The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 American romantic comedy film directed by George Cukor, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart, and featuring Ruth Hussey. Based on the 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. The socialite character of the play—performed by Hepburn in the film—was inspired by Helen Hope Montgomery Scott (1904–1995), a Philadelphia socialite known for her hijinks, who married a friend of playwright Barry.
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06/10/2019
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Directed by George Cukor
Produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart Waldo Salt (uncredited)
Based on The Philadelphia Story 1939 play by Philip Barry
Starring Cary Grant
Katharine Hepburn
James Stewart
Ruth Hussey
Music by Franz Waxman
Cinematography Joseph Ruttenberg
Edited by Frank Sullivan
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date December 26, 1940
Running time 112 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $914,000
Box office $3.3 million
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The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 American romantic comedy film directed by George Cukor, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart, and featuring Ruth Hussey. Based on the 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. The socialite character of the play—performed by Hepburn in the film—was inspired by Helen Hope Montgomery Scott (1904–1995), a Philadelphia socialite known for her hijinks, who married a friend of playwright Barry.
Written for the screen by Donald Ogden Stewart and an uncredited Waldo Salt, it is considered one of the best examples of a comedy of remarriage, a genre popular in the 1930s and 1940s, in which a couple divorce, flirt with outsiders, and then remarry—a useful story-telling ploy at a time when the depiction of extramarital affairs was blocked by the Production Code.
The film was Hepburn's first big hit following several flops, which had led to her being included on a 1938 list that Manhattan movie theater owner Harry Brandt compiled of actors considered to be "box office poison". Hepburn acquired the film rights to the play, which she had also starred in, with the help of Howard Hughes[7] in order to control it as a vehicle for her screen comeback. According to a Turner Broadcasting documentary MGM: When the Lion Roars, after MGM purchased the film rights, they were skeptical about Hepburn's box office appeal, so Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Louis B. Mayer took an unusual precaution by casting two A-list male stars (Grant and Stewart) to support Hepburn. Nominated for six Academy Awards, the film won two: James Stewart for Best Actor, and Donald Ogden Stewart for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was remade in 1956 as a musical, retitled High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra.
The Philadelphia Story was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1995.
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Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) is the elder daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia Main Line socialite family. She was married to C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), a yacht designer and member of her social set, but divorced him two years prior, because he did not measure up to the exacting standards she sets for all her friends and family: He drank too much for her taste, and as she became critical of him, he drank more. Now, she is about to marry nouveau riche "man of the people" George Kittredge (John Howard).
Spy magazine publisher Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell) is eager to cover the wedding, and assigns reporter Macaulay "Mike" Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey). He can get them into the affair with the assistance of Dexter Haven, who has been working for Spy in South America. Dexter will introduce them as friends of Tracy's brother Junius (a U.S. diplomat in Argentina). Tracy is not fooled, but Dexter tells her that Kidd threatens the family with an innuendo-laden article about her father Seth's affair with a dancer. Tracy deeply resents her father's infidelity, which has caused her parents to live separately. To protect her family's reputation, she agrees to let Mike and Liz stay.
Dexter is welcomed back with open arms by Tracy's mother Margaret (Mary Nash) and teenage sister Dinah (Virginia Weidler), much to her annoyance. In addition, she gradually discovers that Mike has admirable qualities, and she even takes the trouble to find his book of short stories in the public library. As the wedding nears, she finds herself torn among George, Dexter, and Mike.
*Mike carries Tracy into the house from a midnight dip.
The night before the wedding, Tracy gets drunk for only the second time in her life, and takes an innocent midnight swim with Mike. When George sees Mike carrying an intoxicated Tracy into the house afterward, he thinks the worst. The next day, he tells her that he was shocked and feels entitled to an explanation before going ahead with the wedding. She takes exception to his lack of faith in her, and breaks off the engagement. Then she realizes that all the guests have arrived and are waiting for the ceremony to begin. Mike volunteers to marry her (much to Liz's distress), but she graciously declines. She also realizes, for the first time, that she is not perfect and should not constantly condemn others for their weaknesses. At this point, Dexter offers to marry her again, and she gladly accepts.
