It has recently come to my attention that there is a film featuring Katharine Hepburn as an aviatrix who commits an abortion/suicide by flying into the sun, and I am simply furious with each and every one of you for keeping this from me.
“That…that can’t possibly be right,” I hear you stammer weakly. OHO, CAN’T IT. I present to you the plot summary of Christopher Strong:
Kate plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, an aviatrix who meets and falls in love with Sir Christopher Strong played by Colin Clive. Sir Strong is married and rather then tell him that she is going to have a baby and since she knows their relationship is doomed she decides to take a challenge to attempt the world speed record. Her plane climbs to 30,000 feet where she takes off her oxygen mask, loses control and dies in the crashing airship.
Can you imagine. I cherish the thought that the original script called not for Cynthia to be an aviatrix but a society woman who dies from a regular, run-of-the-mill botched abortion, and Hepburn herself decided to make things a little more interesting.
“Say, fellas. Love the script. It’s terrific stuff, the real Tabasco. But what if the girl’s a pilot?”
“A…pilot? But she’s a socialite.”
“Sure, that’s a great gag. But catch this angle: she does the abortion herself by flying into the sun.”
“I don’t follow.”
“‘Course you don’t, boys, keep up. She wants to beat the world altitude record, see? And to also have an abortion and die.”
“You…you really think that’s a good idea, Kate?”
[pounds table] “Boys, we’d be crazy not to make her a lady daredevil pilot. I wouldn’t do the picture otherwise.”
“Well, if you think so…but most girls have abortions on the ground, don’t you think, Kate?”
“I think my character would prefer to have one by flying into the sun. If she’s going to have an abortion, she might as well break the sound barrier while she’s at it.”
“You’re the boss, Kate.”
“Damn right, lads. And one more thing. Find a way to make my character wear a moth costume in this picture.”
“A moth costume?”
“That’s right. Here, have a cigar.”
The 1930s were a wonderful time. Women were constantly breaking the sound barrier to have abortions and giving cigars to henpecked studio heads. You couldn’t turn around without kissing a lady reporter who worked like a man and played like one too, and the streets of New York City were crawling with female stenographers who’d kill you as soon as look at you. And Katharine Hepburn made at least one movie with a trailer like this:
Which was a promotion for, you might remember, a film where she played a lady pilot who has an abortion by flying towards the sun (Tagline: “Higher and higher! Faster and faster! She gave herself to the great god Speed, and tried to run away from the fires within her!”).
Let us consider the following posters for Christopher Strong. Would you say that this effectively communicates “lady daredevil has illicit affair, then flies to a lonely death”?
You would not? Nor I; we are of one mind on the subject. Let us try again. Perhaps we will get closer with the next one.
Oh, that’s better, that’s a great deal better. Her thousand-yard-stare is part Jack Torrance and part Hannibal Lecter. “Who is this man sitting next to me,” her face seems to say. “Why aren’t I flying ’round the world right now?” But we can do better.
There we are. That’s the one. The only abortionist a woman needs is the sky itself.
Chris: “What do other women do who don’t risk their lives flying?”
Cynthia: “I don’t know. I only know I want to go up again. I want to break records. I want to train hard and not eat and drink all the time. I want to get up at dawn. I want to smell the fields and the morning air, and not mind getting oil in my hair and hands. And I want to talk with the boys I’ve flown with again.”
And have abortions by flying into the sun. And have, lest we forget, abortions by flying into the sun.
Tags: abortion, aviation, being more than a little cavalier about fictional abortions, heroes, katharine hepburn, movies, o tempora o mores, pre-code hollywood, suicide, world records
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I think I would happily have married Katherine Hepburn.
I started out thinking this was an Ortberg Satire (the best type of satire!) inspired by last week’s Femslash Friday and lo, it was not, and it was good, and I am still amazed.
Mallory is often amazing. In so many ways.
I want to just fall into this post from a tall height, with Creed arms and a beatific smile.
I need to watch this movie yesterday.
Thank you! I’ve seen this, but totally forgot the name.
You can tell she’s serious because she never lifts her chin above a good 70 degree glower-angle.
I feel like we also need to acknowledge and REVEL in the fact that this was Hepburn’s SECOND film and FIRST starring role.
Pitch perfect textual Hepburn impression. <3
I love the word “aviatrix” – it’s so evocative of 1930s movies. Also, if you’ve ever seen “The Drowsy Chaperone”, the narrator cracks wise that “aviatrix” was just 1930s code for “lesbian”, which has proven to be accurate more often than not.
We need more movies about gutsy aviatrices.
Did you just write that as an excuse to pluralise ‘aviatrix’? Because no one could blame you if you did.
That’s a distinct possibility.
(Though we do honestly need more aviatrix films. Maybe something about an heiress donning a fake mustache so she can fly with the Lafayette Escadrille.)
I think the answer is an adaptation of Code Name Verity, because that’s definitely how I was reading Maddie Brodatt.
I saw this at Film Forum last year and to my horror, people were *laughing. out. loud* at her moth costume. Totally ruined the moment for me.
I haven’t seen this movie, but I’ve seen a lot of depictions of women dressed similarly to the “moth costume.” It sucks your experience was shat on by inconsiderate dickweeds.
Old films are incredible things. There’s a body of work involving cross dressing and homosexuality that’s just… out there. Not a special kind of movie, as far as I can tell. Not hidden movies, secret movies. Just… movies where attractive young girls dress up as supremely hot dudes and fall in love with other dudes who kiss them in public and then there’s some wacky hijinks and TA DA they are ladies after all. They are pre-Hays code, of course.
Has there been a pre-code movie post on The Toast? Because there should be.
Would read would read would read
WISH GRANTED
YOU ARE SO GOOD TO US
I have that exact same moth dress. But I guess everybody does, right? Kind of a wardrobe staple, that.
