The Philadelphia Story

1940

Starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, John Howard, and Virginia Weidler

Directed by George Cukor

112 minutes

We live in a world of preconceived notions, and our lifestyle has put us there.  As a society, we are so accustomed to taking in as much information in as little time as possible (so that we can move on quickly to the next thing), we sometimes forget to take the time to fully understand things.  Sound-bite news feeds, on-screen crawls, and sidebar articles can offer just enough information to get us by at the water cooler the next day, and because of our short attention spans, we sometimes find it easy to make generalizations about people because its quick and easy, despite any inaccuracy. 

Which of the following sounds familiar to you (either based on your own thoughts or on the comments you’ve heard from others)?  All models are dumb.  All geniuses are geeks.  All writers drink.  All rich people are snobs.  The list could go on and it could get far worse.  George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story looks at the preconceived notions of a variety of personalities, dismantles those notions, and does so with humor, charm, and romance.

The Philadelphia Story opens with a short scene that wonderfully plays like an old silent picture.  A handsome and affluent man storms out of his large house with luggage in hand.  Nipping at his heels is a beautiful and affluent woman who pulls a golf club from the man’s bag and spitefully snaps it in half over her knee (golf club shafts were made of wood back then, kids).  The man cocks his fist, but rather than hit her, he palms her face like a basketball and pushes her to the ground.  End Scene.  Cukor’s efficiency here is fantastic.  In less than a minute, and with no dialogue, we know (or we can safely assume) that these two characters are wealthy, spiteful, and soon to be divorced.  It’s instant conflict.

Fast-forward two years, and we learn that the woman was Tracy Lord (Hepburn), a publicity-shy Philadelphia blueblood, and the face-palmer was her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant), also of old Philadelphia money.  Tracy is set to marry George Kitteredge (Howard), a man not of blue blood, but of blue collar, who earned, not inherited, his wealth, and who has high social and political aspirations.

Enter Macauley “Mike” Connor (Stewart) and Liz Imbrie (Hussey), reporter and photographer (respectively) for Spy Magazine, who will attend the Lord-Kitteredge nuptials under the guise of being friends of Tracy’s brother, who is traveling abroad and cannot attend.  While there, Mike and Liz will covertly cover the wedding for the magazine.  Dexter has arranged this fraud, seemingly for revenge, but things, as you know, are rarely as they seem, and this situation is no exception.  (By the way, Dexter plans to stick around for the wedding as well.  His thought process is that even though they are divorced, Tracy is still his wife until she is remarried, and he has every right to see it happen.

When Tracy scolds Dexter for inviting strangers into her home, he reveals their identities (but he doesn’t tell Mike and Liz that Tracy knows), and he explains to Tracy that the magazine story of her wedding is the price she must pay to bury another story about an affair between her still-married father and some dancer.  Blaming both her father and Dexter for the pinch that she’s in, Tracy allows the charade to continue, but takes the opportunity to crank up her snobbery level ten-fold, with the help of her kid-sister Dinah (Weidler) and their mother, Margaret (Mary Nash).  Mike and Liz, commoners in an uncommon situation, find themselves overwhelmed by, and contemptuous of, the affluence of those around them.  Still, they have no choice but to carry out their assignment.

Preconception runs rampant throughout this film.  Tracy looks down on Mike not because of his socioeconomic status, but because of his job.  She views him as nothing more than a snoop who refuses to let private lives remain private, until she learns that Mike has published a book of poetry.  She then tags him as an intellectual snob until, but ultimately realizes that his poetry comes not from his mind, but from his heart. 

Mike pegs Tracy for being a high society* snob, until he gets to know her better, too.  In fact, he discovers what a fascinating person she truly is.  Throughout the film, she is at odds with nearly everyone: Dexter, for their previous marriage and his connection to Spy; her father, for his philandering ways; her mother, for tolerating her father’s lifestyle; Mike, for his disdain of society and his intellectualism; and Liz, for her normalcy.  Tracy even harbors a little resentment for Dinah, her kid sister, because Dinah still believes that Dexter is the only man for Tracy. 

But even though she was born into wealth, Tracy has a headstrong and independent will (classic Hepburn character trademarks).  She is the center of everyone’s universe, yet she resents that everyone puts her on a pedestal.  She yearns for a true, “normal” love, yet she prepares to marry a man largely because of what he is, not who he is.  Some would call her hypocritical, but in the hands of Hepburn, Tracy is sympathetically misguided – the poor little rich girl at odds with the most important person in her life … herself.