*Tracy is short a groom, with a roomful of wedding guests waiting.
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Cary Grant as C.K. Dexter Haven
Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Samantha Lord
James Stewart as Macaulay "Mike" Connor
Ruth Hussey as Elizabeth Imbrie
John Howard as George Kittredge
Roland Young as William Q. Tracy (Uncle Willie)
John Halliday as Seth Lord
Mary Nash as Margaret Lord
Virginia Weidler as Dinah Lord
Henry Daniell as Sidney Kidd
Lionel Pape as Edward, a footman
Rex Evans as Thomas, the butler
David Clyde as Mac, the night watchman (uncredited)
Eric Mayne as wedding guest (uncredited)
Joseph Sweeney as butler (uncredited)
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"Everyone had enormous fun on the movie. The days and nights were sweltering that summer of 1940, but nobody cared. Cary got along very well with Kate Hepburn. She enjoyed him pushing her through a doorway in one scene (so she fell over backward) so much that she had him do it to her over and over again. There was a scene in which she had to throw Cary out the door of a house, bag and baggage, and she did it so vigorously he fell over and was bruised. As he stood up, looking rueful, Kate said, "That'll serve you right, Cary, for trying to be your own stuntman."
—Cameraman Joseph Ruttenberg, recalling The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Broadway playwright Barry wrote the play specifically for Hepburn, who ended up backing the play, and forgoing a salary in return for a percentage of its profits. Her co-stars were Joseph Cotten as Dexter Haven, Van Heflin as Mike Connor, and Shirley Booth as Liz Imbrie.
The original play, starring Hepburn, ran for 417 performances. It made over $1 million in box office sales and later went on to tour, performing another 250 times and making over $750,000 in sales. The play also originally featured another character named Sandy. However that role was eliminated for the movie to make more room for the character development of Mike.
At this time, Hepburn hoped to create a film vehicle for herself which would erase the label of "box office poison" that she had acquired after a number of commercial failures (including the classic Bringing Up Baby). So, she happily accepted the film rights to the play from Howard Hughes, who had bought them for her. She then convinced MGM's Mayer to buy them from her for only $250,000, in return for Hepburn having veto over producer, director, screenwriter, and cast.
*Hepburn as Tracy Lord and Stewart as Mike Connor
Hepburn selected director George Cukor, in whose films A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and Little Women (1933) she had acted, and Donald Ogden Stewart, a friend of Barry's and a specialist at adapting plays to the big screen, as writer.
Hepburn wanted Clark Gable to play Dexter Haven and Spencer Tracy to play Mike Connor, but both had other commitments. Grant agreed to play the part on condition that he be given top billing, and that his salary would be $137,000, which he donated to the British War Relief Society. The pairing of Cukor and Gable would have been problematic in any case, as they had not gotten along on the recent Gone with the Wind, and Cukor had been replaced with Victor Fleming, who was a friend of Gable’s.
The film was in production from July 5 to August 14, 1940 at MGM's studios in Culver City. It was shot in six weeks and came in five days under schedule. At one point, Stewart slipped in his hiccuping during the drunk scene. Grant turned to him, surprised, and said, "Excuse me", then appears to have stifled a laugh. The scene was kept, and was not reshot.
Stewart had been extremely nervous about the scene in which Connor recites poetry to Tracy, and believed that he would perform badly. Noël Coward was visiting the set that day, and was asked by Cukor to say something to encourage him. Stewart was also quite uncomfortable with some of the dialogue, especially in the swimming pool scene.
*Hepburn and Director George Cukor
Hepburn performed the dive into the swimming pool by herself, without the help of doubles. Forty years later, during the filming of On Golden Pond, Jane Fonda was frightened to do her own dive, to which the annoyed Hepburn responded, "I did my own dive in The Philadelphia Story."
The film premiered in New York City in the week of December 27, 1940, and it was shown in select theaters in December, but MGM had agreed to hold its general release until January 1941 in order to not compete with the stage play, which was no longer playing on Broadway, but was touring the country. It went into general American release on January 17, 1941. It broke a box office record at Radio City Music Hall by taking in $600,000 in just six weeks.
