Capital Classics for the Fourth of July

Summer has arrived, and the Fourth of July is just around the corner. It's too hot to be outside, so why not celebrate with some classic movies set in our nation's capital? If you haven't been feeling especially optimistic about our country's politicians lately, these films might provide some relief from the debacle of modern politics, although it's important to remember that the Hays Code helped to tint those rose-colored spectacles an even softer shade. Nonetheless, here are some classic movies that memorably depict the ideals of the American experiment if not its reality.

 

MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) - Frank Capra's tale of a young Senator's political education is quintessential Capra "corn" with James Stewart and Claude Rains delivering outstanding performances, especially Stewart in the famous filibuster scene. Although some in the US took offense at the depiction of Washington insiders, the film was banned in other countries precisely because of its pro-democracy stance. Capra, Stewart, Rains, and costar Harry Carey all picked up Oscar nominations for their work, and the movie earned six additional nominations, but it only won the Academy Award for Lewis R. Foster's writing for Best Original Story. The stellar cast also includes Jean Arthur, Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, and H.B. Warner.

THE MORE THE MERRIER (1943) - This wartime romantic comedy uses a housing shortage in Washington, D.C., to bring together an unlikely trio played by Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Charles Coburn. George Stevens directs the stars through some hilarious situations, with sizzling fireworks going off between Arthur and McCrea, but Coburn proves the scene-stealer of the lot in a performance that earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The picture garnered five additional nominations, including nods for Stevens and Arthur. It's an absolute delight from start to finish, and fans of modern rom coms will find a lot to love in this underrated classic.

 

BORN YESTERDAY (1950) - George Cukor directs the brilliant Judy Holliday in her Oscar-winning performance as Billie Dawn, a former chorus girl whose domineering and crooked boyfriend (Broderick Crawford) wants her to become more respectably well-educated now that his business has him hobnobbing with Washington politicians. William Holden plays the political writer hired to tutor Billie, and the two inevitably fall in love while touring the sights of the nation's capital. Billie's personal and political awakenings drive the picture, which was adapted from the 1946 Broadway play by Garson Kanin (in which Holliday also originated the role). 

These three classics make a great triple feature for your Fourth of July holiday, but if you prefer patriotic goodwill outside the Beltway, you can always celebrate with the beloved James Cagney musical, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942). If you prefer something darker, dive into JAWS (1975) for red blood, a Great White, and deep blue ocean with a climax that takes place over the Fourth of July weekend.

You'll find full-length reviews of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Born Yesterday, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and hundreds of other classic movies in my two books, BEYOND CASABLANCA and BEYOND CASABLANCA II, both of which are available as ebooks on Amazon. Hundreds more are posted here on my blog. Just use the labels to search for your favorite actors, directors, and genres!

Classic Movie Duos: Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant

Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant only made four movies together, but each one is worth watching for the formidable duo and the ways in which they are markedly different from one another. Two of their collaborations, Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), are highly regarded and much beloved, but their other two pictures, Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and Holiday (1938), are less celebrated, and, in fact, three of their four movies together were originally box office duds. With only four films to get through, it's a worthwhile project to sit and down and watch all of these movies as a group in order to appreciate the ways in which the stars work together and the career trajectories that they were charting when these pictures were being made.

Hepburn and Grant in Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

Hepburn and Grant first worked together on the most obscure of the four films, the gender-bending dramedy, Sylvia Scarlett (1935), in which Hepburn takes the title role and Grant plays the English conman who becomes her mentor and travel companion. George Cukor, who directed all but one of the pair's collaborations, is at the helm here, too. This is the only one of the four movies in which Hepburn and Grant do not play romantic partners, and in retrospect it seems odd that they don't get together here, especially since Sylvia's partner of choice, an egotistical painter played by Brian Aherne, seems just as problematic a mate as Grant's slippery but ultimately compassionate con artist. For Grant the movie was a step along the way to stardom, but for Hepburn it came during a troublesome slump that saw her cast in one flop after another. It's not a perfect movie, but Hepburn's cross-dressing provides a delightful opportunity for the star to show off her athleticism and escape the glamorous trap of a typical leading lady role. 

