The Mother of Romantic Comedies

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Tracy (Katharine Hepburn): If you just face the facts squarely as I did.

Margaret (Mary Nash): We both might face the fact that neither of us have proved to be a very great success as a wife.

Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husbands, that's all.

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I suppose it is tempting to call "The Philadelphia Story," which premiered on this date in 1940, the best of Jimmy Stewart's career. After all, he received his only Best Actor Oscar for his performance in that movie — although he was nominated for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "It's a Wonderful Life," "Harvey" and "Anatomy of a Murder," all favorites of mine.

Frankly, if Stewart could only win Best Actor once, I would have preferred that he win it for any of those performances instead. Don't get me wrong. "The Philadelphia Story" was good, but it just wasn't unique, at least in the way those others were. Still, its influence was far reaching.

I suppose it can't really be said that "The Philadelphia Story" performance was the best by Katharine Hepburn, who was the star of the show and was nominated for Best Actress (she had a dozen Best Actress nominations in her career), but she didn't win (Ginger Rogers won for "Kitty Foyle").

Poor Cary Grant wasn't even nominated — and his performance in "The Philadelphia Story" is regarded as his best by many film critics.
In hindsight, I guess you could call "The Philadelphia Story" the mother of romantic comedies.

"The Philadelphia Story" certainly occupies an important place in the story of Hepburn's career. She won the Best Actress Oscar in 1934 and was nominated again in 1936, but her career had been on a downward spiral prior to this day in 1940. She had even been labeled "box office poison" so it could rightfully be said that "The Philadelphia Story" was what turned her career around — and made it possible for her to be nominated nine more times and to win three.

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Without "The Philadelphia Story," which was the fifth–most popular movie of 1941 (earning more than $2.3 million in North America), it is quite possible that Hepburn's career would have vanished into oblivion.

So even though she didn't win the Oscar, she probably won something that she valued more.

It was the kind of romantic comedy that was most popular in the '30s and '40s — one in which a married couple get divorced, dally with others, make their exes jealous and then get back together. Well, that's probably oversimplified for most of the movies in that genre — but it pretty much sums up the plot of "The Philadelphia Story."

And there was probably no one better prepared for the role he played in it than Grant. What the earthy John Wayne was to the western the debonair Cary Grant was to the romantic comedy.

Hepburn and Grant played a couple who apparently had married on something of a whim, then got divorced. Two years later, Grant showed up at Hepburn's home just before she was to marry someone else. Hepburn's character was a member of a socially prominent family so, naturally, her wedding drew folks from the press, one of whom was Stewart.

The stage was set for some high–society conflicts. In fact, "the stage" is an appropriate noun to use because "The Philadelphia Story" began life as a stage play. Hepburn acquired the film rights to it with the intention of using it as her comeback springboard.

Mission accomplished.

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Macaulay Connor (Jimmy Stewart): Doggone it, C.K. Dexter Haven. Either I'm gonna sock you or you're gonna sock me.

C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant): Shall we toss a coin?

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If you've seen a documentary on the golden age of moviemaking, you have probably seen the memorable scene early in the movie when Grant's character, as he leaves Hepburn, puts his palm on her face and pushes her back inside the house. In conversations I have had with movie fans, that scene is probably second only to the one in which James Cagney grinds grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face in "Public Enemy" on the Most Memorable scale.

Kind of similar scenes. But not entirely.

"Public Enemy" wasn't a madcap romantic comedy, though, and "The Philadelphia Story" was. I'll leave all its quirky twists and turns for you to discover for yourself. That's the real fun of it.

Judy Holliday Was No Dummy

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Billie (Judy Holliday): You're just not couth!

Harry (Broderick Crawford): Yeah? Well, I'm as couth as you are!

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Judy Holliday wasn't the movies' first dumb blonde, and she certainly wasn't the last. But she may have been the best.

Let's be clear here, though. Judy Holliday was not dumb. She was said to have had an IQ of 172. That would put her in the ballpark with Albert Einstein, whose IQ is unknown but is estimated to have been between 160 and 190, and just behind Leonardo da Vinci, whose IQ was estimated to be between 180 and 190. That's pretty impressive company.