*Hepburn and Director George Cukor
The model sailboat that Grant gives Hepburn is based on an actual boat, the True Love (originally the Venona II, based on the Malabar design by John Alden built for racing), which currently sails on Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen, New York, as a excursion boat for Schooner Excursions, Inc.
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The film was the 5th most popular movie at the US box office in 1941. According to MGM records, it earned $2,374,000 in the US and Canada, and $885,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $1,272,000.
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Writing for the New York Times in 1940, Bosley Crowther wrote that the film "has just about everything that a blue-chip comedy should have—a witty, romantic script derived by Donald Ogden Stewart out of Philip Barry's successful play; the flavor of high-society elegance, in which the patrons invariably luxuriate; and a splendid cast of performers headed by Hepburn, Stewart, and Grant. If it doesn't play out this year and well along into next, they should turn the Music Hall into a shooting gallery ... Metro and Director George Cukor have graciously made it apparent, in the words of a character, that one of 'the prettiest sights in this pretty world is the privileged classes enjoying their privileges'. And so, in this instance, will you, too." Seventy-five years later, Peter Bradshaw wrote "However stagily preposterous, George Cukor’s 1940 movie The Philadelphia Story, now rereleased, is also utterly beguiling, funny and romantic. ... The fun and wit rise like champagne bubbles, but there is a deceptive strength in the writing and performances." Bradshaw also notes that the film is the "most famous example of the intriguing and now defunct prewar genre of 'comedy of remarriage'".
*Hepburn and Director George Cukor
The film has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 58 reviews, with an average rating of 8.78/10. The consensus reads: "Offering a wonderfully witty script, spotless direction from George Cukor, and typically excellent lead performances, The Philadelphia Story is an unqualified classic." The site also ranked it as the Best Romantic Comedy of all time.
The film was the last of four starring Grant and Hepburn, following Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Holiday (1938).
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*Hussey as Liz Imbrie
*Grant as C.K. Dexter Haven, and John Howard as George Kittredge
At the 1940 Academy Awards, James Stewart won for Best Actor, and Donald Ogden Stewart for Best Writing, Screenplay. James Stewart did not expect to win and was not planning to attend the ceremony, but he was called and "advised" to show up in a dinner jacket. He said he had voted for Henry Fonda for his performance in The Grapes of Wrath, and always felt the award had been given to him as compensation for not winning for his portrayal of Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the previous year. Donald Ogden Stewart, on the other hand, declared upon winning his Oscar: "I have no one to thank but myself!"
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Outstanding Production: MGM (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, producer)
Best Director: George Cukor
Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn
Best Supporting Actress: Ruth Hussey
Hepburn won a 1940 New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance,[23] and the film was named the third best of the year by Film Daily.[24]
In 1995, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
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1998: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #51
2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #15
2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #44
2007: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #44
2008: AFI's 10 Top 10 – #5 Romantic Comedy Film
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The stars of the film appeared in an adaptation on CBS Radio's Lux Radio Theater, airing July 20, 1942, as the premiere episode of the special War Office Victory Theater series. Lux presented it again in 1943, with Robert Taylor, Loretta Young, and Robert Young. It was also adapted on two episodes of The Screen Guild Theater, first with Greer Garson, Henry Fonda, and Fred MacMurray (April 5, 1942), then with Hepburn, Grant, and Stewart reprising their film roles (March 17, 1947).
The film was adapted in 1956 as the MGM musical High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, and Louis Armstrong, directed by Charles Walters.
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This great comedy really is a film that has its wedding cake and eats it. James Stewart sums it all up beautifully in two caustic lines – on the one hand: “The prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.” That’s certainly a big selling point for a movie set in an impossibly luxurious mansion on the eve of a grand wedding, amid a whirl of champagne and gowns by Adrian. But, on the other hand, as Stewart snarls on the phone: “This is the Voice of Doom calling. Your days are numbered, to the seventh son of the seventh son.” The Philadelphia Story, one of the greatest of screwball comedies, celebrates the quirkiness of rich society families, as epitomised in Katharine Hepburn’s haughty, upper-crust heroine, Tracy Samantha Lord. But it also suggests that their days are indeed numbered, and shows this American aristocrat having to change and bend with the times.