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

The second outing, Bringing Up Baby (1938), switches to Howard Hawks for direction, but that change did not save the screwball comedy from a bad box office showing on its release. Hawks thought that the movie flopped because all of its characters are crazy, but it has since soared to the status of a beloved masterpiece of its genre. The wacky story of a free spirit socialite (Hepburn) who wrecks the measured life of a paleontologist (Grant) casts our two stars in very different roles from their previous collaboration, and each gives a fantastic performance. Hepburn makes the leap to full-blown comedy and is simply hilarious, while Grant embodies a meeker personality driven to distraction by the outrageous obstacles he faces. While the movie didn't immediately pull Hepburn's career out of its slump, it has become a favorite film for her fans, and it set the two stars up for more romantic pairings in their next two films.

Holiday (1938)

Holiday (1938) came out shortly after Bringing Up Baby but found the two stars and director George Cukor at Columbia instead of RKO, which had made the two previous films. Once again the movie failed to gain traction with audiences, although the critical response was more positive. Adapted from a hit play by Philip Barry, the story once again put Hepburn and Grant into a mix of comedy and drama but this time set them up as characters who are obviously destined to get together, never mind that Grant's upwardly mobile protagonist, Johnny Case, opens the movie as the intended groom of the wrong sister. Hepburn once again plays a free spirit socialite, but this time family pressure has kept her penned in and unhappy until Grant arrives as a breath of fresh air in the oppressively lavish mansion. Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon also liven up the place as Johnny's friends, and Grant gets to show off a little of his acrobatic skill with Hepburn very game as his partner. While it's not as hellbent for hilarity as Bringing Up Baby, Holiday deserves attention for its compelling performances and its artful casting of the two leads, who are each just right for the parts they play.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Hepburn fans already know that the last of the duo's collaborations, The Philadelphia Story (1940), proved to be her big comeback. The romantic comedy from MGM picked up six Oscar nominations, including nods for Hepburn, Cukor, and supporting actress Ruth Hussey, with Jimmy Stewart winning for Best Actor and Donald Ogden Stewart taking home the award for Best Screenplay. Like Holiday, this movie was adapted from a play by Philip Barry, but in this case the original role had been written specifically for Hepburn, who also owned the film rights thanks to Howard Hughes. The story opens as if it might be a sequel to Holiday, with Hepburn and Grant's romance gone sour and the lovers now divorced, but Grant's character, C.K. Dexter Haven, isn't willing to give up his ex-wife to a new groom without a fight. Tracy Lord is another of Hepburn's socialite roles, beautiful and smart but rather spoiled, although Tracy is not about to be bossed around by anyone, especially her wayward father. 

Although only the final film proved to be a box office success, each of the Hepburn-Grant collaborations contributed to that last production in different ways, whether by building the relationships between the stars and their director, refining the character types the stars played, or establishing that Philip Barry's work was a good fit for the pair. Hepburn would make one more film adapted from a Barry play, Without Love (1945), which was also originally written for her, but in that picture her costar would be her longtime companion and collaborator, Spencer Tracy. While Hepburn and Grant would each make many more films, their work together ended on a high note with The Philadelphia Story.

Mystery and Maternity in GASLIGHT (1944)

George Cukor's 1944 version of the Patrick Hamilton play Angel Street is not the first adaptation of the material for film, but Gaslight provides a unique take on the events found in the original text. The screenplay makes a number of important changes, including the identity of the heroine as the murdered woman's family member, and it layers mystery upon mystery without feeling obligated to unravel every thread in a neat, methodical fashion. Because of that, one of the great charms of Gaslight is the way in which it tantalizes us with lingering questions long after the final scene fades. Chief among these, perhaps, although hidden in the subtext of the story, is the mystery of Paula's mother. Who was she? What happened to her? Why did Alice Alquist tell Paula so little about her biological parents? This mystery creates an important opportunity for Paula's sadistic husband, Gregory, but it also invites the viewer the consider the possibility that the answer, like Alice's priceless jewels, might be hidden in plain sight.

The 1944 adaptation of the story stars Ingrid Bergman as the naive young Paula, who interrupts the murder of her opera diva aunt and prevents the killer from obtaining the jewels for which Alice Alquist is so brutally strangled. A decade later, Paula falls into a whirlwind romance with the suave Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), who convinces his bride to return to the London home where Alice Alquist died. Once they are in London, Gregory's affection rapidly transforms into menacing control, and he constantly suggests that Paula is losing her mind. Circumstances make Paula believe that her husband might be correct, but a determined Scotland Yard detective, played by Joseph Cotten, suspects that Gregory has sinister motives for his cruel, calculating behavior.