But she knew how to play dumb. She won the Oscar for Best Actress for playing the dumb blonde in "Born Yesterday," which premiered on this date in 1950. For a comedy, it garnered quite a few Oscar nominations — for Best Picture, Best Director (George Cukor), Best Screenplay, Best Black and White Costume Design — in addition to Holliday's. When she smiled for the camera, her twinkling eyes seemed to be saying, "You know, this is really an act. I'm a lot smarter than I seem."

"Born Yesterday" is a movie I never tire of watching — and what a treat it must have been for audiences 65 years ago to go to the theaters the day after Christmas and see Judy Holliday co–starring with William Holden and Broderick Crawford.

Kind of reminds me of Christmases when I was a child, and my parents would take my brother and me to the movies either on Christmas Day or the day after Christmas.

I don't think we ever went to a theater during the Christmas season and saw a movie that is regarded as a classic today, though, and I know for sure that we never saw a trio as talented as Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford and William Holden.

Even so, Christmas always seemed to me to be a smart time for a studio to release a movie that seemed destined to be a blockbuster — or that the studio simply wanted to draw bigger audiences — but they didn't really seem to do that much when I was growing up. They do it a lot more now.

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It was an interesting shift for Crawford, who won a Best Actor Oscar for "All the King's Men" the year before. In some ways, though, it was the same character. They were both manipulators; Willie Stark was just better at it than Harry Brock. Maybe the product that Willie Stark was selling (himself) was more highly regarded than what Harry Brock was selling (junk) — although, given the reputation politicians seem to have always had, that seems to be backward, doesn't it?

Of course, the story did take place in Washington, D.C., which was where Harry was trying to buy a congressman.

For that matter, Holden hadn't yet been nominated for an Oscar when he made "Born Yesterday," but he got his first Oscar nomination for his performance in "Sunset Boulevard," which was in theaters only a few months earlier — and probably was still showing in many theaters in that pre–multiscreen cineplex era when movies could and did show at the same theaters for months.

Initially, Harry hired Holden's character to smooth Holliday's rough edges and instruct her in some of the finer points of government and history.

That way she could converse intelligently with Harry's clients. But she learned a lot more than he expected her to learn from Holden.

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In the process, they fell in love.

And Holliday's character showed millions of Americans what being a liberated woman was about — a couple of decades before the phrase became a part of modern American lingo.

Holliday played the role with true panache.

And, really, I would expect no less from someone as smart as she was.

Was 'Adam's Rib' Hepburn and Tracy's Best?

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I don't know if "Adam's Rib," which premiered 65 years ago today, was the best of the Spencer Tracy–Katharine Hepburn movies.

Tracy and Hepburn made nine movies, after all.

But the American Film Institute ranked it higher than any of their other movies — #22 overall.

They played a variety of roles in their movies. In this one, they played married lawyers who had to oppose each other in court. Hepburn was defending a woman accused of shooting her husband. Tracy was the prosecuting attorney. The defendant was played by Judy Holliday in only her second credited movie. Her husband was played by Tom Ewell, who went on to star in "The Seven–Year Itch" on both stage and screen.

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Amanda (Katharine Hepburn): What I said was true, there's no difference between the sexes. Men, women, the same.

Adam (Spencer Tracy): They are?

Amanda: Well, maybe there is a difference, but it's a little difference.

Adam: Well, you know as the French say...

Amanda: What do they say?

Adam: Vive la difference!

Amanda: Which means?

Adam: Which means hurrah for that little difference.

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Seems Ewell's character had been itching in "Adam's Rib," too. That is why Holliday shot him. She believed he had been having an affair, and she opened fire on him when he was with his girlfriend, but she wasn't a very good shot and only managed to strike his shoulder. She was distraught, not responsible for her actions.

Well, that was Hepburn's argument.

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Hepburn's defense really was ahead of its time — it was, essentially, the battered wife syndrome. Well, not so much battered as abused — as in emotional, not physical or sexual, abuse. Hepburn argued that Holliday had been forced to act as she did because of Ewell's poor treatment of her.