The opening scene is a brief silent drama which shows Tracy’s violent break-up with her husband, CK Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), as she contemptuously breaks his golf clubs and he retaliates by pushing her through a door, deciding against hitting her. From this dramatic break-up, it’s a case of going full circle and getting back to the point where the couple fall in love. Just as Tracy is about to marry a safe but boring businessman, George Kittredge (John Howard), Dexter turns up at the eleventh hour and starts turning everything upside down. He brings in a reporter and photographer from a gossip magazine, Spy, (he has been blackmailed into doing so) and things are soon becoming more complicated, and comic, by the minute. It turns out that the reporter, Macaulay/Mike Connor (Stewart) is really a poetic short story writer, and Tracy starts to fall under his spell, threatening her forthcoming marriage – while the rest of her eccentric family are busy causing their own brand of mayhem.
*Hepburn with the three men in her life in this film
Extra-marital affairs might have been frowned on under the restrictions of the Hays Code. But Hollywood had ways of smuggling in forbidden material – and one of those ways was the comedy of remarriage, which allowed a couple to divorce, romance others and then, inevitably, get back together again. Two of the greatest movies in this vein were both made in the same year, 1940, both starring Cary Grant as the ex-husband who steps in on the eve of his ex-wife’s second wedding. In His Girl Friday he’s the newspaper editor who won’t let reporter Rosalind Russell escape his clutches. The dialogue might be delivered a little more slowly in Cukor’s screwball great than in Hawks’s, but it is every bit as sharp, with endless lines to take away and savour. It’s easy to see why it was such a smash hit, especially with the added ingredient of James Stewart as the other man who also falls for Hepburn’s charms, and who gets some of the best lines.
*Grant and Hepburn
Like her character in this film, Hepburn was herself having to change her image, after a succession of flops led to her being labelled ‘box-office poison’ . Some of these are now recognised as great films, including Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby, but the audience failed to warm to Hepburn, who was reportedly seen as too perfect. So Hepburn went back to the Broadway stage and starred in a play written with her in mind, The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry, before then managing to get the rights for the film adaptation and re-creating the role on screen. The film, scripted by Donald Ogden Stewart, succeeded in softening Hepburn’s screen personality, as it shows Tracy coming down off her pedestal, rejecting descriptions of herself as a ‘goddess’ or ‘queen’ and insisting at the end ‘I feel like a human being’.
But the film has its cake and eats it here too, because Hepburn is of course a beautiful movie ‘goddess’ in this, and some of the most memorable scenes are those where she is at her most triumphantly upper-crust and insouciant. Director Peter Bogdanovich has an interesting piece about the film on his blog where he says that he finds it a hard film to love because of the insistence on cutting Hepburn down to size and making her eat humble pie. I would have to agree this layer of sexism is a troubling element, with shades of The Taming of the Shrew. It would be nice to see Grant’s character having to give a little more too – and yet, somehow the impression Hepburn gives at the end of the film, despite all the changes she has been forced to make, is not humble at all.
*Hussey, Stewart, Grant and Hepburn
I suppose it could be argued that Dexter’s own big change has been made between that opening scene and the main part of the film, during the space of the title card ‘Two years later’. The reason given for his break-up with Tracy is not one of the usual screwball comedy misunderstandings, but a surprising touch of reality. She threw him out for his drink problem and he has since been drying out in ‘a couple of sanitariums for alcoholics’. Tracy gets the blame for his drinking – he suggests that her coldness drove him to the bottle and also accuses her of failing to be a “helpmate” in beating the problem. (Ludicrously, she is even blamed for her parents’ break-up – apparently her father was tempted to have affairs with dancers because his daughter was so judgmental and failed to worship him enough!) All this is pretty hard to take, but the couple’s warmth and affection, and all the banter between them, as they call each other ‘Red’ and ‘Dex’, makes their relationship enjoyable to watch despite it all. And Grant is great as always at creating a character with an urbane surface but hints of complicated layers below. As Stewart says to him: “CK Dexter Haven, you have unsuspected depth.”
