May 2003

The Philadelphia Story

• Starring: Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, John Howard, John Halliday
• Directed by: George Cukor
• Theatrical release: 1940
• DVD release: 2000
• Video: Academy Ratio
• Sound: Dolby Digital 1.0 mono
• Released by: Warner Home Video

You have a good mind, a pretty face, a disciplined body that does what you tell it to. You have everything it takes to make a lovely woman except the one essential -- an understanding heart. And without that, you might just as well be made of bronze.
-- Seth Lord to his daughter, Tracy

C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) and super-wealthy Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) have been divorced for two years. She is scheduled to marry George Kittredge (John Howard), a social-climbing executive. A tabloid wants to send both a writer and a photographer to the wedding, but they know the Lord family would refuse. The tabloid editor convinces Dexter to sneak in the reporters by threatening to publish pictures of Seth Lord (John Halliday) playing footsie with a mistress. Dexter likes the idea. He still loves Tracy, and sees this as a way he can insinuate himself in the proceedings and win her back.

Rather than bring shame on the fabled old Philadelphia family, Tracy decides to allow Macaulay Connor (James Stewart) and Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) to become embedded reporters. Connor, a man from humble origins who distrusts the rich, finds himself falling for Tracy. The question is, who will end up with Tracy Lord?

The Philadelphia Story started as a play, written in 1939 and expressly designed for Katherine Hepburn. She had spent much of the early 1930s as a superstar, but by 1938, she had been dubbed "box-office poison" by Photoplay Magazine. The problem wasn’t the quality of the films (which included such classics as Sylvia Scarlet and Bringing Up Baby), but her total unwillingness to play by the Hollywood rules; she was never available for interviews with the reigning syndicated powerbrokers. Hepburn had also acquired a reputation as difficult, demanding, and arrogant. Fans everywhere thought it odd that she wore men’s clothes and wouldn’t wear make-up. If fact, when one of the wardrobe mistresses stole Hepburn’s pants, the star responded by walking around the studio in her panties until her pants were returned. By today’s standards, she might seem strong and intelligent. By 1930’s standards, she was considered uppity. She wasn’t acting like a diva -- she was acting like she deserved the same power as a man. That scared people.

Hepburn had enough career smarts to know that she needed a blockbuster and needed it fast. She went to playwright Phillip Barry and asked for his help. He wrote a play specifically to showcase her abilities and public persona. The Philadelphia Story opened at the Schubert Theatre in New York on March 28, 1939, and played to sellout crowds until Hepburn was ready to make it into a movie in 1940.

She really wanted Clark Gable to play Cary Grant’s role and Spencer Tracey to play James Stewart’s. Gable was busy but would have refused anyway, due to Hepburn’s choice of director, George Cukor. Gable had seen to it that Cukor was fired from Gone With the Wind, saying that Cukor was a director of "ladies films" and didn’t understand the action scenes. Truth was, Gable disliked Cukor because he was homosexual and, perhaps more importantly, he paid more attention to Vivien Leigh than to Gable.

Tracey was also busy. Two years later they would make Woman of the Year, the first of their eight films together. They would also start a relationship that would last until his death. Tracey was a devout Catholic and wouldn’t divorce his wife, so Tracey and Hepburn lived "in sin." Luckily for us, Hepburn wasn’t scorned by the film community for this arrangement. After The Philadelphia Story, she was too big a star.

Grant and Stewart weren’t just second-rate substitutes. Cary Grant was wildly popular. Men thought he was manly, and women thought he was gorgeous. His comedic timing, honed under the master, Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday), was perfect for the character of C.K. Dexter Haven. He was also a big-enough star that he could carry a film by himself.

So was Jimmy Stewart. He had already made the box-office champ Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for Frank Capra as well as The Shop Around the Corner for the legendary Ernst Lubitsch. His upright personality worked flawlessly with the character -- a man suspicious of the rich, supremely uncomfortable in their presence, yet honorable enough to offer to marry one of them for kissing her.

