Previously in this series: The sequel to Rebecca the second Mrs. de Winter deserves.
DEXTER: Three years ago I did you out of a wedding in this house by eloping. Which was very bad manners. I’ll make it up to you by going through with it now as originally planned.
TRACY: No, I don’t believe I’ll marry you again at all, Dexter.
DEXTER: Not marry me again? Why on earth not? I’ve been skulking around your house for absolute hours, insulting your fiancé and making veiled, insulting insinuations about your sexual predilections and reminding you that I thought it was your fault I had a drinking problem when we were married. What else can a man do?
TRACY: Look, I understand that it’s the 1930s –
DEXTER: I even compared you favorably to a boat!
TRACY: But this still feels excessive.
MIKE: I’d just like to point out that I didn’t sexually assault you last night.
TRACY: Yes, thank you, Mike.
MIKE: Even though you were drunk, and I’ve been staying at your house this whole week.
TRACY: And I really do appreciate that, Mike.
MIKE: I just…there’s an award for that, right?
TRACY: I don’t believe that there is, Mike.
MIKE: So what do I get for it?
TRACY: I’m sorry?
MIKE: Like, a hat, or a boat, or a…or you marry me out of gratitude, or something?
TRACY: I’m afraid not, Mike.
MIKE: Oh, well.
TRACY: I will say this, though: I appreciate that you are the only man in this entire movie who has not described me as a frigid bitch-goddess or a human statue.
MIKE: That is something, isn’t it? I said you were a girl, and that I liked your fire, and your self-sufficiency.
TRACY: It was, quite literally, the nicest thing any man has ever said to me, including my father and former husband.
MIKE: My God, that’s awful.
TRACY: So, you know, go in peace, and rest easy in the knowledge that you are the kindest male American in the year of our Lord 1940. Oh, so it isn’t the thirties. Well. Earlier point still stands.
[Exit MIKE]
TRACY: What I’m trying to say is that I’m not looking for 21st-century-era progressivism, which would be unrealistic.
DEXTER: I don’t even know why you would. What an odd era of human history to decide to compare us to.
TRACY: I just mean I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to want to marry someone who, okay, is a man of his era, but also doesn’t feel the need to blame his wife for his alcoholism, or his daughter for his extramarital affairs.
SETH LORD: Wait a minute, I–
TRACY: WHICH IS DEFINITELY NOT NOW, AND HAS NEVER BEEN, A THING, FATHER.
SETH: That’s debatable.
TRACY: I don’t care how sexist an era is, there are exactly zero periods in human history where it’s been customary to blame the daughter for a man’s infidelity to his wife. Like, ever. The wife, sure. You could make a case for that, at least some of the time. But no man accused of adultery has ever justified his actions with “It’s not my fault! I have daughter issues!”
SETH: I sort of feel like you’re twisting my words, here.
TRACY: “What most wives fail to realize is that their husbands’ philandering…has nothing whatever to do with them. A reluctance to grow old, I think.” Which, A of all, Moonstruck already covered this, and covered it better.
SETH: I don’t know what Moonstruck is.
TRACY: Well, you should. It’s a modern classic. “I suppose the best mainstay a man can have as he gets along in years is a daughter. The right kind of daughter. I’m talking seriously about something I’ve thought over thoroughly. I’ve had to. A devoted young girl gives a man the illusion that youth is still his.”
MIKE: Holy shit, did he actually say that?
DEXTER: I thought you left.
MIKE: I had. This is so creepy I had to come back. Like, he said that to his own daughter? With his mouth?
DEXTER: Also, what does this imply about men who only have sons?
MIKE: Is he…is he suggesting that men implicitly want to have sex with their own daughters, and if their daughters don’t also-implicitly give off the impression that they could have sex with them, if they wanted to, they’ll have to go have affairs with young women they’re not related to, to make up for the sex they’re not having with their daughters?
TRACY: Fucked up, right? “Because, without her, he might be inclined to go in search of his youth. That’s just as important to him as it is to any woman. But with a girl of his own, full of warmth for him, full of foolish, unquestioning, uncritical affection…”
DEXTER: Jesus. Is this a common outlook, for the thirties?