One of the joys of this film is its wonderful cast. Hepburn, Grant and Stewart all play against each other brilliantly, and Ruth Hussey is also great, filling out the somewhat underwritten role of Liz, the photographer watching over and yearning for Mike. There are also fine supporting performances, in particular from Roland Young as Uncle Willie and Virginia Weidler as Tracy’s younger sister Dinah. Looking at how well the whole cast works together, it is rather surprising to realise that Grant and Stewart were both second choices. On stage, Joseph Cotten played Dex, with Van Heflin as Mike and Shirley Booth as Liz. When the film was being cast, Hepburn initially asked for Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy – they didn’t know each other yet, but she wanted to work with him. Both of them were unavailable, so Grant and Stewart were cast. It’s interesting to speculate on how Gable and Tracy would have altered the roles, but it’s impossible to imagine anybody could have been better than Grant and Stewart. Having said this, I do find it rather odd that Stewart won the Oscar for best actor, something he himself saw as a consolation prize for losing out the previous year in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Yes, he’s great in this too, but it is surely Hepburn’s film all the way, and if one of the leads had to receive an Oscar, it should have been her.
06/10/2019
The Philadelphia Story (1940-film)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Profile :
Directed by George Cukor
Produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart Waldo Salt (uncredited)
Based on The Philadelphia Story 1939 play by Philip Barry
Starring Cary Grant
Katharine Hepburn
James Stewart
Ruth Hussey
Music by Franz Waxman
Cinematography Joseph Ruttenberg
Edited by Frank Sullivan
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date December 26, 1940
Running time 112 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $914,000
Box office $3.3 million
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2. Introduction :
The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 American romantic comedy film directed by George Cukor, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart, and featuring Ruth Hussey. Based on the 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. The socialite character of the play—performed by Hepburn in the film—was inspired by Helen Hope Montgomery Scott (1904–1995), a Philadelphia socialite known for her hijinks, who married a friend of playwright Barry.
Written for the screen by Donald Ogden Stewart and an uncredited Waldo Salt, it is considered one of the best examples of a comedy of remarriage, a genre popular in the 1930s and 1940s, in which a couple divorce, flirt with outsiders, and then remarry—a useful story-telling ploy at a time when the depiction of extramarital affairs was blocked by the Production Code.
The film was Hepburn's first big hit following several flops, which had led to her being included on a 1938 list that Manhattan movie theater owner Harry Brandt compiled of actors considered to be "box office poison". Hepburn acquired the film rights to the play, which she had also starred in, with the help of Howard Hughes[7] in order to control it as a vehicle for her screen comeback. According to a Turner Broadcasting documentary MGM: When the Lion Roars, after MGM purchased the film rights, they were skeptical about Hepburn's box office appeal, so Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Louis B. Mayer took an unusual precaution by casting two A-list male stars (Grant and Stewart) to support Hepburn. Nominated for six Academy Awards, the film won two: James Stewart for Best Actor, and Donald Ogden Stewart for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was remade in 1956 as a musical, retitled High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra.
The Philadelphia Story was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1995.
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3. Plot :
Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) is the elder daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia Main Line socialite family. She was married to C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), a yacht designer and member of her social set, but divorced him two years prior, because he did not measure up to the exacting standards she sets for all her friends and family: He drank too much for her taste, and as she became critical of him, he drank more. Now, she is about to marry nouveau riche "man of the people" George Kittredge (John Howard).
Spy magazine publisher Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell) is eager to cover the wedding, and assigns reporter Macaulay "Mike" Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey). He can get them into the affair with the assistance of Dexter Haven, who has been working for Spy in South America. Dexter will introduce them as friends of Tracy's brother Junius (a U.S. diplomat in Argentina). Tracy is not fooled, but Dexter tells her that Kidd threatens the family with an innuendo-laden article about her father Seth's affair with a dancer. Tracy deeply resents her father's infidelity, which has caused her parents to live separately. To protect her family's reputation, she agrees to let Mike and Liz stay.
