Große braune Augen

"Big Brown Eyes" is from 1936 and directed by Raoul Walsh. Joan Bennett was still a blond, and here, Cary Grant plays Dan Barr, a detective trying to recover someone's stolen jewels. Bennett plays his jealous manicurist girlfriend Eve, who takes a job on a newspaper after she quits manicuring.

Walter Pidgeon plays Cortig, the head of the jewel theft ring which is also involved in the murder of a child who was hit by one of Cortig's stray bullets. He's joined by Lloyd Nolan. Thanks to his crooked attorney, Cortig is found not guilty. Dan is so upset he quits the force to go out on his own and get justice. Eve returns to her manicure job; both are very defeated by the trial.

This is an okay, fast-moving film with Bennett playing what today would be considered a stereotype, you know, the gum-cracking, wisecracking blond. Grant is very handsome and slips easily into his role. He's not the "Cary Grant" persona quite yet. That's a couple of years away.

I don't know who the Big Brown Eyes were, but it must have been Cary Grant. I saw Joan Bennett in person near the end of her life - she was very tiny, with very black hair, and had beautiful blue eyes.

Big Brown Eyes (1936)

*** (out of 4)

Detective Danny Barr (Cary Grant) is trying to track down some jewel thieves but one day he is given the grim news that a baby has been shot and killed in a park. He finds that the two crimes are connected but can't get any real clues until his girlfriend Eve (Joan Bennett) goes to work for a newspaper.

Yes, you heard the plot of BIG BROWN EYES correct. It's a movie that features a baby being shot and killed. That was a rather dark subject for any period of films but you have to wonder how that plot point got past the Hayes Office just a year after they were coming down on certain topics. Apparently a film with a baby being shot was okay as long as the male and female stars weren't kissing for over five seconds.

As far as the film goes, director and co-writer Raoul Walsh does a very good job at mixing several genres together and in the end they all work quite well. You've got the mystery of the jewel thieves and the baby murder. You've got the back and forth romance between Grant and Bennett. You've also got some comedy thrown in for good measure, although the killing of the baby is a tad bit dark for the rest of the picture. All of these elements work very well and it plays out quite nicely.

Grant was yet a major star but you can see the comic timing really starting to come out here. I've been going through his films in the order that he made them and this role was clearly one of the best of his early career. He got to play the tough cop and do it nicely but his comic and romantic timing is that classic Grant. Bennett is also very good in her supporting role and makes for some good charm and there's no question that the two leads have some nice chemistry. Walter Pidgeon, Lloyd Nolan and Joe Sawyer are also good in their supporting bits.

BIG BROWN EYES isn't all that well known, which is a tad bit shocking considering the cast, the director and the fact that it's a good movie. The film even has some fun with Grant having him play a ventriloquist. There's even more fun to be had when Bennett says a classic Mae West line to him.

Cary Grant and Joan Bennett co-star in Big Brown Eyes which had it been done over at Warner Brothers would have been standard material for James Cagney and Joan Blondell. In fact the whole project was an unusual one for Paramount, it was a gritty urban drama that Warner Brothers specialized in.

Grant is a police detective and Bennett a manicurist turned reporter (only in Hollywood) who team up in life and who team up to solve a series of robberies. What begins as high end jewel robberies turns deadly serious when during a payoff gone bad, a baby is killed in the park by a stray bullet.

When the doer Lloyd Nolan is acquitted in court due to perjured testimony and political influence, Grant quits the force and Bennett goes back to manicuring and look for justice in an unofficial manner. Need I say they get it though you have to see Big Brown Eyes to find out how its done. But I will say that forensics and Bennett's manicurist training does help a lot.

Walter Pidgeon is also in the cast as a crooked politician, hip deep in the rackets, a type that Thomas E. Dewey was putting in jail with increasing frequency in New York at the time. Two very funny supporting performances come from Marjorie Gateson as an amorous robbery victim with an eye for Cary Grant and Douglas Fowley who was one of the gang that they trick into squealing. That is the highlight of the movie.

Big Brown Eyes is a slick comedy directed by Raoul Walsh who gets the whole cast in sync like a Swiss watch. An unusual film for Cary Grant, but his fans will like it.

Big Brown Eyes would have been a big fat bomb if Cary Grant hadn't carried the movie. Even in such an early picture (1936) his debonair, yet cheeky gentleman style is evident. Playing a detective seemed odd, yet no matter what role he is cast in, he makes it his own. His romantic interest, Joan Bennett, seemed a tad too hard around the edges to play his girlfriend, but she did manage some decent repertoire with Grant, especially when the packing scene in Grant's apartment. Overall, the picture is uneven. It can't decide if it is a serious crime/drama or a light comedy. There is a scene where a stray bullet kills a baby (intimated) and there is nothing funny about that. Another scene a man is shot while arranging roses. It's incongruent action like these scenes that makes this movie just short of unwatchable. I have yet to see a Cary Grant movie that I didn't like, and this one seems a practice for his all out great flick His Gal Friday. Big Brown Eyes is watchable, only because of Cary Grant.

Yes, it's true. The actor who in a few years would become the ultimate symbol of film sophistication and elegance has the role of a policeman in this fairly routine comedy-drama. But no matter. Grant has enough charm and grace to make even this kind of part his own. How did he do it? Grant just stands out and is so likable while a lesser actor would just walk through this rather thankless assignment.

Joan Bennett played the kind of sassy brassy part that was often taken on by the likes of Ginger Rogers or Joan Blondell. Did anyone else catch her throwaway line that mirrored Mae West's famous "come up and see me sometime?" Many folks don't remember that Bennett was a blond BEFORE she became better known to later movie audiences as a brunette. Does anyone know of any other famous actress who made such a transition? Not me.

The rest of the cast did serviceable work in the film. Douglas Fowley, who played a humorous bit as one of the crooks, is far better known to most film audiences as the harried movie director in "Singing in the Rain," who had to deal with the chaotic and riotous problems of bringing sound to what were formerly silent movies.

But this film belongs to its male lead. You can almost see in watching the movies he made at this time just how he developed the layers of "business" that came together to produce the screen personality we all know as Cary Grant. He may have been paying his dues by taking on this fairly routine role. In the long run----we are all the better for it. Cary Grant was one of the greatest screen actors of all time----maybe the greatest.