MIKE: Forties, technically.
DEXTER: Still.
TRACY: And then he capped it all off with “You have a good mind, a pretty face, a disciplined body that does what you tell it. You have everything it takes to make a lovely woman except the one essential. An understanding heart. Without that, you might as well be made of bronze.”
MIKE: Is that actual dialogue from the movie?
TRACY: Fucking WORD FOR WORD, Mike. Ver-goddamn-batim.
DEXTER: Your dad told you that you had ‘a disciplined body’?
MIKE: Christing hell.
DEXTER: Tracy, I think I get it now. You don’t have to marry any of us.
MIKE: But you really should not have to live within a hundred miles of your father. If you ever need help finding, like, an anonymous apartment in the city, please let one of us know. We would be more than happy to help out. Platonically.
DEXTER: With no expectation of a relationship. Or anything. Just…if you need anything, you call us. Okay?
[DEXTER and MIKE stare at SETH unblinkingly for a solid minute and a half.]
DEXTER: I mean, just Christ.
MIKE: Christing hell.
TRACY: THANK you.
FIN
Seth Lord is INFURIATING.
Now I gotta go watch Holiday to cleanse myself.
Holiday is total aces. May I join you? I’ll bring cookies and wine.
One of my favorite movies. As is The Philadelphia Story.
Also, Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman should be *canonized* because the screenplay is so much better than the play.
I miss an America where people said, “Our nation’s audiences won’t sympathize with Nick and Susan if they’re rich, young idlers! Let’s make them MIDDLE-AGED LEFT-WING ACADEMICS!”
Also, by casting a perfectly nice but rather blah actress as Julia they kind of give the ending away. I hear they wanted Rita Hayworth, which would have kept the suspense up rather more.
Let us together toast to the downfall of capitalism and bankers!
Now I feel genuinely sad that I am not watching Holiday with cookies and wine tonight.
I’m pleased to present you with the “Leopold” award for early and apposite mention of Holiday.
Congratulations!
AAHHHUUUGHHGGHH that is CREEPY AS FUCK. “Christing hell” is right. ew ew ew ew.
Also Katharine Hepburn always and forever deserves more than any mere mortal man.
I shipped Tracy and Mike so hard when I first saw TPS, and it upset me so much when they didn’t, although I understood why.
I wanted Dexter to end up with Elizabeth Imbrie, and I recall creating a pretty steamy fan fic in my head (I was 15) about Dex looking for comfort in Elizabeth’s arms except she is a grown ass woman and she puts him in his place, which makes him fall in love with her. He then has to woo the hell out of her, and there are a bunch of sex scenes as well.
Right? It was so bananas to me that Mike was dismissed as a “not-right-for-Tracy” choice because like, of all the men in the movie, he’s the only one who both RESPECTED and LIKED her. He didn’t worship her and he didn’t belittle her. They have this INCREDIBLE scene where he is like, “I have no desire to change you because I think you’re marvelous” and by the end she’s like “No, I definitely want the guy who negs me incessantly.”
And Tracy is so good for Mike too! She confronts him about his inferiority complex about his social standing and his misplaced hostility towards her.
Just her ditching that wack fiancé of hers for Mike (maybe an elopement?) would’ve been glorious without that alcoholic boatboy butting in and ruining EVERYTHING
Fiance what now?
No joke, I seriously forgot Georgie boy was a part of this movie for the duration of this conversation.
Can’t even remember what he looks like. I kept picturing him as The Drunk Uncle until like 5 seconds ago
Can we also talk about the class issues in this movie because omg.
Elizabeth is the most pragmatic of them all. She doesn’t like that she was born into poverty and limited choices but she has this lack of hostility about it – she works hard to take care of herself and yet doesn’t let any bitterness get in the way of her empathy. Mike on the other hand is so bitter, and his love for Tracy makes him grow up about it.
I come from a lower middle class family, but I was fortunate enough to go to a private school on a scholarship and it made me connect with these two characters SO much.
YES!!! PUT ME IN YOUR POCKET, MIKE
“You’re made out of flesh and blood. That’s the blank, unholy surprise of it. You’re the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight. What goes on? You’ve got tears in your eyes.”