Dexter is welcomed back with open arms by Tracy's mother Margaret (Mary Nash) and teenage sister Dinah (Virginia Weidler), much to her annoyance. In addition, she gradually discovers that Mike has admirable qualities, and she even takes the trouble to find his book of short stories in the public library. As the wedding nears, she finds herself torn among George, Dexter, and Mike.
The night before the wedding, Tracy gets drunk for only the second time in her life, and takes an innocent midnight swim with Mike. When George sees Mike carrying an intoxicated Tracy into the house afterward, he thinks the worst. The next day, he tells her that he was shocked and feels entitled to an explanation before going ahead with the wedding. She takes exception to his lack of faith in her, and breaks off the engagement. Then she realizes that all the guests have arrived and are waiting for the ceremony to begin. Mike volunteers to marry her (much to Liz's distress), but she graciously declines. She also realizes, for the first time, that she is not perfect and should not constantly condemn others for their weaknesses. At this point, Dexter offers to marry her again, and she gladly accepts.
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4. Cast :
Cary Grant as C.K. Dexter Haven
Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Samantha Lord
James Stewart as Macaulay "Mike" Connor
Ruth Hussey as Elizabeth Imbrie
John Howard as George Kittredge
Roland Young as William Q. Tracy (Uncle Willie)
John Halliday as Seth Lord
Mary Nash as Margaret Lord
Virginia Weidler as Dinah Lord
Henry Daniell as Sidney Kidd
Lionel Pape as Edward, a footman
Rex Evans as Thomas, the butler
David Clyde as Mac, the night watchman (uncredited)
Eric Mayne as wedding guest (uncredited)
Joseph Sweeney as butler (uncredited)
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5. Production :
"Everyone had enormous fun on the movie. The days and nights were sweltering that summer of 1940, but nobody cared. Cary got along very well with Kate Hepburn. She enjoyed him pushing her through a doorway in one scene (so she fell over backward) so much that she had him do it to her over and over again. There was a scene in which she had to throw Cary out the door of a house, bag and baggage, and she did it so vigorously he fell over and was bruised. As he stood up, looking rueful, Kate said, "That'll serve you right, Cary, for trying to be your own stuntman."
—Cameraman Joseph Ruttenberg, recalling The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Broadway playwright Barry wrote the play specifically for Hepburn, who ended up backing the play, and forgoing a salary in return for a percentage of its profits. Her co-stars were Joseph Cotten as Dexter Haven, Van Heflin as Mike Connor, and Shirley Booth as Liz Imbrie.
The original play, starring Hepburn, ran for 417 performances. It made over $1 million in box office sales and later went on to tour, performing another 250 times and making over $750,000 in sales. The play also originally featured another character named Sandy. However that role was eliminated for the movie to make more room for the character development of Mike.
At this time, Hepburn hoped to create a film vehicle for herself which would erase the label of "box office poison" that she had acquired after a number of commercial failures (including the classic Bringing Up Baby). So, she happily accepted the film rights to the play from Howard Hughes, who had bought them for her. She then convinced MGM's Mayer to buy them from her for only $250,000, in return for Hepburn having veto over producer, director, screenwriter, and cast.
Hepburn selected director George Cukor, in whose films A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and Little Women (1933) she had acted, and Donald Ogden Stewart, a friend of Barry's and a specialist at adapting plays to the big screen, as writer.
Hepburn wanted Clark Gable to play Dexter Haven and Spencer Tracy to play Mike Connor, but both had other commitments. Grant agreed to play the part on condition that he be given top billing, and that his salary would be $137,000, which he donated to the British War Relief Society. The pairing of Cukor and Gable would have been problematic in any case, as they had not gotten along on the recent Gone with the Wind, and Cukor had been replaced with Victor Fleming, who was a friend of Gable’s.
The film was in production from July 5 to August 14, 1940 at MGM's studios in Culver City. It was shot in six weeks and came in five days under schedule. At one point, Stewart slipped in his hiccuping during the drunk scene. Grant turned to him, surprised, and said, "Excuse me", then appears to have stifled a laugh. The scene was kept, and was not reshot.