Tracy thought Holliday was guilty of attempted murder — then found out he had been assigned the case. Normally, that would be cause for celebration, but Tracy immediately realized it would mean a pretty unpleasant home life until the trial was over.

Therein lay the plot of "Adam's Rib." I'm sure you can guess many of the jokes. It could have been a routine comedy except for the professional approaches of Hepburn and Tracy.

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Amanda: No part of marriage is the exclusive province of any one sex.

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Even obvious jokes were enjoyable when they were delivered by Hepburn and Tracy, though. "Adam's Rib" may not have been an Oscar–worthy movie — unlike other movies they made together — but it delivered on entertainment. In fact, there are those who consider it a classic of the romantic comedy genre.

Cocky vs. Cockney

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"The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated."

Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn)

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My grandmother loved musicals. Her daughter (my mother) loved some musicals, too, not all — but they both loved George Cukor's "My Fair Lady," the movie version of the musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's 1912 play "Pygmalion" that made its big–screen debut 50 years ago today.

At one time, "My Fair Lady" was the longest–running musical in Broadway history, and that, I suppose, was the premise for making it into a movie.

That, however, was only one of several aspects of "My Fair Lady." It worked quite well on the stage and screen as a musical, and, with music by Lerner and Loewe, how could it not?

But it also worked as the spoof of the British class system that Shaw intended it to be. In fact, you could watch it several times, or a group of people could watch it together, and each experience could be unique.

There were lots of movie musicals in the 1960s; that wasn't what made "My Fair Lady" unique. But it may have been the pinnacle of the genre — beautifully filmed, elegantly costumed, gracefully acted.

The cast was wonderful, led by Rex Harrison and the always–beautiful Audrey Hepburn, who always lit up the screen (even if her singing was done by someone else — which it was. Marni Nixon did the singing in "My Fair Lady" as well as "The King and I" and "West Side Story.").

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I am not a fan of musicals, but I would agree that the music in "My Fair Lady" was exceptional. I think it still holds up half a century later.

"I cannot decide if I am happier when the characters are talking or when they are singing," film critic Roger Ebert wrote. "The songs are literate and beloved; some romantic, some comic, some nonsense, some surprisingly philosophical, every single one wonderful."

As I recall, my mother and grandmother were especially fond of "I Could Have Danced All Night," the song that Audrey Hepburn sang after the iconic scene in which Harrison said, "By George, I think she's got it!" and he danced around the room with Hepburn while the two of them, along with Wilfrid Hyde–White (in perhaps his best–known role as Colonel Pickering), chanted variations on "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain."

If you haven't seen the movie, trust me, it makes sense when seen in context.

On the other hand, wrote Ebert, "The dialogue by Alan Jay Lerner [who also penned the song lyrics] wisely retains a great deal of 'Pygmalion.'"

Not to mention, as I said before, Shaw's original intent.

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As I say, I'm not really a fan of musicals, but I think my favorite piece in "My Fair Lady" is the one from the race track, in which the patrons, to a minuet–like tune and in voices lacking any emotion at all, sang "Ascot Gavotte." Shaw would have been proud.

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"Pulses rushing, faces flushing,
Heartbeats speed up,
I have never been so keyed up.
Any second now they'll begin to run.
Hark! a bell is ringing,
They are springing forward.
Look, it has begun!"

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The horses ran past the totally still and silent onlookers, who resumed their song after the horses passed them, again with no emotion.

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"What a frenzied moment that was!
Didn't they maintain an exhausting pace?
'Twas a thrilling, absolutely chilling running of
The Ascot opening race."

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Hepburn was the Cockney flower girl whom the cocky Harrison was going to pass off as a duchess. It was a clash of the titanic wills. As Ebert observed, "It is characteristic that, in a musical that has love as its buried theme, no one ever kisses or seems about to."

I can't explain why it was that way with the rest of the cast, but, with Harrison and Hepburn, I think it's largely because their relationship was largely adversarial. The audience knew the characters were in love long before they did — and even when they realized at the end that they did love each other, they couldn't completely shift gears.

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Astonishingly, Hepburn wasn't nominated for Best Actress.