WARMTH. WARMTH AND DELIGHT. *swoons*
Also Drunk Mike is overwhelmingly endearing.
SHUT UP MIKE, SHUT UP
KEEP TALKING, MIKE, KEEP TALKING
YES. I still get so confused when she does a 180 on Mike. HE MAKES SENSE AND RESPECTS YOU. sigh. Maybe I should start turning it off after that scene and making up my own ending/substituting yours. Happier head-canon.
Yeah, he does remind her that she’s a real person, but only because he’s coming to terms with his own prejudices about people. But he also doesn’t really get her. Remember at Dexter’s house where Mike asked if Dexter was still in love with her. “she’s sort of like a…she’s sort of like a…” “A goddess?” “No! No you said that word today. She’s like a *queen.* A radiant, glorious queen!” Which is basically exactly like when George says, “Useful? You? I’m going to build you an ivory tower with my own two hands!” Mike definitely worshipped her! Like, you’re beautiful and away and separate and better and I’m just here to clean your feet.
Also, Liz Imbrie is the best character in that movie and she did not deserve that nonsense.
Dex in a way is more grown up than Mike, and he *knows* her, and they have a long history but Mike didn’t sock Tracy in the face over golf clubs though, so he wins.
Liz Imbrie forever.
“No hunter of buckshot in the rear is cagey, crafty Connor. Unquote, close paragraph.”
“Close job, close bank account.”
Liz is my hero, always has been and always will be. It bothers me deeply that she ends up with nothing better than being Mike’s backup girlfriend after Tracy rejects him.
I am totally with you here. Even though Mike only SAID nice things, and I LOVE him, I think he still was not seeing Tracy as a real, human person, and I think Dex does.
That said, this is my favorite movie ever and the first time I watched it and actually listened to the things the men said (which was like, college sometime maybe? or late high school? waaay later than it should have been considering I watched this movie approximately 1,000 times in my youth) it broke my heart into a million pieces and I have since spent an ENORMOUS amount of time trying to justify continuing to watch it in my mind. And I absolutely agree with Mallory that the above would be a way better scenario than what actually happens in the movie. But I also, still, will always love CK Dexter Haven for being Cary Grant, and being Dinah’s favorite, and loving Tracy forever and ever. Even though I wished he talked to her, rather than announcing their wedding without her permission.
Also, Liz. Liz wouldn’t like it.
Also, he has the small distinction of being horrified that everyone assumes he’d totally have sex with a drunk-off-her-face Katharine Hepburn. Which, granted, isn’t much, but at least he puts basic decency out there as a cultural expectation.
re-watched the scene again because I remember swooning over Jimmy Stewart when I first saw it, and HOT DAMN.
Yes, I would like to sign up for the Person Describing All My Prickly Attributes As Marvelous & Kissing Me Against A Pillar, where do I do that?
I also love the scene where Tracy schools him about being such a needlessly hostile dingbat and he takes it in, pauses and says “Tracy –
“What do you want?”
“- You’re wonderful”
I also wanted Dexter to end up with Liz! I love when he shows up in the middle of the night and demands to know if she can use a typewriter, and she’s all, “No, thanks, I already have one,” and he gives her a startled look because he wasn’t expecting her to be funny.
Liz is the best character in the whole damn movie, and I would at the very least like a sequel in which she dumps Mike for spending the whole movie chasing after Katherine Hepburn right in front of her.
Liz and Dinah are the actual heroes of the movie.
Liz and Dex had great chemistry too. My adolescent hormone crazed radar definitely picked it up.
THIS EXACTLY. I hate this movie, which is madness because I love all the people in it AND 1940s movies in general, but I have never understood people who talk about how great it is. The way I would describe it is “various men gather around Katharine Hepburn and blame her for their personal failings.” Which is NONSENSE.
NONSENSE
AND HER FATHER IS SUCH AN ASSHAT
Donald Trump is the Seth Lord of our time. I’m still trying to forget all the creepy shit The Donald says about his daughter.
Or perhaps Ryan O’Neal, who tried to hit on Tatum after Farrah’s funeral till he realized she was his daughter <hworf>.
