SOURCE: Jurca, Catherine. “Hollywood, the Dream House Factory.” Cinema Journal 37, no. 4 (summer 1998): 19-36.

In the following essay, Jurca proposes that Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House can be interpreted as an effort to clearly express national allegiance by the American film industry.

Communists, Housing, and Hollywood

In the September 1948 issue of Harper's, real estate developer William Levitt issued his famous postwar pronouncement on the relationship between homeownership and national allegiance: “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist. … He has too much to do.”¹ Levitt had a vital personal interest in his prescription for national stability through the pressures of domestic responsibility. He was angling to sell houses, thousands of them, and the feasibility of his capitalist venture depended on substantial government cooperation with materials and financing. Levitt delivered his assessment of the homeowner's loyalty with the force of a punchline, but the...