"My Fair Lady" won eight Oscars — including Best Picture, Best Director (Cukor), Best Actor (Harrison) — but Hepburn wasn't even nominated. Julie Andrews won Best Actress that year for "Mary Poppins."

Judy Garland's Comeback

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"He gave me a look at myself I've never had before. He saw something in me nobody else ever did. He made me see it, too. He made me believe it."

Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester (Judy Garland)

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We're overdue for another remake of "A Star is Born."

The original version, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, was made in 1937. The first remake premiered 60 years ago today, and the third version, with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, hit the theaters 22 years later.

Of the three versions, the one that premiered on this day in 1954 was superior to the others. After all, it starred Judy Garland, and no one could sing like Judy Garland. Her co–star was James Mason as the fading star who tries to give her a boost as his career begins its descent.

Apparently, it was treated as Garland's comeback, given the fact that it had been about four or five years since her last movie. She was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award, and everyone seemed to assume she would win. She couldn't attend the Oscars ceremony because she had just given birth to her son so NBC, which broadcast the Oscars in the 1950s, sent a camera crew to her hospital room so she could give her speech on TV.

Except she didn't win. Grace Kelly did — for "The Country Girl."

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I suppose, if one is going to launch a show–biz comeback, being in a movie that is about show biz is a pretty good way to do it.

Director George Cukor's story certainly must seem predictable to 21st–century viewers. Considering that it was a remake, it should have been familiar to viewers in 1954, too. After all, it was faithful to the story that was told in the Janet Gaynor–Fredric March movie.

Garland played an up–and–coming singer/actress who married an alcoholic actor on the downside of his career. She relied on his wisdom at first, but, as she became more self–sufficient, she needed his intervention less and less, and Mason's character, already struggling with alcohol, retreated deeper into the bottle.

It was a battle his character did not win. Although he sought treatment and seemed to recover, he suffered a relapse when Jack Carson, playing a publicist, accused him of living off his wife's income. This sent Mason's character on a drinking binge that led to his arrest.

When he realized that Garland had decided to sacrifice her career to care for him, Mason committed suicide in the famous scene in which he walks into the sea and drowns. (Well, March did it first.) His hope was to free Garland to pursue her destiny as a star — but, instead, she became a recluse.

A friend snapped her out of it by telling her she was wasting the career that Mason's character wanted to save, and she agreed to appear in public again, introducing herself as "Mrs. Norman Maine."

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When I was younger, I thought Streisand and Kristofferson gave the movie its musical spin even though I knew Garland was in the 1954 version. But I was wrong. Garland gave it its first musical spin. She sang lots of songs in "A Star Is Born." If you went to a theater 60 years ago today hoping to hear Judy Garland sing, you weren't disappointed.

But people who hoped for a blockbuster of a movie were disappointed. By 1954 standards, it was very expensive to make. It made more than $6 million — an impressive figure for 1954 but not enough to recover the investment that was made in it. Was that a factor in the Oscar vote that year?

"A Star Is Born" was nominated for six Oscars and lost them all.

Pay No Attention to Those Flickering Lights

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gas·light [gas-lahyt]

noun
1. light produced by the combustion of illuminating gas.
2. a gas burner or gas jet for producing this kind of light.

adjective
3.gaslit ( def 2 ) .

verb (used with object), gas·light·ed or gas·lit, gas·light·ing.
4. to cause (a person) to doubt his or her sanity through the use of psychological manipulation: How do you know if your partner is gaslighting you?

Origin: 1800–10; gas + light1 ; def 4 in reference to the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which an abusive husband secretly and repeatedly dims and brightens the gaslights in the house while accusing his wife of imagining the flickering

Random House Dictionary

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Ingrid Bergman won her first Oscar for George Cukor's "Gaslight," which premiered 70 years ago today. That movie also earned the rare distinction of serving as the illustration for a term in the dictionary — in this case, a verb.

I don't know if gaslight is used frequently anymore, but, surely, everyone can understand the concept. Bergman's character was driven to the very brink of madness through the psychological manipulation of her husband (Charles Boyer).

