Katharine Hepburn
James Stewart
Ruth Hussey
John Howard
Roland Young
John Halliday
Mary Nash
Virginia Weidler
Henry Daniell
Photography:
Black and white
Distributed By:
MGM
Release Date:
1940
Runtime:
112 minutes
The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 American romantic comedy film directed by George Cukor, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, and Ruth Hussey. Based on the 1939 Broadway play of the same name by Philip Barry, the film is about a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and a tabloid magazine journalist.
Why It Rocks
The story concerned the pending marriage of Tracy Lord, a divorced society heiress, to George Kittredge, a noveau riche industrialist. Complicating matters are two reporters for a gossip magazine who arrive to cover the wedding, as well as Tracy’s ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven, whose presence causes her to question her choices and principles.
Barry based Hepburn’s Tracy Lord character in large part on the star herself, or at least how the public and the actress perceived the star’s personal life to be.
Katharine Hepburn was beloved for essentially playing herself in film -- a privileged, possibly spoiled actress with pretensions to grandeur. She sought stories where her characters went through dramatic changes in personality, and insisted on forcing her persona as a screen star and celebrity to its knees. Tracy Lord serves as her ultimate role, where Hepburn basically exposes her private life on stage and screen, after all the rumor and gossip about it, showing audiences the unhappiness and sordid underside to wealth they always imagined. Her character is mannered, self-centered, insensitive, but audiences forgave her because she wanted to be kind, and because at the end of the story she apologized for being who she was. Her closing lines, after submitting to insults from almost every member of the cast, are, “You know how I feel? Like a human, like a human being.”
Grant chose to play Dexter, a tricky role in that he spends much time in the background while essentially masterminding the plot. His history with Hepburn in three previous films also made him perfect for the classic, wordless opening scene, in which their marriage ends with comical drama and he pushes her flat on her backside—something that’s a lot funnier onscreen than it is on paper.
James Stewart --one of the hottest stars in the country at the time-- took on the important but smaller part of Macaulay Connor, a journalist with a low impression of high society. Stewart always downplayed his performance in the film, but it is a superb one, so seemingly effortless that it’s easy to overlook the range of emotions and tones he is called to depict. He flows smoothly from cynical to romantic, annoyed to enthusiastic, caustic to poetic, and he shares with Hepburn one of the most famous and lovely scenes in any romantic comedy.
There's also child actress Virginia Weidler, who easily holds her own with three top stars, and Ruth Hussey, so fine in her supporting role as Liz—the photographer who loves Mike—that she garnered an Oscar nomination.
Hepburn and Grant’s chemistry is palpable, but so is that of all three stars in every combination. Stewart and Hepburn are a delight, whether they’re antagonizing each other early on or finding love in the moonlight, and the two men share a marvelous scene that begins with Stewart drunkenly shouting at Grant’s door in the middle of the night, “Oh, C. K. Dexter Haaaaaay-ven!” Once inside, Stewart lets out a hiccup that was not scripted and which he did not tell Grant or Cukor about in advance. Grant then ad-libs “Excuse me” and they each stifle a smile.
Mankiewicz, who recorded the stage production in order to find its laugh lines, added some visual gags, notably an adroit opening scene involving golf clubs. His most important contribution was to combine the character of Tracy Lord’s brother with her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven, which gave Haven better lines and more scenes, but it also added a layer of hurt and remorse that the play lacked.
The screenwriter succeeded in opening up what had been a two-set production into a story that flowed through a variety of locations, adding some new material that captured Barry’s own voice.
George Cukor does more than just film the stage version, he finds a consistent rhythm and pacing that complemented the story. Grant and James Stewart improvise a scene in which Stewart, drunk on champagne, expounds on Hepburn’s character. It is one of several moments in the film in which life breaks through the boundaries of the play.
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