Hepburn took the chance of toying with the unpopular part of her public persona. Tracy Lord (and contrary to popular rumor, that’s not where the ingénue actress-singer/gay-rights activist with the pluralized last name came up with her nom de théâtre) is a tough-minded woman who takes charge, fights when she needs to, and has little room for the strictures of society. Just like Katherine Hepburn. Also like Hepburn, Tracy also secretly longs for a strong man to love her just the way she is.

Director George Cukor had a terrific talent for picking superb scripts, then making the direction invisible. He told the New York Times just months after The Philadelphia Story, "For one thing, give me a good script and I'll be a hundred times better as a director… So far as I'm concerned, I don't like to have the director forever dancing between me and the story on the screen. In the pictures of mine that I like the best, my own work is least apparent." The Philadelphia Story was, rightfully, one of his favorites.

Cukor was correct. All this star power and great directing would mean nothing if it were not for this urbane and witty script. People always love to see how the rich live. Here, we have the opportunity to be voyeurs in a world of wealth and glamour. Then, to make sure we don’t end up fretting over what we don’t have, we learn that money is less important than love. There’s enough dramatic tension to keep The Philadelphia Story from being a simple laugher. For instance, we know from the beginning that Tracy won’t marry her prig fiancé, but we don’t know how Dexter will get her, or whether she will end up with Connor. However wonderful all this is, my favorite part of the script is something more subtle.

Barry’s play and its adaptation for the screen by Donald Ogden Stewart possess the rarest of all qualities: respect. The Philadelphia Story respects its characters. With each character, there is redemption and the opportunity to see what human complexities led to their foibles. For example, watch chapter 12, where Tracy and Connor meet in the library, and notice the tenderness with which the writers clarify the characters’ idiosyncratic behavior.

The actors get respect, too. The writers never simplify the dialogue or the action. They throw tongue-twisting words and labile emotions at the actors with intrinsic faith that these performers can pull it off. Watch Grant and Hepburn bring complex lines to life in chapter 14. The dialogue dances between haughty, mean, hurt, and loving. Grant is hurt by Hepburn’s meanness; she is shocked at his candor. Yet, as Hepburn pulls up her hair and Grant eyes her body, you know that his anger comes from pain over lost love. You have to respect and have faith in an actor to give them that kind of difficult work.

Most important of all, the writers respect the audience. When was the last time you heard dialogue in a film with words like "rapacious" or a reference to the Wreck of the Hesperus? These writers trusted our brains. I appreciate that. So did the writers of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who gave Donald Ogden Stewart the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

The Philadelphia Story received five other nominations: Best Picture, George Cukor for Best Director, Katherine Hepburn for Best Actress, Ruth Hussey for Best Supporting Actress, and James Stewart for Best Actor. Stewart was the only other winner, and, this is amazing, it was his only Academy Award (an interesting side note, Jimmy Stewart sent the Oscar to his father in Pennsylvania who kept it on display in his hardware store for 25 years). Katherine Hepburn, winner of more acting Oscars (4) than any other woman, was shut out by Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (I’ve never seen it either). Ms. Hepburn, by the way, turns 96 on the 12th of this month.

Warner Home Video’s DVD delivers the film and the vital dialogue clearly. The look is slightly washed out and lacks the kind of sharpness we’ve seen in other films of the era such as The Best Years of Our Lives or Citizen Kane. Films of this quality at least deserve commentary tracks, biographies, and photo galleries. Instead, the only extra is the theatrical trailer, which informed film audiences that they were getting a bargain because they didn’t have to pay $4.40 a seat like the Broadway audience did (average movie ticket prices ran about 40 cents).

The Philadelphia Story is a classic, filled with intelligence, wit, honest feeling, and enough humor to make it worth watching many, many times. I hate to say this. It’s trite and generally connotes nostalgic sentimentality more than clear-eyed analysis. But in the case of The Philadelphia Story, it happens to be true. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com

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