An Allergic FBI Agent Squares Off Against a Furry Informant in That Darn Cat

Last week, I watched Norman Tokar’s The Cat From Outer Space and was surprised to discover that it starred not Dean Jones but Ken Berry, another leading man from Disney’s Herbie franchise. The next DVD to arrive in my mailbox was Robert Stevenson’s That Darn Cat!, and it made me smile to see Jones in the lead in that movie. I don’t know if I had my Herbie stars mixed up or my Disney cat flicks mixed up, but either way, it felt as though the world had righted itself.

Jones plays Zeke Kelso, the FBI agent who leads the investigation when plucky Patti Randall (Hayley Mills) reports her suspicion that her drifter of a cat, whom she calls D.C. (short for “Darn Cat”), may have a crucial clue that could lead to the bank teller whose kidnapping is headline news. The reason for this mental leap is the watch Patti finds around D.C.’s neck in place of his collar, particularly what looks to be the beginning of the word “HELP” scratched into the back. So begins a curious partnership as Zeke channels his resources into trailing this felicitous feline on his nighttime rounds.

Mills is sweet and energetic, if a tad on the daffy side, while her older sister Ingrid (Dorothy Provine) is rather snippy. She has good reasons for it, though; Zeke sets up shop in her room while she’s out, leaving her confused and under suspicion of untoward behavior by nosy neighbor Mrs. MacDougal. This sour busybody is played by Elsa Lanchester, who I recognized right away as indignant nanny Katie Nana from Mary Poppins. She is, if possible, even more comically unpleasant here, and the efforts of her disgruntled husband (William Demarest), who has a habit of turning off his hearing aid to tune her out, to undermine her are quite entertaining.

Ingrid also has to deal with the amorous advances of slimy carpool driver Gregory Benson (Roddy McDowall), who reminds me of Big Bang Theory’s Howard Wolowitz. There’s a part of me that feels sorry for this socially awkward Brit who seems cowed by an overbearing mother, but he’s too generally rude to stay in my sympathies long, and the scene in which he tries to seduce Ingrid with an explanation of how to properly prepare a duck for dinner is just plain skeezy. McDowall, incidentally, is in both this movie and The Cat from Outer Space, perhaps another reason I got them confused.

There’s really nothing all that remarkable about D.C. He’s basically a typical cat with a touch of wanderlust and a knack for knowing when he is being followed. While Lanchester and Demarest are probably the biggest sources of comic relief here, there are some funny scenes of D.C. thwarting those who want to use him as an “informant.” The antagonism between him and Zeke, who goes into sneezing fits whenever he is nearby, adds to the humor. Additionally, while he’s only in the movie for a short time, the always-funny Ed Wynn is a hoot as a frazzled jewelry store owner.

While I generally found the movie engaging, I had a hard time really connecting with Patti and especially Ingrid, so when they were in scenes apart from Zeke or D.C., I usually found my attention wandering a bit. Still, this is a fun flick with a swingin’ Sherman Brothers theme song that Bobby Darin sings with all the swagger he can muster. As someone who has been known to affectionately utter the title phrase a few times myself, I think That Darn Cat! is darn entertaining.

Cary Grant Patches Lives and Steals Hearts in The Bishop's Wife

I was in high school when The Preacher's Wife hit theaters. Though I'd wanted to see it back then, I didn't get around to it until this year. My mom, meanwhile, had been hearing good things about The Bishop's Wife, on which the former is based, so once I kicked off my Christmas movie watching with the angelic Denzel, I figured I might as well move on to Cary Grant.

The Bishop's Wife is directed by Henry Koster and written by Leonardo Bercovici and Robert Sherwood. The first major difference between the two movies is that this 1948 film is in black and white, a condition I always find gravely disappointing, but if the movie is engaging enough it stops bugging me after a little while. This one is. The second significant difference is that while every major character in The Preacher's Wife is black, every major character in this movie is white.

It's a very different sort of setting, and David Niven, as Bishop Henry Brougham, has a decidedly aristocratic air. He's English, detached from his family and lives in a mansion, where he is attended by servants, one of whom is played by Elsa Lanchester, who I know as sourpuss nanny Katie Nana in Mary Poppins. So when Dudley (Grant) shows up with his little bag of angelic tricks to help Henry get control over his life, I couldn't help but think this movie has as much in common with Mary Poppins as with The Preacher's Wife.

I found Loretta Young more engaging than Whitney Houston in the role of the wife, Julia, who supports her husband's ministry but is beginning to feel neglected. She's a warm, passionate woman, and her vivacity increases in Dudley's presence. In this original version, Dudley has always been an angel, an entirely different order of being from humans, and he's been averting calamities for centuries. He's hobnobbed with ancient royalty, but he's never before become so entranced by a woman that he actually wishes he could stop being an angel. It comes to that in this movie, and Julia is the one who must ultimately decide the course of Dudley's future.

The plot is pretty similar overall. In both films, Henry is pressured by someone very wealthy to agree to the building of an opulent cathedral. In this case, it's elderly Mrs. Hamilton (Gladys Cooper), who seems cold as ice but whose past hides a private pain that Dudley is uniquely qualified to unlock. He oversteps his bounds a bit by taking Julia to a restaurant of great importance to her and her husband and spends an idyllic evening ice skating with her in the park.

Because this Dudley is an angel in a truer sense of the word than Washington's Dudley, he does a lot more than change just the Bishop. He has a profound impact on several minor characters who don't have counterparts in the remake, including world-weary cabbie Sylvester (James Gleason) and atheistic history professor Wutheridge (Monty Woolley). Of course, because he's Cary Grant, he has a different sort of impact on every woman he meets. All the swooning gets a little silly after a while. And I get the impression that these ladies were not acting.

It's hard to say which of the two films I liked better, as there were aspects of each that I preferred. While I would much rather watch The Bishop's Wife in color, the movie is vibrant enough to make up for it, much like its contemporary, It's a Wonderful Life. While Bishop Henry is no George Bailey, we want his life to turn around, and it sure is fun to see just how that happens.