Also interesting is C.K. Dexter Haven.  While everyone is busy being angry at someone else, Dexter remains somewhat neutral.  He might be admired, envied, or despised, and he might instigate problems between others, but his motives, and the core of his character, are pure, and that purity is fueled by his love for Tracy – a love that never died, even if their marriage did.  He has not invited Mike and Liz so that Spy can publish the dish on Tracy’s wedding; that’s nothing but a cover story.  Dexter wants to spare Tracy and her family from the public embarrassment that her father is causing with his wandering libido, and Dexter’s deal with the magazine was the only way to do that. 

Also, he has no real concern that Mike (who has fallen in love with Tracy, or at least thinks he has) or George are threats; he doesn’t have to.  Let’s face it: he’s C.K. Dexter Haven, and he knows it.  He is only concerned about Tracy and her happiness, and he sincerely believes that her happiness is with him.  So, while his actions show that her happiness could be with someone else, his confidence in his own idea of the truth lets him get her without taking her.  He embraces the “If you love something, set it free…” mantra, but he never tips his hand as such.

The Philadelphia Story is one of those rich movies (not in dollars, but in depth) with a greater message comprised of smaller messages, none of which is preachy or heavy-handed.  It covers tabloid journalism’s quest to do whatever it takes to get a story, it addresses the divide between the social classes, and it touches on divorce, adultery, and sexism (all of which still ring true today).  But the overall puzzle that is made up of these pieces is one of handling preconception.  Not all models are dumb, nor are all geniuses are geeks, nor are even worse preconceptions involving race, gender, or religion true.  It also shows that not all rich people are snobs, not all intellectuals are snobs, and a person’s lot in life doesn’t define who that person is.

With a sharp script, tight direction, and excellent performances from a roster of Golden Age all-stars, The Philadelphia Story gets that message across with plenty of laughs, in a story that spans all of two days.  By the end of the film, feelings are hurt, fences are mended, jokes are made at nearly everyone’s expense, and not everybody wins.

But in the end, Tracy finally, and happily, marries … and it’s all caught on camera for Spy Magazine.

*Kudos to you if you understand this reference.  What, you thought I would just give it to you here?

The Lost Weekend

1945

Starring Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, and Howard Da Silva

Directed by Billy Wilder

101 minutes

Hollywood has had this habit (pardon the pun) of portraying alcoholics as funny drunks, getting cheap laughs from the “antics” of actors like Dudley Moore in 1981’s Arthur, and Foster Brooks, a Las Vegas comedian who appeared in various TV movies and series, and who was known as “The Loveable Lush.”  Even legends like W.C. Fields and Dean Martin had popular and entertaining real-life personas of being perennially excessive drinkers.

All of these antics have also been to the delight of the industry’s wallet.  If a man humiliates himself as a result of being intoxicated, Hollywood is ready to milk every slur, stumble, or fall for a laugh and a buck.  Yes, there have been exceptions, like Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and 28 Days (2000), which are two excellent modern examples of how Hollywood deals with alcoholism’s debilitating hold on its sufferers.  The best classic example, though, is The Lost Weekend (1945), a film that is more sobering than a month on the wagon.

Director Billy Wilder’s masterful establishing shot speaks volumes.  It’s a wide shot of the city skyline, which is cliché, but this view of the city simply lulls us into thinking it’s a standard opening shot.  Wilder pans and fixes the lens on an open apartment window; then, as Wilder slowly zooms in, we see, hanging by a length of rope from the open window, and dangling high above the street/sidewalk/alley below … a bottle of booze. 

Not only does the sight of this shock us out of our lull, it tells us several things about the main character, and we haven’t even met him yet.  We know that if a man hangs a bottle of booze from his high-rise apartment window, he must be hiding it from someone, and if he’s hiding it from someone, he probably shouldn’t have it to begin with.  It shows his resourcefulness at finding unique hiding spots, because if he has gone to the extreme of hanging the bottle outside, chances are all of his inside hiding spots have been found.  It also shows the desperate extent to which an addict will go to ensure that he gets his fix.  We know, seconds into the film and without a word of dialogue, we are in for an intense ride.

Through the window and into the apartment, we meet Don Birnam (Milland), a failed writer and recovering alcoholic, who is packing for a weekend in the country with his brother, Wick (Terry).  Don’s girlfriend, Helen (Wyman), arrives with a pair of concert tickets, and Don manages to persuade Wick to accompany her, after which the brothers can take a later train to the country.  Fate steps in, and Wick finds Don’s dangling bottle, which he quickly pours down the drain.

Wick and Helen leave Don with no booze and no money, until Don finds some hidden for the cleaning lady.  Don steals the money and heads straight for the liquor store for two bottles of rye.  Then he heads for the local bar to down a few shots before he opens the bottles.  As the weekend progresses, so does Don’s drinking, to the point of hospitalization.  Wick abandons him, Helen worries for him, a local girl who hangs out at the bar looks for love from him, and Nat (Da Silva), the barkeep, keeps on pouring for him.