"I think [Bergman]'s my favorite movie actress," wrote Roger Ebert, and I think many people would agree. Bergman was still young in 1944, but she already had a reputation and a following. She was pretty well known by the time she won her Oscar for "Gaslight."

See, Bergman played a turn–of–the–century young singer who fell for a dashing older man (Boyer). They got married and set up their home in a house Bergman's character had inherited from her aunt, also a singer who had been murdered there a decade earlier.

The man who had murdered her aunt had been searching for her jewels, but he was interrupted by Bergman as a child and fled. He was never identified.

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"If it was I who took that picture down ... if it was I who took it down the other times, if I do all these senseless, meaningless things, so meaningless, why should I take a picture down? But then, I don't know what I do anymore. ... But then, if that's true, then you must be gentle with me. You must bear with me, please."

Paula (Ingrid Bergman)

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It was all part of Boyer's character's plan. You see, he was the one who had killed Bergman's aunt, and he tried to manipulate her psychologically. When he moved around in the attic, looking for the jewels he left behind all those years ago, his footsteps could be heard, and the gaslights in the house flickered when he switched on the lights in the attic because that reduced the gas supply to the rest of the house.

He systematically attempted to drive her insane. If she were certified insane and put in an institution, he would be free to search for the jewels whenever he pleased.

As her paranoia increased, Bergman's character became convinced that her maid (Angela Lansbury, a real spitfire in her first movie role) detested her.

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It was Joseph Cotten, as an inspector from Scotland Yard, who provided the alliance Bergman needed to convince herself that all the odd things really were happening, that they weren't her imagination — and, most importantly, that she was not responsible for them. There was a reasonable explanation for what had been happening.

The movie got seven Oscar nominations, but only the mesmerizing Bergman and four others (for Art Direction) took home the statuette. Boyer and Lansbury were nominated for their acting, the movie was nominated for Best Picture, and John Balderston, Walter Reisch and John Van Druten were nominated for their adapted screenplay, but Cukor was not nominated for his direction.

There were some heavyweights in that category that year, though (Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Henry King and the winner, Leo McCarey), and it is hard to imagine how Cukor could have been wedged in.

Holiday With Cary and Katharine

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I suppose that, to movie audiences 75 years ago, it must have seemed that Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant were co–starring in movies all the time.

Early in 1938, Hepburn and Grant were featured in a screwball comedy called "Bringing Up Baby."

On this day in 1938, they appeared in another movie together — "Holiday."

Now, "Bringing Up Baby" is generally considered to be a classic, particularly of its genre, which enjoyed its greatest popularity during the Depression — although it can hold its own with other types of movies from other eras. The American Film Institute included "Bringing Up Baby" in its list of the top 100 movies of all time.

"Holiday" isn't as highly regarded, nevertheless, it has stood the test of time. I think it is already considered one of director George Cukor's best, and it starred one of Cukor's first proteges (Hepburn).

I don't think it would be regarded as a screwball comedy. Sure, Grant was Hepburn's co–star in both movies, but the roles were different. The role Grant played in "Holiday" was too assertive to be a plausible male lead in a screwball comedy.

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Likewise, it would be a mistake to think that the roles Grant and Hepburn played were the same in both movies. The stories were different and, therefore, required different characters.

In "Bringing Up Baby," Grant played a nebbish scientist who was truly no match for Hepburn's conniving heiress.

In "Holiday," they were worthy adversaries, if you want to call them that. Hepburn was still an heiress, but she was the sister of Grant's original love interest and was initially supportive.

Grant's character was more well–to–do — a self–made man, in fact — but also quite free spirited — and, given his stated intention to take some time off from work while he was still young so he could "find himself," he was ahead of his time. He would have been right at home in movies made three decades later.

That independent streak in Grant's character led to the first cracks in his relationship with Doris Nolan, who played Hepburn's sister. Until Grant revealed his plans, Nolan's character was his ally in all things, even actively recruiting the allegiance of her brother and sister in the effort to win over their father, but she was too obsessed with wealth and its trappings.

Naturally, the story threw Grant and Hepburn together — but in significantly different ways than in "Bringing Up Baby."

Thus, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the movie was resolved in a significatly different way as well.