Stewart had been extremely nervous about the scene in which Connor recites poetry to Tracy, and believed that he would perform badly. Noël Coward was visiting the set that day, and was asked by Cukor to say something to encourage him. Stewart was also quite uncomfortable with some of the dialogue, especially in the swimming pool scene.
Hepburn performed the dive into the swimming pool by herself, without the help of doubles. Forty years later, during the filming of On Golden Pond, Jane Fonda was frightened to do her own dive, to which the annoyed Hepburn responded, "I did my own dive in The Philadelphia Story."
The film premiered in New York City in the week of December 27, 1940, and it was shown in select theaters in December, but MGM had agreed to hold its general release until January 1941 in order to not compete with the stage play, which was no longer playing on Broadway, but was touring the country. It went into general American release on January 17, 1941. It broke a box office record at Radio City Music Hall by taking in $600,000 in just six weeks.
The model sailboat that Grant gives Hepburn is based on an actual boat, the True Love (originally the Venona II, based on the Malabar design by John Alden built for racing), which currently sails on Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen, New York, as a excursion boat for Schooner Excursions, Inc.
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6. Reception :
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6.1 Box office :
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6.2 Critical :
The film has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 58 reviews, with an average rating of 8.78/10. The consensus reads: "Offering a wonderfully witty script, spotless direction from George Cukor, and typically excellent lead performances, The Philadelphia Story is an unqualified classic." The site also ranked it as the Best Romantic Comedy of all time.
The film was the last of four starring Grant and Hepburn, following Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Holiday (1938).
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7. Awards and honors :
At the 1940 Academy Awards, James Stewart won for Best Actor, and Donald Ogden Stewart for Best Writing, Screenplay. James Stewart did not expect to win and was not planning to attend the ceremony, but he was called and "advised" to show up in a dinner jacket. He said he had voted for Henry Fonda for his performance in The Grapes of Wrath, and always felt the award had been given to him as compensation for not winning for his portrayal of Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the previous year. Donald Ogden Stewart, on the other hand, declared upon winning his Oscar: "I have no one to thank but myself!"
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7.2 There were also four nominations:
Best Director: George Cukor
Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn
Best Supporting Actress: Ruth Hussey
Hepburn won a 1940 New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance,[23] and the film was named the third best of the year by Film Daily.[24]
In 1995, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
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7.3 The film was included in various American Film Institute lists:
2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #15
2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #44
2007: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #44
2008: AFI's 10 Top 10 – #5 Romantic Comedy Film
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8. Adaptations :
The stars of the film appeared in an adaptation on CBS Radio's Lux Radio Theater, airing July 20, 1942, as the premiere episode of the special War Office Victory Theater series. Lux presented it again in 1943, with Robert Taylor, Loretta Young, and Robert Young. It was also adapted on two episodes of The Screen Guild Theater, first with Greer Garson, Henry Fonda, and Fred MacMurray (April 5, 1942), then with Hepburn, Grant, and Stewart reprising their film roles (March 17, 1947).
The film was adapted in 1956 as the MGM musical High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, and Louis Armstrong, directed by Charles Walters.
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9. Review : The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The opening scene is a brief silent drama which shows Tracy’s violent break-up with her husband, CK Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), as she contemptuously breaks his golf clubs and he retaliates by pushing her through a door, deciding against hitting her. From this dramatic break-up, it’s a case of going full circle and getting back to the point where the couple fall in love. Just as Tracy is about to marry a safe but boring businessman, George Kittredge (John Howard), Dexter turns up at the eleventh hour and starts turning everything upside down. He brings in a reporter and photographer from a gossip magazine, Spy, (he has been blackmailed into doing so) and things are soon becoming more complicated, and comic, by the minute. It turns out that the reporter, Macaulay/Mike Connor (Stewart) is really a poetic short story writer, and Tracy starts to fall under his spell, threatening her forthcoming marriage – while the rest of her eccentric family are busy causing their own brand of mayhem.