Watching a man drink himself into oblivion is a difficult thing to do.  Going with him to the bottom of the bottle is harder still, and that’s exactly where Oscar-winners Wilder and Milland take us.

Wilder’s greatest storytelling achievement in this film is that he manages to take time away from us.  We know that the “lost” weekend is a long one – Friday to Monday – and that it starts mid-afternoon on Friday.  But once we get into the evening, the weekend grows more blurred for Don, so it grows more blurred for us.  Wilder only uses subtle clues to tell us that a substantial amount of time has passed, like the number of shot glass-sized rings on the bar and the number of milk bottles outside Don’s apartment door.  Don slips in and out of sleep, in and out of bars, and in and out of consciousness, and while we might be given hints as to whether it’s day or night, we’re never sure which day or night it is. 

Time is not simply one of those elements that is crucial to a film’s believability, it is something that is important to all of us, because we never seem to have enough of it, so we are always aware of it.  Think about the number of “timekeepers” in your life: clocks, watches, computers, cell phones, etc.  All of them keep time.  Losing this sense of time in the film is exactly Wilder’s goal; someone on a multi-day bender will not have a tight grip on time, so neither should we, and that gets us deep inside the character.

A sequence of note is the flashback, as told by Don to Nat, about the time Don and Helen meet for the first time.  This sequence lays some nice groundwork on just how much of an impact alcohol has had on Don’s life, and on the lives of his loved ones.

At first, those supporting characters seem two-dimensional, but what they represent are standard personalities – common character denominators of people who populate an alcoholic’s world.  Wick is the one who has tried so hard to help the alcoholic recover, but finally gives up; Helen is the one who loves the alcoholic, and who will do anything to keep the alcoholic alive; and Nat is the one who, despite knowing better, takes twisted pity and feeds the alcoholic’s needs.  And all play their parts despite the consequences.

As for Milland, he rises to the daunting task of creating a character that is deceitful and mean and selfish, yet so tragically flawed and self-aware that he commands sympathy.  Out of everyone in his life, he is his own greatest victim; not just by the damage he does to his own body and mind, but by the scars he leaves on his own soul.  And it’s that soul that continues to fight, despite the scars.  Nearly everything Don consciously does seems to have a dual purpose – selfish and unselfish.

He sends his brother to the concert with Helen, so that (selfish) he will be alone to drink, and (unselfish) because they are the two people who he has made suffer the most, and who deserve a couple hours away from the daily worry and care for him.  He buys two bottles of rye with the expectation that Wick will find one.  This “decoy” bottle (selfish) will make Wick think that Don has been caught, when Don’s second bottle is all he’ll need, and (unselfish) Wick will feel better about himself thinking that he stopped his brother from downing a bottle of booze.  He arranges a date with Gloria when he already has a girlfriend, (selfish) so he can have companionship with someone that is not trying to save him or rehabilitate him, and (unselfish) he can give Gloria the opportunity for a night out on a “real” date, not the usual “dates” she makes with older men.  Don’s split behavior continues throughout, even when he steals money from a stranger’s purse, so that he can pay a bar tab.  He is thoughtful enough and remorseful enough about the negativity of his own actions to leave a flower in the purse as a form of apology.

Even after the Hitchcockian hallucinations Don he has while suffering through the DTs, some might consider the film’s ending to be a little too tidy, but having lived through Don’s experiences, it comes as nothing short of sweet relief.

His Girl Friday

1940

Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy

Directed by Howard Hawks

92 minutes

In my life, I have watched an inordinate amount of episodic television, across all genres and networks, during every hour of the day and night, without prejudice towards premier or rerun.  (It’s this experience, particularly during my formative childhood years, that now makes me a savant at commercial jingles – not that it pays any bills, but I thought I’d mention it).  If I were asked the dreaded “desert island” question and was forced to choose only one TV show to watch for the rest of time, I would seriously consider creator/writer Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing.

The show, about the day-to-day inner-workings of the White House, appeals to me because of its crackling dialogue, which Sorkin serves intelligently, wittily, and at a blistering pace that is reminiscent of Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday.  But where The West Wing laces its politics with humor, His Girl Friday laces its humor with politics.

After an extended leave of absence, Hildy Johnson (Russell), ace reporter for New York City’s fictional newspaper The Star Ledger, returns to the office to inform her publisher, Walter Burns (Grant), that she is leaving the newspaper business for good.  She has become engaged to insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Bellamy), and plans to move in with her new husband … and his mother … to settle down as a homemaker in Albany. 

