Monroe at 100 Watch: Monkey Business (1952)

Watched:  06/11/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Howard Hawks

Not everything is going to land.  

This movie had everything going for it.  Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers star, Marilyn Monroe plays a major supporting role (just before she landed leads), Howard Hawks is directing, it has Hugh Marlowe, Charles Coburn and even the kid from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (an infinitely superior movie).  

But I only really laughed at a few bits.  

My real feeling is that this movie worked very well in 1952 and has aged badly through changing social conditions and what I'd guess is better versions of similar premises.  

Monkey Business (1952) is a screwball comedy when the genre was running on fumes and a decade before it would be transmogrified into live action Disney films and Jerry Lewis vehicles.  

Grant plays a chemist who is an Absent Minded Professor, so pre-occupied with his work that he fails to notice his own wife, Ginger Rogers, looks like a million bucks and is ready to hit a 1950's booze-fueled party.  Honestly, anyone showing the symptoms Grant is displaying should see an elder-care specialist.  But the point is - he's working on a formula that will make the user feel like they're young again - not just the energy, but as it turns out in practice, also mentally.  

The film is called "Monkey Business" because Grant is testing on chimps*.  A chimp gets loose in the lab and proceeds to mix in random chemicals that make the formula work (and which means we'll never replicate the formula and the movie can end).  

Grant takes the formula and is suddenly feeling 20 years old again.  As a "young man" in the 1950's, he gets a flat-top, buys a jalopy of a car, and drives around with Marilyn Monroe - his boss's secretary.   He goes roller skating and swimming (with Monroe)!  Ah, the folly of youth.  

No sooner does he recover - the effects temporary - than Ginger Rogers downs the formula so Grant can observe someone who has taken the drug.  She goes wacky - like a hyper 17 year old.  She wants to dance!

If what Grant went through was a semi-dated stereotype, with Rogers we get someone who is reliving her wedding night. Which is a bit odd.  She's clearly supposed to be scared of sex and it's a whole scene, but for both - I was wondering "did they retain their memories or not?"  It's a bit confusing.

I think what's weird is that you get the feeling Ginger Rogers really *doesn't* love Cary Grant and it's only exposed through the regression.  I *think* they were saying she's actually being flighty and emotional because women amitrite?  but it reads more like she's been harboring feelings that he ruined her life somehow.  Which..  okay I guess?  Just saying - it sure feels like stuff that is going to send you to a marriage counselor, not just get swept under the rug.**

When she recovers, she acts as if there's barely any memory of what she did or said.  Which leads me to further not understand this movie.

Then, later, both get a stronger dose of the medicine and become approximately 6 and 9.  So its Ginger and Cary running around like obnoxious kids.  Oh, and they do a racism about white kids playing  Native Americans that is intended to be really funny and probably was to some people in 1952.

Monroe is funny when she gets a chance, playing a a goof and really diving in on some malapropisms and misconstruction of instructions and being very cross she isn't allowed to type.  

It is weird to watch a movie where Ginger Rogers is the dowdy one. 

This is a movie I suspect did inspire other things - from Freaky Friday to The Nutty Professor.  Science gone wrong to hilarious effect, people acting the wrong age, not themselves, etc...  It's very locked into the notion that naturally people change over time into staid adults.  

I dunno, it just didn't really work.  With the talent assembled, I imagine it fell apart at the script stage and never really recovered.  So why make it?  I don't know.  But it's nowhere near as funny as Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire, or other movies with the above involved.  Heck, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes blows this one right out of the water.

I suppose if you like this one, chime in and let me know how or why.

*I am the guy who will also fold his arms and mutter "chimps are apes, not monkeys"

**SPOILER - it does seem the pair end the movie remembering sex is a thing they can do, and all is well