and try to oppose those causes in order to slow aging....
, urged on by his commercially minded boss Mr. Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn
Charles Coburn

Charles Douville Coburn was an Academy Award-winning United States film and theater actor....
). One of his chimpanzee
Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially known as a chimp, is the common name for the two Extant taxon species of ape in the genus Pan where the Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
s Esther gets loose in the laboratory and pours some chemicals into the water cooler
Water cooler

A water cooler is a machine that cools and dispenses water. They are generally broken up in two categories: bottle-less and bottled water coolers....
 — chemicals that just happen to have the rejuvenating effect for which Fulton is searching.

Unaware of the monkey's antics, Fulton tests his latest experimental concoction on himself, and washes it down with water from the cooler. Naturally, he soon begins to act just like a 20-year-old, and spends the day out on the town with his boss's secretary Miss Lois Laurel (Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
). When Fulton's wife Edwina (Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers was an Academy Awards-winning United States film and stage actor, dancer and singer. In a film career spanning 50 years, she made a total of 73 films, and is now principally celebrated for her role as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre....
) learns that the elixir "works," she drinks some, again washing it down with water, and turns into a prank-pulling schoolgirl.

Things get out of hand when her newly quick temper induces Edwina to make an impetuous phone call to her old flame Hank Entwhistle (Hugh Marlowe
Hugh Marlowe

Hugh Marlowe was an American film, television, stage and radio actor.Marlowe was born Hugh Herbert Hipple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California....
), who, knowing nothing of the elixir, believes that Edwina is truly unhappy in her marriage and wants a divorce
Divorce

Divorce or dissolution of marriage is a legal process in which a judge or other authority dissolves the bonds of matrimony existing between two persons, thus restoring them to the marital status of being single....
. Meanwhile, more and more people at the laboratory are drinking the water and reverting to a second childhood, with predictably hilarious results. In the end, of course, everything works out, with help from the elixir itself.

The film is reminiscent of Bringing Up Baby
Bringing up Baby

Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 in film screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It tells the story of a scientist winding up in various predicaments involving a woman with a unique sense of logic and a leopard named Baby....
 (1938
1938 in film

The year 1938 in film involved some significant events....
), which also starred Cary Grant and was directed by Howard Hawks, but had a leopard
Leopard

The leopard is a member of the Felidae biological family and the smallest of the four "Panthera" in the genus Panthera; the other three are the tiger, lion and jaguar....
 instead of a chimpanzee. The denouement
Denouement

In literature, a d?nouement consists of a series of events that follow the climax of a drama or narrative, and thus serves as the conclusion of the story....
, involving a chemical that causes a board of directors to act like schoolchildren, is shared by 1961
1961 in film

The year 1961 in film involved some significant events....
's Lover Come Back
Lover Come Back

Lover Come Back is a 1961 in film romantic comedy released by Universal Studios. The film stars Doris Day and Rock Hudson in their second film together....
, a Doris Day
Doris Day

Doris Mary Anne von Kappelhoff is a German-American singer, actress, and animal welfare advocate known as Doris Day. Able to sing, dance, and play comedy and dramatic roles, she became one of the biggest box-office stars....
–Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson

Rock Hudson was an United States film and television actor, recognised as a romantic leading man during the 1960s and 1970s. Hudson was voted 'Star of the Year', 'Favorite Leading Man', and similar titles by numerous movie magazines and was unquestionably one of the most popular and well-known movie stars of the time....
 vehicle, although in that film the chemical — in pill
Tablet

A tablet is a mixture of active substances and excipients, usually in Powder form, pressed or compacted into a solid. The excipients include binders, glidants and lubricants to ensure efficient tabletting; disintegrants to ensure that the tablet breaks up in the digestive tract; sweeteners or flavours to mask the taste of bad-tasting activ...
 form — simply causes everybody to get extremely drunk.

Hawks said he didn't think the film's premise was believable, and as a result thought the film was not as funny as it could have been. Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian DePalma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola....
 has noted that the scenes with Cary Grant
Cary Grant

Archibald Alec Leach , better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American actor. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming....
 and Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
 work especially well and laments that Monroe wasn't the leading lady instead of Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers was an Academy Awards-winning United States film and stage actor, dancer and singer. In a film career spanning 50 years, she made a total of 73 films, and is now principally celebrated for her role as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre....
.

Cast

Cary Grant
Cary Grant

Archibald Alec Leach , better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American actor. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming....
 (at 48 yrs old as) Dr. Barnaby Fulton
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers was an Academy Awards-winning United States film and stage actor, dancer and singer. In a film career spanning 50 years, she made a total of 73 films, and is now principally celebrated for her role as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre....
 (at 41 yrs old) as Mrs. Edwina Fulton
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
 (at 26 yrs old) as Miss Lois Laurel
Charles Coburn
Charles Coburn

Charles Douville Coburn was an Academy Award-winning United States film and theater actor....
 ... Mr. Oliver Oxley
Hugh Marlowe
Hugh Marlowe

Hugh Marlowe was an American film, television, stage and radio actor.Marlowe was born Hugh Herbert Hipple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California....
 ... Hank Entwhistle
Henri Letondal ... Dr. Jerome Kitzel
Robert Cornthwaite
Robert O. Cornthwaite

Robert Cornthwaite was an United States film and television character actor who began his acting career in 1937, appearing in a college production of Twelfth Night, or What You Will, while attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon....
 ... Dr. Zoldeck
Larry Keating
Larry Keating

Larry Keating was an United States actor born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is known for his role of next-door neighbor Roger Addison on the television series Mister Ed, which he played from 1961 until his death in 1963....
 ... G.J. Culverly
Douglas Spencer
Douglas Spencer

Douglas Spencer was a film actor. He appeared in Monkey Business . Also in the western classic Shane as "Swede" and in the thriller The Glass Wall ....
 ... Dr. Brunner
Esther Dale ... Mrs. Rhinelander
George Winslow ... Little Indian

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