*barfs*
I know I’m getting tired when I stared at “Seth Lord” for a good 10 seconds thinking you meant to type “Sith Lord.”
Conveniently enough, either of those terms would work equally well in describing Donald Trump.
Also can we talk about how great Elizabeth Imbrie is?
THAT HAT.
she’s the only one in the movie who knows what’s good for her
other than Tracy’s little sister?
Tracy’s sister is my favorite character. “Lydia the TAAATTOOED lady!”
She was ready and willing to induce smallpox in herself to stop Tracy from marrying George! Dinah is glorious
i have a screenshot of her en pointe with her diamonds as my cover photo on twitter– i love dinah to the ends of the earth and like to think that i was effectively dinah as a child.
AND a TORso EVen MORE-so
Tracy’s little sister is my personal hero.
“Joe Smith. Hardware.”
Oh, she just photographs well (i know this movie by fucking heart).
And now I have something to point to when people ask me what I think about this movie! Because there are some weird screwed up plot points going on.
Aaaahhahahahaha I love this movie, but by god, don’t ever examine any of the subtext…because it’s FRIGHTFUL in almost every way.
But now this exists and Mallory has fixed it for us! All we have to do is reread this post every time we watch it again.
Too right!
THIS MOVIE OK. THIS FUCKING FILM. This was the first time I really gained an understanding of the fact that MOVIES ARE FULL OF WRONGNESS. Because I was 11, I think? And I thought if something was in a BOOK or in a FILM then it was full of … Rightness? Because it was art and that was always right, and explaining something to me about the world? BUT THIS FILM. I watched it and I was like, hang on, I don’t understand why everyone is being horrible to Katharine Hepburn, she’s amazing, she’s so smart and strong, why would — what — is her dad — why — WHAT —
The bit where Cary Grant is breaking character to laugh at Jimmy Stewart’s drunken antics is pretty great though.
THANK YOU. I know this movie is a classic and all (and features some undeniably great performances), but it is indeed a wall-to-wall creepfest.
Long ago, a friend wrote an ESSAY OF MANY WORDS on PS fabricated almost entirely from her false memory that Tracy shoves CKDH on the doorstep rather than vice versa.
yeah denial does that to you
But it’s still okay if my greatest ambition is to be considered yar, right?
Oh, ABSOLUTELY.
Only if it’s not attached to an old rumpot.
Since this was the movie that got my wife and I together, I had “You’ll always be yarr.” engraved on her wedding ring. After reading this, I’m not sure if that makes me an awful person or not.
Oh my god, is it too late for me to actually have this done to my own ring? Actually, fuck it, I’m getting a new ring, and having that engraved on the outside. It’s a worthy mantra.
Not for nothing but Dexter also punch/shoves Tracy in the face for breaking one of his golf clubs. That’s how the movie starts!
Okay this is one of my favorite movies and while I INTELLECTUALLY and FEMINISTLY know it’s a patriarchal, creepy, sexist trainwreck of the highest magnitude, can we all agree that OBVIOUSLY Tracey and Ruth should have FRO’d and started their own Sapphic separatist colony? And taken Dinah, to, you know, to protect her from her father and all?
Oh, it’s still great!
We watch this movie every year around Christmas and I . I generally just wince my way through the Seth Lord scene. Uncle Willy was better to women than he was. And really, for me, it’s all about Dinah and Elizabeth Embry. That and the scene between a drunk Mike Connor and CK Dexter Haven. “Oh CK Dexter HAAAAAAAAVEN”
I actually still haven’t forgiven Keven Spacey for thinking it was ok for him to play CK Dexter Haven on stage in London with an all British cast.
Drunk Mike is my dream husband.
I wonder if I could trouble you for another drink.
Mike in that scene is the entire reason why I’m naming a future Boston Terrier ‘CK Dexter Haven.’ So much fun to yell!
I bet that if you named a dog that, it would wind up being frustratingly obedient, and would never run off and force you to yell OH CK DEXTER HAAAAAAAAVEN down the street.
My film studies professor in college named her cat CK Dexter Haven! She was a delight.