Throughout the film, Paula is described as Alice Alquist's niece, but her resemblance to her dead aunt is remarkable. "I look like her, but I don't sing like her," Paula laments early on in the film, after her mentor comments on the uncanny likeness. When Paula shows Gregory a portrait of her famous aunt, the face of the opera diva is unmistakably that of Ingrid Bergman, even though the costume shows the singer with dark hair. Brian Cameron, the Scotland Yard detective, thinks at first that he has seen a ghost when he initially spots Paula at the Tower of London. The resemblance is so powerful that Cameron breaks out the old case files on the Alquist murder and resolves to get a closer look at Paula and her secretive spouse. That fact alone makes Paula's resemblance to her aunt vital to the plot, but the likeness of the two women is far more pronounced than one might expect between an aunt and a niece. Paula seems to Cameron to be Alice Alquist herself come back from the grave, demanding that the mystery of her murder finally be solved. The two women's fates are, ultimately, inextricably linked, as Paula turns out to be married to the same man who murdered Alice. Gregory Anton, once known as Sergis Bauer, has the power to destroy both incarnations; in the attic room he wrecks Alice's possessions, the relics of her life, while downstairs he wrecks Paula's mind. Even after Alice's death, the two women are like different aspects of the same life force.

Gregory uses the mystery of Paula's mother as one of his weapons against her sanity. Paula reveals that she knows nothing at all about her biological parents, except that her mother died when she was born. She does not even carry the name of her missing mother and father; her own name before marriage appears to be the same as that of her aunt. The only person who might have told Paula about her parents is Alice, and Alice apparently chose to say nothing at all. Gregory later takes advantage of this blank history by claiming that he has been investigating Paula's mother and has discovered that she went mad and died in an insane asylum. "Your mother was mad," he tells her. "She died in an asylum when you were a year old." The news terrifies Paula and pushes her that much closer to the breaking point, but Gregory later admits that this story is a lie, something he made up as part of his attempt to drive Paula mad. Paula's mother is as much a mystery as ever, her history subject to falsification because Paula knows nothing about her. By withholding any information about her parents, Alice has left Paula vulnerable to Gregory's lies, but she must have had some reason for concealing the truth.

Alice Alquist was certainly good at concealing other vital pieces of information. She hid the very existence of her jewels from Paula, who knew nothing about them even though she lived with Alice from infancy. Alice hid them partly because of their immense value and partly because they were a gift from her royal lover, the Tzar. While opera divas lived somewhat outside the social norms of the time, Alice could not publicly admit such a scandalous relationship, even though it seems to have been something of an open secret to the police. Ironically, Alice chose to hide the stones in plain sight by having them sewn into her costume as Empress Theodora, the same character depicted in the portrait that Paula shows to Gregory. When Alice appeared on stage at the opera, only her lover would recognize his magnificent gift as part of her apparel. It was a secret between the couple that none of the adoring crowds could guess. Gregory, intent on finding the jewels, mistakes the real things for costume fakes when he first rifles through Alice's clothes. Only near the film's end does he recognize them as the object of his murderous desire. He never seems to suspect that Alice might have hidden other fruits of her romance with the Tzar in plain sight, as well.

All of these elements of the story, however, point to one conclusion: Alice Alquist was Paula's real mother, and her father was most likely the Tzar. A love child would explain the extravagance of the Tzar's gift; he wanted to give the mother of his child something priceless because he could never acknowledge either of them. Alice Alquist wanted to protect Paula from the stigma of being illegitimate and the danger of being recognized as the Tzar's offspring. As she did with the jewels, Alice hid Paula in plain sight, concocting a fictional sister who conveniently died abroad while giving birth. The closer familial relationship explains the extraordinary resemblance between the two women, but it also makes Paula's final confrontation with Gregory more poetic and significant. Paula has no idea how much she has lost because of Gregory, but she is able to seal his fate and gain vengeance for her mother's murder. Alice dies because of one hidden treasure, but another, even more precious to her, becomes the catalyst for long delayed justice.

 

Classic Films in Focus: GASLIGHT (1944)

Gothic thrills get a stylish Hollywood makeover in George Cukor’s 1944 version of Gaslight, which earned Ingrid Bergman a Best Actress Oscar as a naive bride whose duplicitous husband tries to drive her insane. The top-notch cast also includes Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, and Dame May Whitty, but the best is a scene-stealing screen debut by a teenaged Angela Lansbury, who picked up an Oscar nomination for her performance, as well. Mounting suspense and thrilling cinematography make this tale of psychological terror a true classic, which rewards repeat viewings with its carefully developed motifs and keen attention to detail.