This greatly concerns Walter because he will not only lose his best reporter to a life of (what he perceives to be) abject boredom, he will also lose his ex-wife to another man – an ex-wife he still loves.  Making matters worse, Hildy is scheduled to leave in only a few hours, with the nuptials to take place the next day.  Hoping to change Hildy’s mind about her reporter’s life and her heart’s love, Walter takes every scheming opportunity to postpone, and ultimately prevent, her marriage and departure.  Hildy is quite familiar with Walter’s wily ways, so she is as careful as possible while around him, meaning Walter must be twice as conniving (in the names of love and news, of course) to get his way.

Walter’s mission begins with a little bribery.  He offers Hildy the commission from a $100,000 life insurance policy to be underwritten by Bruce, in exchange for her getting the scoop on the story of the century.  Earl Williams (John Qualen) is a man convicted of shooting a cop, and he is to be executed by hanging the next day.  Complicating Williams’ case is the fact that he is white, the cop was black, and the Mayor (Clarence Kolb), who is up for re-election, is using his support of the execution as a springboard to secure the city’s black vote (despite the governor's opposing wishes). 

As events unfold and as Walter’s scheming takes its toll, Hildy wants to forfeit the commission and flee for Albany.  But Walter finds more ways to keep her around by whatever means necessary.

One of the most important aspects of any film is the chemistry between its stars, but that is difficult to quantify, because, like organic chemistry, costar chemistry can take on many forms. 

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, who starred in nine films together, had the great chemistry of two people with mutual restrained desperation for each other (thanks, in part, to their long, off-screen affair that resulted in the marital equivalent of unrequited love).  William Powell and Myrna Loy, together in 14 films, had the chemistry of two people who had been together for eons, but acted like newlyweds every day (they were only ever friends in real life).  And real-life lovers Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, together in just four films, had a heat that has yet to be matched in Hollywood since.

In His Girl Friday, Grant and Russell have a chemistry of two best friends (with myriad benefits) who can’t live with or without each other.  It’s this chemistry, when combined with each actor’s individual talents, that makes the rapid-fire dialogue – with numerous instances where their dialogue overlaps for what feels like glorious minutes – work so well, because they are that comfortable with each other.  This comfort level also makes their critical comic timing perfectly smooth.  Unfortunately for us, unlike the dozens of combined pairings of the three aforementioned couples, Grant and Russell make their only on-screen coupling in His Girl Friday.

Like the films featuring Tracy & Hepburn or Powell & Loy, His Girl Friday has a strong sense of female empowerment and equality, as evidenced in Hildy’s first scene, when she returns to the newspaper.  She strides with great confidence through a field of desks, and is showered with enthusiastic and respectful greetings from her male peers.  This strong sense continues throughout the film, whether in Hildy’s double-speak dealings with Walter, her verbal spars with the boys in the press room (and a fantastically motley bunch they are, featuring great character actors like Porter Hall, Roscoe Karns, and Frank Jenks), her interview with Earl Williams, or her pants-wearing role in her relationship with Bruce. 

Yet, for all that empowerment and equality, and like other Hepburn and Loy characters, Russell’s Hildy won’t sacrifice her feminine identity.  Hildy laments that her marriage to Walter was a failure, she yearns for the “normal” life of a homemaker, and she empathizes with the only other pivotal female character in the film, Williams’ friend, Molly Malloy (Helen Mack), who is misunderstood and mistreated by the male reporters.  These instances remind us that while Hildy might be “one of the guys” on a daily basis, she is still a woman at heart.

Dig a little deeper into the film’s dialogue, and you’ll find scathing jabs taken at politics, politicians, corruption, nepotism, racism, sexism, capital punishment, and the power of the press, all delivered by screenwriter Charles Lederer in a style that Aaron Sorkin surely must admire, if not downright envy.

Spinning all of these plates is director Howard Hawks, who is smart enough to do several things.  First, he compliments the complex dialogue with simple direction.  There are no stunning camera angles, no fancy tricks of shadow and light, and no lavish sets.  This film is based on the play The Front Page (written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur), and Hawks maintains the feel of live theater by keeping everything (except the dialogue) to a minimum. 

Second, Hawks doesn’t preach (and this is where His Girl Friday splits from The West Wing).  Yes, weighty issues are addressed, but they only act as reminders of the real world while simultaneously serving as targets for humor.

Third, and most impressively, Hawks knows when to change pace.  Sure, the majority of the dialogue is delivered at breakneck speed, but from time to time, Hawks slows things down enough so that we might catch our breath.  Then he cranks it back up again.  The best example of this is when Hildy interviews Williams in jail.  Progress comes to a near halt as we learn the convict’s story, but once that’s done, Hawks says to us, “I know you’ve been on a roller coaster ride that feels like it’s now over, and I’m sure you appreciate the stoppage, but what do you say we ride it again, only this time with a few more curves?”

We gladly ride it again, and we never want the ride to end.