This is very important: does anyone here do a Jimmy Stewart impression good enough to overdub all his movies so that he says “Christing hell” all the time? I need this for reasons.
Not guaranteeing anything, but I’m fully prepared to die attempting this. Give me a bottle of champagne, a silver cigarette case, and check back in a week.
Kevin Spacey does an uncanny Jimmy Stewart. Maybe ask him? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgZXTPn2mw
Thank you for this! I love all of this thread, but this really made my night for some reason?
I used to be pretty good at it, but I’m a little rusty now. It cracked up my boyfriend.
Dana Carvey does a good one, and he’s apparently not been very busy lately.
Please do this also with The Women (Norma Shearer version, of course. What idiot would remake this?). The Philadelphia Story and The Women are two movies I love and have watched over and over despite how fucked up they are and that they always make me feel a bit sad.
A+++, would read this!
I was baffled not that “The Women” was remade, but that “The Women” was remade with very little of the icky problematic stuff removed. The casting, acting, and costumes were not the problems– they were the bloody compensation for enduring the script’s problems!
(I feel the same way about “His Girl Friday.” I want a remake not because there’s anything wrong with Rosalind Russell– there isn’t, and I will scrap with anyone who says otherwise– but because the racism in it is so gross and pointless. Put Wanda Sykes in the Cary Grant role and– maybe Melissa McCarthy in the Rosalind Russell role? It could be either a female buddy movie or a love story. Or, hell, both.)
Please tell me how to contribute to this Kickstarter.
Also my favourite movie, but thank you Mallory for making it less morally repugnant. At least we know that Elizabeth Imbrie and Dinah will turn out okay. And let’s not forget ‘Men are wonderful aren’t they?’ ‘The little dears’.
There’s a special kind of complicated for loving old movies because they star amazing ladies (everything Katharine Hepburn, also Maureen O’Hara, Rosalind Russell, etc) when those movies so frequently end with them being put in their place/finding men who can “handle” them. Also, pretty sure having no regard for human frailty is why I’m still single.
I just watched “All About Eve” for the first time, and it’s exactly that: “great actresses!” plus “wait what??”. I mean, yes, Eve Harrington is the villain, but Addison DeWitt putting her in her place at the end is the worst. In my mental sequel, she has him murdered as soon as they get to LA and plays the part of the grieving girlfriend so well that she becomes incredibly famous and successful. Then maybe she can be taken down by the next calculating ingenue, that’s fine.
Pauline Kael called All About Eve the “You’re-sneaky-and-corrupt-but-so-am-I-We-belong-to-each-other-darling” genre of writing — which I think was her coded way of alluding to the coded queer characters, Addison and Eve. I always hated that the movie pits them against each other, when they should have been natural allies.
solidarity <raises fist>
It helps if you remember it was sometimes against the censorship code for them to do anything else (which is a whole nother batch of fuckery, but). I wish I could remember the name of the marvelous noir I watched where the femme fatale was the protagonist, and she was getting away with it, too – until, in the last thirty seconds of the film, she was killed by a falling piano.
Goddamn Hayes code.
His Girl Friday is pretty great for having Rosalind Russell NOT get put in her place, but indeed realize that the man for her is the one who likes how awesome she is at her job. And who is also Cary Grant.
I have a great regard for human frailty. I just feel no need to invite it into my house.
Yeah, agreed, I’m just not into dating it.
I’m really excited about TCM’s theme this month – every Tuesday and Thursday, they’re showcasing films by women. Later on, we get things like Look Who’s Talking and Sleepless in Seattle which I guess I’m looking forward to hearing the introductions explaining their presence (I guess Nora deserves a place, but Look Who’s Talking confuses me?)
anyway, yes for loving old movies and hating how the endings so often fuck up something otherwise good, and i’m really looking forward to this showcase and seeing how women directors did things.
God, I’ve been waiting for this my whole LIFE it feels like (or at least since I rewatched The Philadelphia Story last year and had to keep pausing it in frustration because TRACY LORD DESERVES BETTER THAN ALL OF YOU AND ALL OF THIS). Seth Lord is the WORST.
