Main Cast: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Marlowe
Release Year: 1952
Country: US
Run Time: 97 minutes
Plot
Howard Hawks hoped to capture the screwball comic fervor of his 1938 film Bringing Up Baby with his 1952 comedy Monkey Business. As in the earlier film, Cary Grant stars as an absent-minded professor involved in a research project. This time he's a chemist seeking a "fountain of youth" formula that will revitalize middle-agers both mentally and physically. Though Grant's own laboratory experiments yield little fruit, a lab monkey, let loose from its cage, mixes a few random chemicals and comes up with just the formula Grant is looking for. This mixture is inadvertently dumped in the lab's water supply; the fun begins when staid, uptight Grant drinks some of the "bitter" water, then begins cutting up like a teenager. A harmless afternoon on the town with luscious secretary Marilyn Monroe rouses the ire of Grant's wife Ginger Rogers, but her behavior is even more infantile when she falls under the spell of the youth formula. Everyone remembers the best line in Monkey Business: foxy-grandpa research supervisor Charles Coburn hands the curvacious Monroe a letter and says "Get someone to type this". Even better is his next line: after Monroe sashays out of the room, Coburn turns to Grant and, with eyes atwinkle, murmurs "Anyone can type." Likewise amusing is Monkey Business's pre-credits gag, wherein Cary Grant opens a door and is about to step forward when director Hawks, off-camera, admonishes "Not yet, Cary." Among the co-conspirators on Monkey Business's carefree script are Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer and I.A.L. Diamond, with an original story by Harry Segall (Here Comes Mr. Jordan) as their source. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Not one of director Howard Hawks' top-ranked efforts, Monkey Business is still a very entertaining, if immensely silly piece of fluff. While the director's efforts may remind some of fellow director Frank Tashlin in its zaniness and non-stop inanity, it's still very much a Hawks film; the care he takes in setting up punchlines, the attention to precise timing, the seemingly carefree flow, the improbability that seems somehow grounded in a strange kind of reality prove this. While the script at times seems beneath the talents of its three esteemed creators, pulling off a story this silly requires the kind of enormous skill they bring to the project. Of even more benefit is the cast, headed by the irreplaceable Cary Grant, who holds the film together with his on-the-mark performance. Grant makes it all seem effortless, and if he finds the proceedings somewhat ridiculous, he never lets on to the audience. He is well matched by Ginger Rogers, who makes Edwina's transformation believable and delightful, and by the always reliable Charles Coburn. Marilyn Monroe has little to do in a small role, but she commands attention nonetheless; director Hawks would find considerably more for her to do the next year in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
George Patrick - Art Director, Lyle Wheeler - Art Director, William Travilla - Costume Designer, Paul Helmick - First Assistant Director, Howard Hawks - Director, William B. Murphy - Editor, Leigh Harline - Composer (Music Score), Lionel Newman - Musical Direction/Supervision, Ben Nye, Sr. - Makeup, Milton Krasner - Cinematographer, Sol C. Siegel - Producer, Thomas K. Little - Set Designer, Walter Scott - Set Designer, Ray Kellogg - Special Effects, W.D. Flick - Sound/Sound Designer, Roger Heman - Sound/Sound Designer, Harry Segall - Screen Story, I.A.L. Diamond - Screenwriter, Ben Hecht - Screenwriter, Charles Lederer - Screenwriter
From left to right Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, and Marilyn Monroe
Cary Grant plays Dr. Barnaby Fulton, a research chemist working on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company, who is trying to develop an elixir of youth, urged on by his commercially minded boss Mr. Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn). One of his chimpanzees Esther gets loose in the laboratory and pours some chemicals into the water cooler — 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). When Fulton's wife Edwina (Ginger Rogers) 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), who, knowing nothing of the elixir, believes that Edwina is truly unhappy in her marriage and wants a divorce. 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 (1938), which also starred Cary Grant and was directed by Howard Hawks, but had a leopard instead of a chimpanzee. The denouement, involving a chemical that causes a board of directors to act like schoolchildren, is shared by 1961's Lover Come Back, a Doris Day–Rock Hudson vehicle, although in that film the chemical — in pill 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 has noted that the scenes with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe work especially well and laments that Monroe wasn't the leading lady instead of Ginger Rogers.