Ingrid Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, whose famous aunt is strangled by an intruder when Paula is just a young girl. Ten years later, Paula returns to the home she and her aunt once shared with her new husband, Gregory (Charles Boyer), but the honeymoon is short-lived, as Gregory soon turns cool and insists that Paula is losing her mind. As the evidence against her sanity mounts, Paula doubts her own senses, even though she sees and hears mysterious things every night when her husband leaves the house. Only Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotten), a handsome Scotland Yard detective, suspects the truth about Gregory’s motives for having his wife committed to an asylum.

The plot has a Bluebeard’s wife quality that is suggested early on by Paula’s encounter with Miss Thwaites (Dame May Whitty), a murder mystery fan who promptly tells Paula a gory story about a man who killed his wives. This is the dark side of fairy tale romance; after a whirlwind courtship, Paula’s dream becomes a nightmare, and her prince turns out to be an ogre. Bergman unravels beautifully over the course of Paula’s travails; her innocent, happy energy gives way to nervousness and doubt, then hysteria, as she comes unglued under Gregory’s baleful influence. Charles Boyer, sadistic and urbane, makes a perfect villain; he doesn’t have to smile for us to know how much he enjoys his insidious mind games. Gregory works on Paula’s mind with subtle, calculated cruelty, moving objects and undermining her confidence but also building her up with brief moments of happiness just to bring her crashing down. The audience understands his motives long before Paula even suspects, but the dramatic irony only enhances our suspense. We know it’s just a matter of time before Paula cracks under Gregory’s constant pressure.

Everyone in the cast is excellent, and Charles Boyer even got a Best Actor nod for his performance, but it’s impossible not to watch Angela Lansbury with particular fascination. Only nineteen at the time of her first film role, Lansbury commands the screen as Nancy, the pert housemaid whose presence unnerves the self-conscious Paula. With a tilt of her chin and a lazy stare, Lansbury makes Nancy insufferably vulgar and vain. She boldly propositions her master and subverts her mistress at every turn, but we can’t wait to see her again. Like the constables and even Gregory himself, we’re drawn to her undeniable charisma, no matter how forward and presumptuous she becomes. Nancy’s insubordinate behavior is yet another tool that Gregory employs to his advantage; he knows that she’s the worst possible choice of a maid to serve his wife, and that’s exactly why he hires her. Lansbury, all insolence and innuendo, would have carried off the whole picture had the leads been even a hair less skillful in their own performances.

Gaslight picked up seven Oscar nominations in all, with a second win for Best Art Direction. For comparison see the British 1940 version starring Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard; it’s sometimes included with DVD editions of the 1944 picture. Ingrid Bergman is best remembered for films like Casablanca (1942), Spellbound (1945), and Notorious (1946), but she won two more Best Actress Oscars for Anastasia (1956) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Charles Boyer stars in Love Affair (1939), All This, and Heaven Too (1940), and The Constant Nymph (1943). See Joseph Cotten in Citizen Kane (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and The Third Man (1949). For more of Angela Lansbury’s early films, try The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and The Harvey Girls (1946).

Classic Films in Focus: PAT AND MIKE (1952)

Following Adam's Rib (1949) in the progression of Hepburn-Tracy pictures, Pat and Mike (1952) reunites all of the key players who had made that film such a success; we have our two stars, of course, and also director George Cukor and writers Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, who were apparently inspired to write the story because of Katharine Hepburn's real talent for athletic pursuits. While this outing for the collaborators lacks the snap of the earlier picture, fans of the leading couple will find it worthwhile, although the most enthusiastic viewers will probably be those with an established interest in sports stars of the 1940s and 50s, since many of them make cameo appearances and demonstrate the sports for which they were known. Pat and Mike is not the best of the Hepburn-Tracy movies, but it features several solid performances and reveals a surprisingly quirky sense of humor that most people will appreciate.

Katharine Hepburn plays Patricia "Pat" Pemberton, a widowed university athletics teacher whose talent for sports dissipates whenever her pushy, condescending fiance, Collier Weld (William Ching), is on the scene. Determined to prove herself to herself if not to him, Pat accepts the offer of management from promoter Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy), even though it's clear that Conovan has a slightly crooked idea of professional sports. They embark on a tour of tennis and golf matches, where Pat performs brilliantly until Collier shows up. Mike's evolving affection for Pat, meanwhile, inspires him to go straight, even though his investors take a dim view of any practice that hurts their chances of making money.