Mike is definitely the lesser of several evils on the romance side of things, but I was amazed that after finishing the film I was unable to find any great articles proclaiming the obvious fact that Tracy Lord should have ditched them all to go live the glamorous single life.
I love this movie unapologetically, but yes.
This reminds me of an old silent I was watching on TCM; “Laugh, Clown, Laugh” a heartbreaking tale starring Lon Chaney as A NOBLE PEDOPHILE (Wiki the plot line, unbelievable what passed for mass entertainment in the 30’s). And to add an extra layer of “ewwwww”, the actress portraying Chaney’s grown adopted daughter was 14 years old at time of filming. Ew.Ew.Ew.
I’M REALLY GLAD I DECIDED TO WATCH “HE WHO GETS SLAPPED” INSTEAD OF “LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH” NOW
hoooolllyyyyyy shit am i glad i decided i only had the heart for ONE clown film and chose the earlier one because i was tired of late 20s silents. (feels like most of the silents i’ve been seeing lately are late-period, right before sound or even Vitaphone with synchronised sound, which isn’t bad – it’s good to see more silents recently than we’ve seen for a while! – but there’s a weird frenetic tension to the nearly-sound films, i’m finding)
BUT also she trashes her fiance for trying to slut shame her. And everyone is on board with her trashing him for trying to slut shame her.
I know Mike doesn’t deserve a prize for not sexually assaulting her, but I also want to say he fucking gets it in 1941 and so many people today STILL DO NOT GET IT. That is embarrassing, y’all.
I think an understanding heart is an essential for any human, but that’s me. Seth Lord does not have it though.
Well, I think an understanding heart is important too. That’s what makes the insult so monstrous. He tells her all these creepy things about her body and mind and then says, that’s worthless, you’re missing a basic element of human decency.
Too bad he couldn’t take his own fucking advice.
Even with the appalling sexism, this is one of my favorite movies. It annoys me how badly Tracy is treated, but in the end I’m glad she and Dexter got back together. I don’t think Mike ever really saw the whole Tracy or would care to.
Objectively I did always feel that Mike was the better choice but I can’t be mad at her for ending up with Dexter because LOOK AT HIS CHARMING FACE.
Truly, despite what’s going on in the movie, it boils down to Katherine Hepburn = awesome and therefore she deserves to end up with Cary Grant because he = awesome. (I have to confess to not caring for James Stewart except when he turns out to be the killer under all that diffident nice-guy-itude.) However, I’ll take Bringing Up Baby over Philadelphia Story any day.
Yessss Cary Grant + humor have charmed me into loving several “problematic” movies. (I see you, His Girl Friday!)
Nooo I love HGF – but it’s also been awhile since I’ve seen it. I remember it as being proto-feminist, at least compared to most films that came in the following couple of decades, since the man who wants Rosalind Russell to quit work to marry him is shown to be the wrong man for her. What am I selectively forgetting that is problematic?
Also, in addition to how gross and wrong that statement is, he has another daughter who he says maybe a sentence to in the entire movie. I can’t imagine WHY your daughters don’t worship you, Seth.
I have always loathed fucking Seth Lord. WHO WILL SAVE DINAH?
“MIKE: I’d just like to point out that I didn’t sexually assault you last night.
TRACY: Yes, thank you, Mike.”
I can hear her beautiful voice saying this and sort of looking his way momentarily and AAAHHHH how I adore her. I taught a Screwball Comedy class to middle and high schoolers last spring and we talked A LOT about gender roles and expectations because those movies – although full of women who are sassy and strong and whatnot – are pretty screwed up in lots of ways, but this one took the cake. At the end the kids were like, “Um… I didn’t like how that went.” Yep, good call kiddos.
Did no one else’s family say “I’M SEEEW HEPPAAAAY” to each other on a regular basis in imitation of this movie?
My family did! There was also a lot of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gJZSC02VvA
Yes, obviously!
My husband and I do, right before we dramatically wham our faces together and muscularly closed-mouth kiss, old movie-style!
This is one of the movies, like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, that I love while simultaneously plugging my ears and closing my eyes and going “nyah nyah I can’t hear the horrible misogyny it’s definitely not there.” I can’t help it. Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn are perfect. Add Jimmy Stewart and it’s irresistible. But calling out the creepy dad is definitely necessary, because he is the worst.