Extra-marital affairs might have been frowned on under the restrictions of the Hays Code. But Hollywood had ways of smuggling in forbidden material – and one of those ways was the comedy of remarriage, which allowed a couple to divorce, romance others and then, inevitably, get back together again. Two of the greatest movies in this vein were both made in the same year, 1940, both starring Cary Grant as the ex-husband who steps in on the eve of his ex-wife’s second wedding. In His Girl Friday he’s the newspaper editor who won’t let reporter Rosalind Russell escape his clutches. The dialogue might be delivered a little more slowly in Cukor’s screwball great than in Hawks’s, but it is every bit as sharp, with endless lines to take away and savour. It’s easy to see why it was such a smash hit, especially with the added ingredient of James Stewart as the other man who also falls for Hepburn’s charms, and who gets some of the best lines.
Like her character in this film, Hepburn was herself having to change her image, after a succession of flops led to her being labelled ‘box-office poison’ . Some of these are now recognised as great films, including Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby, but the audience failed to warm to Hepburn, who was reportedly seen as too perfect. So Hepburn went back to the Broadway stage and starred in a play written with her in mind, The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry, before then managing to get the rights for the film adaptation and re-creating the role on screen. The film, scripted by Donald Ogden Stewart, succeeded in softening Hepburn’s screen personality, as it shows Tracy coming down off her pedestal, rejecting descriptions of herself as a ‘goddess’ or ‘queen’ and insisting at the end ‘I feel like a human being’.
But the film has its cake and eats it here too, because Hepburn is of course a beautiful movie ‘goddess’ in this, and some of the most memorable scenes are those where she is at her most triumphantly upper-crust and insouciant. Director Peter Bogdanovich has an interesting piece about the film on his blog where he says that he finds it a hard film to love because of the insistence on cutting Hepburn down to size and making her eat humble pie. I would have to agree this layer of sexism is a troubling element, with shades of The Taming of the Shrew. It would be nice to see Grant’s character having to give a little more too – and yet, somehow the impression Hepburn gives at the end of the film, despite all the changes she has been forced to make, is not humble at all.
I suppose it could be argued that Dexter’s own big change has been made between that opening scene and the main part of the film, during the space of the title card ‘Two years later’. The reason given for his break-up with Tracy is not one of the usual screwball comedy misunderstandings, but a surprising touch of reality. She threw him out for his drink problem and he has since been drying out in ‘a couple of sanitariums for alcoholics’. Tracy gets the blame for his drinking – he suggests that her coldness drove him to the bottle and also accuses her of failing to be a “helpmate” in beating the problem. (Ludicrously, she is even blamed for her parents’ break-up – apparently her father was tempted to have affairs with dancers because his daughter was so judgmental and failed to worship him enough!) All this is pretty hard to take, but the couple’s warmth and affection, and all the banter between them, as they call each other ‘Red’ and ‘Dex’, makes their relationship enjoyable to watch despite it all. And Grant is great as always at creating a character with an urbane surface but hints of complicated layers below. As Stewart says to him: “CK Dexter Haven, you have unsuspected depth.”
One of the joys of this film is its wonderful cast. Hepburn, Grant and Stewart all play against each other brilliantly, and Ruth Hussey is also great, filling out the somewhat underwritten role of Liz, the photographer watching over and yearning for Mike. There are also fine supporting performances, in particular from Roland Young as Uncle Willie and Virginia Weidler as Tracy’s younger sister Dinah. Looking at how well the whole cast works together, it is rather surprising to realise that Grant and Stewart were both second choices. On stage, Joseph Cotten played Dex, with Van Heflin as Mike and Shirley Booth as Liz. When the film was being cast, Hepburn initially asked for Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy – they didn’t know each other yet, but she wanted to work with him. Both of them were unavailable, so Grant and Stewart were cast. It’s interesting to speculate on how Gable and Tracy would have altered the roles, but it’s impossible to imagine anybody could have been better than Grant and Stewart. Having said this, I do find it rather odd that Stewart won the Oscar for best actor, something he himself saw as a consolation prize for losing out the previous year in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Yes, he’s great in this too, but it is surely Hepburn’s film all the way, and if one of the leads had to receive an Oscar, it should have been her.
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