Pat is a different sort of character for Hepburn because of her nervousness around Collier, which is revealed to the audience through Pat's habit of putting an uncertain hand to her lip every time she spots Collier in the crowd. Away from his life-draining effect, Pat is confident and strong, even to the point of upsetting Mike by saving him from his mobster investors. Some viewers will find Pat's weakness irritating, particularly because Hepburn is playing her, but the story means to warn us against yoking ourselves to partners who undermine our abilities instead of nurturing them. We understand that Mike, class differences aside, is a better partner for Pat because he believes in her and wants her to succeed, while Collier only wants her to settle down and be a good little wife.

Hepburn is in particularly fine physical form, displaying her athleticism and looking much younger than she had in the previous year's The African Queen (1951). Tracy, however, appears older than his 52 years, and in this picture the age difference between the pair is at its most glaring. By Desk Set (1957) they would look well-matched again, the seven years between them not really being that much by Hollywood standards. Pat and Mike was their seventh picture together, and reportedly Hepburn's favorite, although most viewers prefer their first film, Woman of the Year (1942), and Adam's Rib (1949), their sixth, as the best of the nine movies they made together. Their last movie, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), is hard to watch because everyone on set knew that Tracy was dying, and the real-life emotions bleed through to give the picture a powerful but almost unbearable pathos.

Classic film fans will appreciate supporting and walk-on performances from Aldo Ray, Jim Backus, Charles Bronson, Chuck Connors, and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, while sports enthusiasts will enjoy seeing legends like Babe Didrikson and Alice Marble. Gordon and Kanin earned an Oscar nomination for their screenplay, the third nomination for their collaborative work. See more of George Cukor's work with Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940). You'll find Aldo Ray in We're No Angels (1955) and The Green Berets (1968). Look for more of William Ching in D.O.A. (1950) and In a Lonely Place (1950).

Classic Films in Focus: HOLIDAY (1938)

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn starred in two films together in 1938: they made Bringing Up Baby with Howard Hawks, of course, but they also made Holiday with George Cukor. The Hawks film is the more famous of the two today, but Holiday is a great movie, too, with a more serious undertone seasoning its use of the familiar conventions of the romantic comedy. There are no leopards here, but there is genuine feeling and an acute awareness of the more painful emotions that so often erupt when one unexpectedly falls in love.

Grant stars as Johnny Case, a smart young businessman (pulled up by his own bootstraps, naturally) who has fallen in love with Julia Seton (Doris Nolan), not knowing that she is really extremely wealthy. He arrives at her address and promptly goes to look for her in the servants' quarters, assuming that she must be a maid or a secretary in this imposing edifice. Imagine his surprise when he learns that his intended is not only loaded but that she has some pretty firm plans of her own about what their marriage is going to entail. Johnny soon finds himself being pushed and pulled in several directions at once, caught between his own hopes and dreams and the increasingly insistent demands of his future wife and father-in-law. His expectations are further altered by his introduction to Julia's sister, Linda (Katharine Hepburn), a free spirit painfully stifled by the overly controlled atmosphere that comes with the Seton wealth and privilege.

Classic Hollywood films so often promote the fantasy of the whirlwind romance, where boy meets girl and then both of them immediately meet the justice of the peace. It's an aspect of the romantic comedy that I find troubling, although sudden marriage helps explain the popularity of the second marriage plot in other films, where characters who previously fell for each other too quickly have to learn to understand their relationship properly the second time around. Holiday points out some of the problems with the usual gallop to the altar: Johnny doesn't know anything about Julia, and the more he knows the less in love he becomes, but by then they are already engaged and everybody expects a wedding. Of course, Linda has lived with Julia all her life, and she doesn't seem to know her sister any better than Johnny does. The two of them discover Julia's true nature together, and along the way they find out that they have a lot in common, including a perverse sense of loyalty to the unworthy Julia that might end up wrecking their own chance at happiness.

The principal performers bring a balanced mix of drama and comedy to their roles. Hepburn and Grant are two of a kind, both witty and elegant, equally capable of wild physical comedy and stirring emotional depth. Grant's acrobatics are particularly fun to watch; his Johnny is a man who literally bounds with zeal, even as Julia attempts to contain and repress that lovable energy. Hepburn is funny and wry but also bitterly unhappy as Linda; she yearns to break free from her buried life but can only take refuge in the playroom until Johnny appears and shows her the way out. Even more tragic is the role of Ned, beautifully played by Lew Ayres. Ned has the misfortune to be his father's only son, his natural talent for music crushed and wasted by the old man's desire for an heir to the business throne. Ned sees alcohol as his only way of escaping and avenging himself, and no movie drunk was ever more graceful or more pitiful than this young man. The final scene between Ned and Linda is especially moving; he wants to go with her, wants her to go, but he seems too much resigned to his fate to be able to defy his scowling father once and for all.

Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon have some wonderful scenes as Johnny's friends, a dotty academic couple who love Johnny like a son and only want to see him happy with someone who is right for him. Anyone who has ever been thrust into an uncomfortably high class social setting will sympathize with the Potters as they fidget and squirm their way through Johnny and Julia's engagement party. Every minor faux pas unsettles them and becomes magnified until they are reduced to hiding from the rest of the guests. In the vocabulary of the film, this is how we know that they are real people and not stuffed shirts like the majority of the Seton crowd. Their inclusion in the playroom set reveals their worth as individuals, just as it tells us that Johnny and Linda are made for each other. Being a proper grown-up isn't all that it's cracked up to be, since the childish characters are the only ones who seem to know how to have any fun. Tragedy is the province of the adults in this movie; comedy belongs to those who can listen to their inner child.

Holiday earned an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction but could not compete with The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which won that award and two others in a year of stiff competition. For more of Hepburn and Grant, see Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and The Philadelphia Story (1940). George Cukor, who directed both of those films, also directed Dinner at Eight (1933), The Women (1939), and My Fair Lady (1964). Lew Ayres earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for Johnny Belinda (1948), but you can also see him in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), the Dr. Kildare movies, and Advise & Consent (1962). Don't miss the delightful Edward Everett Horton providing comic relief to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), and Shall We Dance (1937).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: SYLVIA SCARLETT (1935)

Before they made well-remembered classics like Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant first starred together in the more obscure Sylvia Scarlett (1935), a George Cukor picture with a plot straight out of Shakespeare’s play book. The story, adapted from a novel by Compton MacKenzie, is convoluted and thin, but the movie is worth watching for the performances of the two stars and the always entertaining Edmund Gwenn.

Hepburn stars as Sylvia, who first loses her French mother and then learns that her English father (Edmund Gwenn) is a crook. In order to escape the authorities, father and daughter flee to England, with Sylvia disguised as “Sylvester” to lower their profile. Along the way they take up with Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant), a shady character who tries to make them his accomplices but ends up traveling with them as a caravan of entertainers. Sylvia maintains her male identity throughout these adventures but yearns to reclaim her femininity when she falls for a manly artist (Brian Aherne).

The cross-dressed role played by Hepburn is known as a “breeches part” and was quite popular during the Elizabethan period, where the ultimate irony of a girl dressed as a boy depended on the audience’s knowledge that the performer was, in fact, male. Kate might as well be playing Viola in Twelfth Night or Rosalind in As You Like It, and the caravan scenes highlight the feeling of being transported to an appropriate version of merry old England, with Henry Scarlett as a drunken Falstaff thrown in for good measure. The gender confusion allows the picture to flirt with homoerotic moments as female characters make plays for “Sylvester” and Sylvia pines after the artist, Michael Fane. Brian Aherne, who plays Fane, was an actor so regal that he appeared as King Arthur in two different films.

As spunky as Hepburn is in her boyish guise, it’s hard not to focus on Cary Grant’s slippery Jimmy as the more interesting character. This is one of the rare roles in which Grant actually sounds like Archie Leach in his music hall days, milking a Cockney accent for all it’s worth. Grant was born in Bristol, far beyond the sound of Bow Bells, but the characteristic accent heard in most of his roles was as made up as the name “Cary Grant.” Jimmy proves too slick a character to peg as either good or bad for most of the film, but somehow we get the feeling he ought to attract Sylvia a lot more than he does. A rogue is always more fun than royalty, no matter how much Sylvia swoons over Michael’s leonine charm. Grant would have better luck getting Hepburn’s attention in their next three pictures together, which might explain why most viewers prefer the later films.

George Cukor also directed Hepburn and Grant in Holiday (1938). See The Women (1939), Gaslight (1944), and Adam’s Rib (1949) for more of Cukor’s best work. Both stars appeared in more great films than can be listed here, but look for memorable Hepburn performances in Woman of the Year (1942), The African Queen (1951), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). See Cary Grant in Gunga Din (1939), Notorious (1946), and Charade (1963). Edmund Gwenn is best remembered today as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34^th Street (1947).

This review was originally published at Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to her content.