I read that this movie was concieved of to humanize Katherine Hepburn, because people thought she was “arrogant” and “boyish” (read: awesome) and weren’t coming out to see her movies. So, literally the goal of this movie was to take her down a notch (and I guess also make her look glamorous) so that the people of the 30s (40s) would like her because they couldn’t handle an independent woman who wasn’t nice all the time.
Anyway, as far as I’m concerned this movie is all about Dinah.
Dinah is the sh*t.
Was anyone else in the awkward position of having seen High Society first? Because I’m really not sure why on earth they felt the need to remake this movie and basically just change the title and add a few songs since it starred Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra now. (And Grace Kelly, but to my memory, she didn’t sing.)
(It also had Louis Armstrong, who, to my memory, didn’t do anything except hang around in Dexter’s house, casually breaking the fourth wall.)
But for years, I’d only seen High Society and by the time I actually saw Philadelphia Story, I realized it was a lot better, but was sadly old enough to also spend a lot of the movie uncomfortable with the plot and gender politics. And yet I still really like it.
I saw High Society first, too. GRACE DID SING in it (“True Love”). It’s obviously just as Problematic as Philadelphia Story, but I have still watched it soooo many times.
Did she?? NOW I MIGHT NEED TO WATCH IT AGAIN.
I admit, I watched it probably a half a dozen times on VHS when I was maybe twelve, so that was long long ago and my memory of it’s a little fuzzy. Mostly I remember rewatching it over and over in my formative years because I think my brain couldn’t process Grace Kelly’s beauty and I probably retained almost none of the actual details beyond that.
(Also SO GLAD that I’m not the only one who saw High Society. I’ve gotten a lot of blank looks when I mention it and say, “You know, the musical version of Philadelphia Story with Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Grace Kelly? No? Really? Okay, then. I promise it’s real.”)
Did everyone know that Anna Kendrick was nominated for a Tony for playing Dinah in High Society on Broadway when she was like 12? Yes? Everyone already knew that? Okay, cool…just checking.
Oh yes, me too! My grandpa had the soundtrack on a set of 45s that had their own little box. Same thing with realizing Philadelphia Story was better but still couldn’t wrap my head around a lot of it. But oh golly, I loved me some Louis Armstrong. I think I was the only 8 year old white girl in western NY in the 70s who had a Louis Armstrong poster in her room.
I unashamedly love “High Society” as well as “The Philadelphia Story”–possibly because I saw “High Society” at first and was thus unperturbed by its corruption of the original. But what’s not to like about Louis Armstrong and “Well, Did You Evah?”
I deeply and genuinely enjoy both, honestly. But now that I’m actually thinking about it, one point High Society might have in its favor is that Bing Crosby’s Dexter never comes across as quite as much as a smug man with a drinking problem as Cary Grant’s does.
Also Louis Armstrong’s line (and I’m paraphrasing): “There’s a dark horse in this race and my boy’s running a long third.” Every time I have an excuse to use the “dark horse in the race” idiom, I’m pretty sure it’s because of this.
I love the soundtrack to High Society! BUT everything else in the movie is worse than “The Philadelphia Story”-acting, writing (the class politics in “High Society” are even worse than “The Philadelphia Story”), directing. It’s too bad, with so much wonderful music that the rest of the movie can’t live up to it. Cole Porter gone to waste!
There are a lot of Sinatra or Debbie Reynolds remakes of 30s films in technicolor-and-musical for the 50s and i saw most of them before I saw the originals and I can pretty well say that the songs may be better but the originals are always better films.
High Society, Silk Stockings, what’s the remake of Bachelor Mother?, the Astaire one where he inherits a Paris fashion house, Rose-Marie…
Anyway, yes, I too saw High Society first, and was confused by Philadelphia Story, but PS has a lot more spunk and sharp edges, which makes it more interesting. (Also I hate Cole Porter musicals with a passion. His music is so blandly oppressive to me.)
