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| THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940) |
A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture
B&W, 112 minutes
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CAST
C.K. Dexter Haven: Cary Grant
Tracy Lord: Katharine Hepburn
Mike Connor: James Stewart
Liz Imbrie: Ruth Hussey
George Kittredge: John Howard
Uncle Willie: Roland Young
Seth Lord: John Halliday
Dinah Lord: Virginia Weidler
Margaret Lord: Mary Nash
Sidney Kidd: Henry Daniell
Edward: Lionel Pape
Thomas: Rex Evans
John: Russ Clark
Librarian: Hilda Plowright
Manicurist: Lita Chevret
Bartender: Lee Phelps
Mac: David Clyde
Willie's Butler: Claude King
Dr. Parsons: Robert De Bruce
Elsie: Veda Buckland
First Mainliner: Dorothy Fay
Second Mainliner: Florine McKinney
Third Mainliner: Helene Whitney
Fourth Mainliner: Hillary Brooke
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CREDITS
Director: George Cukor
Producer: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Scenarist: Donald Ogden Stewart
Based on the Play by: Philip Barry
As Produced on the Stage by The Theatre Guild Inc.
Photographer: Joseph Ruttenberg
Art Director: Cedric Gibbons
Associate Art Director: Wade B. Rubottom
Set Decorator: Edwin B. Willis
Editor: Frank Sullivan
Sound Recorder: Douglas Shearer
Musical Score: Franz Waxman
Hair Stylist: Sidney Guilaroff
Costumer: Adrian
Makeup Artist: Jack Dawn
Assistant Director: Edward Woehler
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SYNOPSIS
On the eve of Tracy Lord's second marriage, to a stuffy Philadelphia blueblood, her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven, equally well born, but more down to earth and something of a drunk, makes an appearance. Haven has arranged for Mike Connor, a reporter from Spy magazine, and Liz Imbrie, the magazine's photographer, to write up the wedding festivities. The reportorial duo are allowed to stay on in the exalted Lord household only after Tracy discovers that she can buy off a scandalous story detailing her father's illicit affair with an actress by consenting to pose for Spy herself.
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CRITIQUES
"Truthfully, the psychology of the story is as specious as a spiel, and, for all the talk about the little lady being 'a sort of high priestess to a virgin goddess,' etc., she is and remains at the end what most folks would call a plain snob. But the way Miss Hepburn plays her, with the wry things she is given to say, she is an altogether charming character to meet cinematically. Someone was rudely charging a few years ago that Miss Hepburn was 'box-office poison.' If she is, a lot of people don't read labels - including us."
- Bosley Crowther, New York Times, December 27, 1940
"For The Philadelphia Story fits the curious talents of the redheaded Miss Hepburn like a coat of quick-dry enamel. It is said to have been written for her. Its shiny surface reflects perfectly from her gaunt, bony face. Its languid action becomes her lean, rangy body. Its brittle smart-talk suits her metallic voice. And when Katharine Hepburn sets out to play Katharine Hepburn, she is a sight to behold. Nobody is then her equal."
- Life, 1940
"The Philadelphia Story was made in 1940, with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. All three give performances of such calm comic judgment that one wonders whether Cukor's legendary reputation as an actress's director does him honour enough....Donald Ogden Stewart's owlishly witty screenplay...embodies a view of life as critical and formed as one would expect of any serious dramatic writer."
- Penelope Gilliatt, The Observer (London), 1961
"[The Philadelphia Story] is above all Hepburn's film. Without her, it would have been much less. She is at her most dazzling; perhaps no actress can manage artificial comedy with such assurance and wit, and her temperament - vital, glittering, delicately exaggerated - is unforgettably displayed."
- Gavin Lambert, 1961
"Philip Barry wrote this romantic comedy for Katharine Hepburn, shaping it for her tense patrician beauty and her eccentricities, and she had her greatest popular triumph in it on Broadway (in 1939) and on the screen. There's conventional Broadway shoddiness at its center: the material plays off Hepburn's public personality, pulling her down from her pedestal. As Tracy Lord, a snow maiden and a phony - which is how the movie public regarded Hepburn, according to the exhibitors who in 1938 had declared her
'box-office poison' - she gets her comeuppance. The priggish, snooty Tracy is contemptuous of everyone who doesn't live up to her high standards (and that includes her father, played by John Halliday, and her ex-husband, played by Cary Grant); in the course of the action, she slips from those standards herself, learns to be tolerant of other people's lapses, and discovers her own
'humanity.' Shiny and unfelt and smart-aleck-commercial as the movie is, it's almost irresistibly entertaining - one of the high spots of MGM professionalism. There isn't much real wit in the lines, and there's no feeling of spontaneity, yet the engineering is so astute that the laughs keep coming. This is a paste diamond with more flash and sparkle than a true one. The director, George Cukor, has never been more heartlessly sure of himself."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"Philip Barry's witty comedy of manners about a spoiled rich girl (Katharine Hepburn) who longs for some genuine romance. George Cukor gives it the royal treatment with a splendid supporting cast: Cary Grant as Hepburn's sardonic ex-husband, James Stewart as the streetwise but romantically timorous reporter who falls in love with her, and Ruth Hussey as Stewart's philosophical partner. It checks in a little below Cukor's 1938 Grant-Hepburn-Barry outing,
Holiday, a more tender and less cluttered variation on the same theme, but second best in this league is still something special."
- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
"Cukor and Donald Ogden Stewart's evergreen version of Philip Barry's romantic farce, centreing on a socialite wedding threatened by scandal, is a delight from start to finish, with everyone involved working on peak form. Hepburn's the ice maiden, recently divorced from irresponsible millionaire Grant and just about to marry a truly dull but supposedly more considerate type (Howard). Enter Grant, importunate and distinctly skeptical. Also enter Stewart and Hussey, snoopers from Spy magazine, to cover the society wedding of the year and throw another spanner in the works. Superbly directed by Cukor, the film is a marvel of timing and understated performances, effortlessly transcending its stage origins without ever feeling the need to 'open out' in any way. The wit still sparkles; the ambivalent attitude towards the rich and idle is still resonant; and the moments between Stewart and Hepburn, drunk and flirty on the moonlit terrace, tingle with a real, if rarely explicit, eroticism."
- Geoff Andrew, Time Out
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COMMENTARY TRACK
"I remember on The Philadelphia Story when Jimmy Stewart was doing the scene, uh...'You've got hearth-fires banked down in you, Tracy, hearth-fires and holocausts.' And George [Cukor] said to him, 'Now, Jimmy, just do that scene in a romantic way. But don't do it as if you were just about to run away to the circus.' So poor Jimmy...he won the Academy Award for that film...and he was struggling with this thing, 'You've got hearth-fires banked down in you'...it's a bit fancy to say. And just before he did it, Noel Coward stepped onto the set and Jimmy nearly died. So he did the scene, and Noel in one second could see what was going on, and immediately stepped up to Jimmy and told him how devastating he was. And George said, 'Roll 'em,' and took advantage of a moment of flattery and Jimmy got a wonderful take. Stewart was terribly funny about that film. There was a scene where he had to go swimming and he said, 'If I appear in a bathing suit, I know it's the end of me. I know that and I'm prepared to end my career, but it will also be the end of the motion-picture industry.' And we both appeared in that scene in long white flannel dressing gowns."
- Katharine Hepburn, interview with John Kobal, 1979
"Once the picture started she [Hepburn] was just like a regular hardworking actress. No semblance of any 'I want this and I want that. I've done this on the stage for three years, so I know, so don't do it that way.'"
- James Stewart
"When you work with Grant and Hepburn, you work! You let up for a second and they'll steal the movie from under your nose! They're the best sort of competition an actor can have. Talent like that keeps you on your toes."
- James Stewart
"She was perfect as Tracy Lord - she was arrogant but sensitive, she was tough but vulnerable, she didn't care what people thought of her, they had to accept her on her own terms, or forget it. Of course, she was far more polished, more skillful, than she had ever been before."
- George Cukor
"Kate had part ownership of the play, and there was a stipulation in the movie deal that she had to be in it, too. In so many cases like this they cast somebody else. I believe at this time she was considered box-office poison, and she very shrewdly had it in her contract that the two leading men should be big stars. We tried to get this and that star, but they weren't available, and we finally chose Cary Grant and James Stewart, neither of whom was considered absolutely top-notch at the time - and they were perfect."
- George Cukor, interview with Gavin Lambert, 1970
"I've done scenes that even surprise me. I remember in The Philadelphia Story, there is a scene of burning passion with Miss Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart in a comedy vein and they said, 'Well, this is going to be something, isn't it, the both of us being passion flowers...' and it had such beauty and such elevation and such great feeling and such sexual passion. So you see one can do lustful scenes if they're good scenes; if the scenes are true."
- George Cukor, interview with Jeff Wise and Robert Smith, 1973
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HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
Links are provided for information only, and are not endorsements. Please ensure that your player is compatible with the region or standard before purchase.
 Watch the trailer (WMV, 5.9 MB)
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Region 4:
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Lobby card
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Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart
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Katharine Hepburn
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Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, George Cukor
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Katharine Hepburn with Cary Grant, James Stewart, John Howard
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart
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Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart
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Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart
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Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
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James Stewart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
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Lobby card
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Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
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Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn, George Cukor
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