I wear it to the supermarket to do the weekly shop. Really livens up the ‘dips, coleslaw and precooked meat’ aisle.
It also had the unexpected effect of making jury duty much shorter than I thought it would be.
I saw your tweets about this over the weekend and just wanted to say THANK YOU for the source– I’m working on a dissertation about fiction that grapples with women’s reproductive rights in the 1920s and 1930s, so I HAVE to see this movie. FINALLY someone else is working on my dissertation for me! : )
Haha! I was about to write a very similar comment. I’m writing (in part) about the New Woman in 1920s and 30s films, and Mallory’s really making my job easier for me. I’m tempted to print off that picture of Katherine Hepburn, and have her glower at me while I write.
I would like to read both of your dissertations.
Thank you! Whenever I am finished with it, I am considering sending Mallory a copy so she can live tweet her reaction. : )
That is a rad idea. I was just trying to decide if I can manage to craft this moth costume in time to wear it in my defense? I have a few years left, so probably.
CHRISTOPHER STRONG is such a bizarre movie. I have the tenuous honor of owning it on VHS now because I’m writing my way through Hepburn’s 52 films.
Anybody in the LA area up for a movie night? I also have the movie where Katharine Hepburn plays a hick faith healer who steals babies. Three words: Bad. Ozarks. Accent.
Wait, the movie where…what?!
Yup. The movie is called SPITFIRE. Kate’s character’s name is Trigger Hicks. She decides she’s a faith healer because she stole some Bible School cards, then steals a baby to heal it, then abandons the baby to make out with an dam engineer in the sun for a few scenes.
The accent’s the worst part, though. Steel yourself and listen: http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/346354/Spitfir…
Date & time of movie night, please? Also closest airport, as I’ll be flying in. (Worth it.)
May 12th at 7pm, in honor of Kate’s birthday! We can also watch THE LITTLE MINISTER, wherein she plays a Scottish gypsy disguised as a Scottish noblewoman disguised as a Scottish gypsy. Kate-ception
Her RKO career was really weird.
what what what my brainnnn
TRIGGER HICKS.
Want to go to your movie night!
I haven’t seen her 52 films, but I feel like every Hepburn accent that is not a Mid-Atlantic accent is … pretty bad. My fave is when she’s an ::omg no:: COMMUNIST in Iron Petticoat.
But the only way I can push it through at the studio is if the title of the picture is the man’s name.
And: When she reaches the record-breaking height, before she tears off her oxygen mask she smashes the altimeter, so its broken glass holds the needle at the record-breaking number. Presumably so when they collect the bits they can update the books accordingly. Just like when Julian English commits the first (J. O’H claimed) carbon monoxide suicide in literature, he smashes the car clock with the heel of the whiskey bottle, so doctor father-in-law can get the time of death right.
that is so fking dramatic im in love w it
I don’t understand why this is called CHRISTOPHER STRONG. Shouldn’t… shouldn’t it be called something more interesting? Like THE FLYING ABORTIONIST. Maybe it would have been more of a historic success if it were called THE FLYING ABORTIONIST.
I read each of Kate’s lines in your imagined script in your Kate Hepburn impression voice and it was a glorious thing.
This made me think of ‘West with the Night’, by Beryl Markham – a true-life socialite (sort of) aviatrix (not sort of, but without the whole sun-aided abortion/suicide part) who also trained racehorses, hunted wild boar, worked as an elephant spotter and was once “moderately eaten by the large lion” (this is a direct quote… THIS IS A DIRECT QUOTE!), all before flying solo across the Atlantic from East to West. What more could one want in a memoir?
Trying to imagine how anything about being eaten by a lion could be characterized as “moderate”.
It’s no mistake that this excellent film was directed by a woman, Dorothy Arzner, an out lesbian director whose films all quietly defy Hollywood standards and gender norms from within the system. She has many great films – another notable example is “Dance Girl Dance” where a character actually talks about the male gaze and Lucille O’Ball plays a burlesque star… “Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of?…”
Wow, this sounds amazing!
Thank you for the heads-up on this film! I’ve never heard of it, and as an aviatrix, I feel I must see it. I am a bit bummed as I have not yet received my FAA-issue moth gown.
Did you just write that as an excuse to pluralise 'aviatrix'? Because no one could blame you if you did.
Best feeling: goofing off in Cultural Studies lecture on gender in film and looking at the Toast, which has this article, at which point the prof starts lecturing on Katherine Hepburn’s subversive role in Sylvia Scarlett, where she is a “gentleman adventurer” who wears drag and inspires feelings of extreme homolust in Cary Grant. It’s like some sort of awesome Katharine Hepburn singularity!
TRIGGER HICKS.
But also, splice this into the relevant sequence of “The Right Stuff” and we are in BUSINESS.
Mallory — a delightful commentary with dead-on Hepburn dialog. You nailed it! (Although I must point out that the movie was based on a novel where, well, the flier really DID fly into the sun…so it wasn’t Kate’s idea.) It was directed by Dorothy Arzner who began directing in the early days of the studio system when there actually were female directors. Still and all, it’s one of the strangest pictures I’ve ever seen. It was made before the studios were finally forced to obey the industry Production Code (which happened in mid 1934) and after that strongly independent female characters began vanishing from the screen. I can’t help but feel there is a schizoid quality to the story. Why should the flier have to die? Sure, she was being noble by sinning–as so many heroic female characters were in those days–but she did it to simply to save her lover’s reputation and career. That hardly seems justification for missing out on the rest of her fabulous life. She could’ve had the baby in Europe and then come back home with her “adopted” child in tow. Well, at least we got to see Kate Hepburn in that wacky form fitting butterfly costume. It’s so perverse!