I saw High Society after Philadelphia Story and turned HS off after about ten minutes HATED HIGH SOCIETY
Thank you for this, Mallory. I have always loved The Philadelphia Story, and simultaneously cringed at its deeply, deeply weird sexual politics. An act of mental contortionism so frequently required of feminist movie watchers. Feminist consumers of culture-in-general, for that matter.
Mallory I have literally teared up. There is water in my eyes. I have been a devoted reader for a long time but never have I loved, nay, NEEDED, a post more than this.
The fact that Philip Barry was allowed to hold a pen is the biggest mystery I’ve ever come across. And Katherine Hepburn was never better than in this dreadful dreadful film. Team Mike.
Actually he compares her UNfavorably to a boat. The boat was yar. She was not.
Love this piece, and love the movie. I guess we don’t always make sense.
Mike Connor: Reasonably Adequate
Mike Connor: Not Completely Made of Garbage
Mike Connor: Surprisingly Decent, For a Man
Elizabeth Imbrie: Marry the Girl
WHERE IS RUTH HUSSEY?
Because the bit about, “Don’t you mind when your boyfriend goes off having a magical evening with a goddess?” “Not if she’s getting married the next day,” that’s pretty fucked up, too.
Also, her character gave me a line I use quite a lot, when Jimmy Stewart finds out she’d divorced a plain Joe Smith and says, “Liz, you’re the darnedest girl.” And she says, “I think I’m sweet.”
For about the millionth time, I have scrolled down to the comments on The Toast and thought “yes, these are my people.” I also loved this movie as a teenager and will probably love it forever, even if the gender politics/general sexist fuckery of the thing make me mad when I think about them too hard.
Also, Team Liz Imbrie forever.
“Can you use a typewriter?”
“No thanks, I have one at home.”
Ok, that’s all in the delivery. Because I, anyway, take her to mean, “Cary Grant, are you fucking asking me to TYPE?” But then she of course pitches in, to blackmail the publisher of Spy magazine.
At the button on the phone for the stable:
“So you can talk to the horses without having them in the house.”
I was once in a production of this play in which the Seth Lord, who was not good at remembering his lines or his props or people’s names (characters or actors) gave the line as “you have a good body.” Buffy, the subtext here is rapidly becoming text.
This is brilliant. It also goes on a list I’m making of every time Mallory mentions Moonstruck, because she’s clearly just as in love with that movie as I am. It is indeed a modern classic.
Reading this was cathartic. I watched Philadelphia Story in a college class in continental philosophy, where the point it was supposed to be illustrating for us was–I am not making this up–that to be a really excellent person requires openness and willingness to bend, and that sometimes the best thing a friend can do is to criticize you and push you to be better. In other words, the professor wanted to use those men’s treatment of Tracy Lord as an example of moral greatness!
I don’t blame people who like the movie despite its flaws, but it just made me want to put out my own eyes, like Oedipus, in a vain attempt to forget the horrors I had seen.
Thank you! Gah, this movie makes me so mad. (A lot of Hepburn movies tend to make me mad, actually, because of the emphasis on putting her in her place by the end- the only one I recall really unreservedly loving was The African Queen.)
Yeah, let’s not even talk about “Woman of the Year.” But she does well out of “The Lion in Winter.” Yes, she’s going back to castle-arrest, and her husband’s still shtupping their prospective daughter-in-law, but she’s going to outlive him and rule the country while her favorite son King Richard the Lionhearted is off crusading. And she’s the only woman who’s ever been able to match Henry and he knows it.
It's actually a hilarious movie with some stunning performances. If nothing else, watch the ball and the night after the ball (it'll be toward the end). Because drunk Jimmy Stewart is the best thing that's ever been committed to film. That, and every scene with Dinah and Liz Embrie.
I remember the first time I saw this movie as a teen and I wanted to beat the holy sh*t out of Seth Lord. Then Mike gave his hearthfires and holocausts speech and, well, I very nearly forgot everything Seth said to Tracy.
And let's not forget Dexter pushing Tracy into the house BY HER FACE. Jesus christ, Stewart's speech carries a lot of goodwill.
Perfection. Can’t decide whether sending this to my mom, who introduced me to this movie, will make her laugh or cause irreparable disappointment.
This is beautiful.