Mid-Week Inspiration: Houseboat 1958

I was lucky enough to catch a Cary Grant movie marathon last Sunday on TCM. A pleasant surprise was Houseboat (1958), a very uplifting feel good romantic comedy. Cary Grant plays a divorced bureaucrat that gains custody of his three children after their mother dies. A young Sophia Loren is hired as the maid even though she can't cook because the children love her more than their pig-headed Dad. They rent out a shabby and leaky houseboat and with some movie magic fix it up into a wonderful home. It takes him a while to realize it but he falls in love with the dazzling Sophia by the film's end. In real life Cary Grant was madly in love with Sophia and he made this movie in an attempt to reignite their love affair that had ended the year before. She turned down his advances and married Carlos Ponti instead.



Here's the trailer: