Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins (as played by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison), My Fair Lady:
In the original play, Pygmalion, Eliza did not return to Henry. This is the correct response.
This relationship will last approximately five minutes after the closing scene. In the last lines of the film, Henry Higgins, relieved to see that Eliza has returned to him, sits down in his chair and says “Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?”
What we don’t see, immediately following this, is Eliza having an epiphany that Higgins will never appreciate her. She chucks the slippers at his head, and walks out.
Sabrina Fairchild and Linus Larrabee (as played by Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart), Sabrina:
Look, it isn’t the May-December romance thing that’ll make this one fizzle (as will become apparent, this list is swimming in May-December romances). It’s just that, at the end of the day, they have nothing to talk about. Their entire courtship revolved around Sabrina talking about Linus’s brother David, and Linus talking about how he needed to get out more. By the time they step off that boat onto French soil, their conversation will have dwindled down to talking about the weather, and the state of the cuisine onboard the ship. Adding to their doom is the fact that their entire courtship was based upon Linus lying to her. Sabrina deserves better, and will realize it once she’s back in Paris.
Still, though the relationship won’t last, both parties will look back on the whole thing fondly. After years of living fabulously in Paris with a rotating string of amazing lovers, Sabrina will credit Linus with helping her to finally get over David, shedding that last vestige of her awkward teenage self. Linus will look back on his life and always credit Sabrina with helping him to become less of a stodgy, workaholic stick-in-the-mud.
Selina Rogers and Bill Williamson (as played by Lena Horne and Bill Robinson), Stormy Weather:
This man is blackmailing Selina’s uterus, plain and simple.
While watching this movie, I had high hopes for this relationship. After all, this is the rare romance depicted on film that isn’t built on some strange misunderstanding, and is actually full of open communication and mutual admiration.
And then the other shoe drops. “You’ve worked long enough, Selina,” and “Look at this huge house in the suburbs that I’m going to buy for us…and the children” and “I just thought you’d want to settle down.” I understand that this was a different time, and that most women were expected to not work, have a few kids and be happy about it, but this is Lena Horne. Have you heard her voice? Have you seen the talent the gods bestowed upon her? Let her keep performing! It’s not even necessarily a problem for her to have children—these two can hire childcare. Lena Horne doesn’t have to quit singing.
But, alas: even though they break up in an admirably functional way, where both parties agree that they simply want different things out of life, it’s not long before Selina decides it’s okay to throw all her dreams away. In a quick coda at the end of the film, she sings “Stormy Weather,” looks sad, and then smiles and tells Bill she’s changed her mind, and they should have kids and settle down. People should not make major life decisions right after a breakup. Selina spent the entire movie talking about how she’s ambitious, and how she loves performing. This will be a decision she regrets.
Lisa Carol Fremont and L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (as played by Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart), Rear Window:
These two had a nice murder mystery to spice up their relationship for a week or two, but they’re not going to last another month.
It is absurd to me that Lisa has to break into a murderer’s house and endanger her life before Jeff finally realizes that this might be the girl for him. Jeff spends the entire movie trying to break up with Lisa, because he snobbishly assumes that she isn’t cut out for his adventurous photographer lifestyle. Let’s list off Lisa’s admirable qualities: she dresses correctly for every occasion, she packs the most compact night case I’ve ever seen, she has detective skills and intuition to rival Sherlock Holmes, she’s capable of gracefully climbing fire escapes in heels and a skirt, she can talk Twenty-One into not only doing delivery, but sending a waiter along to serve, and she looks like Grace Kelly. That sure seems like someone I’d like to have out in the field.
Lisa is also very good at bearing Jeff’s criticisms with composure, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that composure finally cracks. Jeff’s already got the two broken legs, but he’s still got a few other appendages that could end up in casts.
Kathy Selden and Don Lockwood (as played by Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly), Singin’ in the Rain:
Kathy and Don don’t last. They’ll be happy for a while, maybe a year or so, but then they will fall victim to a classic Hollywood breakup. For one, their careers will keep them apart, but there is also one other glaring obstacle to them finding happiness: Cosmo Brown.
Don is going to wake up one day and realize that he and his buddy Cosmo (played by Donald O’Connor) have ten times more chemistry than he and Kathy ever had. He’ll also start to notice that he spends a lot of time avoiding Kathy in favor of spending time with Cosmo. And then a lot of different realizations will click into place. Nobody watches Singin’ in the Rain for Don’s romantic ballads with Kathy. They watch it for songs with Don and Cosmo. Take another look at Donald O’Connor in that movie, and just notice how insanely blue his eyes are. That man is a stone-cold fox hiding behind a comic relief exterior. Don is going to figure that out soon enough. And even if I’m completely wrong about this and Don isn’t in love with his best friend, it’s still Cyd Charisse instead of Kathy in his big imaginary dance number. This does not bode well for Kathy.
Julie Andre and Jervis Pendleton III (as played by Leslie Caron and Fred Astaire), Daddy Long Legs:
This is the May-December romance to end them all. With an unsettling father figure fantasy thrown in.
Julie will stay with Jervis until she’s in her mid to late twenties, at which point she’s going to have a quarter-life crisis and realize she’s shackled herself to a man at least thirty-five years her senior. What do I even want out of life? she’ll wonder. What am I good at? Who am I? She’ll suddenly have a deep need to go on a journey of self-discovery. And before you know it, Jervis will be alone again, a single man in his sixties.
Dale Tremont and Jerry Travers (as played by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire), Top Hat:
The wonderful thing about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ movies is that they’re almost completely devoid of conflict. They’re always chock-full of absurd misunderstandings, but they never really encounter any real-world problems. No issues exist in the world that can’t be solved with a nice pas de deux.
Nowhere is this more true than in Top Hat, where the only problem they seem to have is that Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) spends the majority of the movie under the misapprehension that Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire) is her best friend’s husband. How could she come to be so mixed up? Having seen this film, I still honestly don’t know, but these things seem to happen to Fred and Ginger all the time.
I predict that Dale and Jerry (or really, it’s just Ginger and Fred — these character names are all pretty interchangeable) will continue be happily in love so long as they stay rich. I truly can’t conceive of these characters in a situation that involves hardship. If they encountered any true adversity, I’m not even sure if they’d break up; I think the two of them would just completely disappear into a puff of pale pink smoke. Let’s just say they stay together in an alternate dimension where nothing bad ever happens and everyone’s always immaculately dressed.
Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns (as played by Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant), His Girl Friday:
This one is tricky. On one hand, Hildy and Walter’s relationship is built almost entirely on discord. On the other hand, I cannot see either of these career reporters marrying anyone else and being happy. Both of them are addicted to adrenaline, and addicted to their jobs. And lord knows, nobody else could keep up with them conversationally — if any of you out there haven’t seen this movie, it’s as if Amy Sherman-Palladino and Aaron Sorkin had a love child, and then that love child got addicted to coke.
The thing that really gives me hope for them is that, thanks to a few well-placed blink-and-you-miss-it exchanges (the censors sure did), it’s clear that Hildy and Walter had a pretty healthy sex life during the first round of their marriage. I foresee them duking it out nightly in the bedroom, adding in extra helpings of kink, and enjoying it well into old age.
Joanna Drayton and John Prentice (as played by Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner:
Joanna is a pretty naive about the success of her relationship with John. They’ve decided to get married after only knowing each other for two weeks. In Hawaii. Trying to turn a vacation fling into something serious can be quite ill-advised.
All these concerns, however, can be remedied by the fact that Joanna is engaged to a man who looks like — and sounds like — Sydney Poitier. When a man has a voice like that, everything he says sounds incredibly smart and thoughtful. If he says that he loves Joanna and the marriage will work, you want to believe it’ll work. If he says it’s possible their child could grow up to be the President, well then…this movie came out in 1967, so that math’s actually pretty sound.
Ellie Andrews and Peter Warne (as played by Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable), It Happened One Night:
Of course they stay together. Those two kooks could never be married to anyone else.
Here’s what I picture for Ellie and Peter: their honeymoon turns into an epic road trip where they live by their wits (and, when their wits fail, they dip into Ellie’s huge fortune). After that, they’ll start their own newspaper — Ellie will take a job as editor, and Peter will be the star reporter — and they’ll give each other merry hell for the rest of their lives.
Regina Lampert and Peter Joshua/Alexander Dyle/Adam Canfield/Brian Cruikshank (as played by Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant), Charade:
This might come as a surprise, but I actually think this couple has what it takes to have long-term happiness. This is definitely another May-December romance, but one where both parties seem to be on the same maturity level, and both know how to have fun. Regina is in a life-threatening situation, but she still takes the time to fake a scream and trap PeterAlexAdamBrian in her room for a little flirting. Instead of being exasperated by her actions, P.A.A.B. responds by jokingly taking a shower in her bathroom, fully clothed. Regina has also been patient enough to roll with P.A.A.B.’s constant name changes. These two will end up a married spy duo, living a fabulous lifestyle, and constantly teaming up and having CIA adventures.
Not for nothing, but this is all going to be more successful because Regina Lampert has a pretty full life, by old Hollywood standards. She takes trips without her husband Charles, and she has female friends (well, one) who she did not meet through her husband, but through her job, a successful job as an automatic translator at UNESCO. And without the help of anyone, when her finances turn sour, she is able to go back to UNESCO and get re-hired. In directing this movie, Stanley Donen was trying to take after Alfred Hitchcock, but in a wonderful turn, one of the ways in which Donen failed to capture that “Hitchcock Style” is that we’re given a fully-formed female character who has a life outside of her romantic relationships. And she’s a brunette. That’s a difference.
Nonono. Kathy, Don and Cosmo become the world’s goofiest, happiest triad. You cannot convince me otherwise. I’ve read the fic.
They’re the three that dance over a sofa, right? If that dance wasn’t explicitly all about a happy 3way I don’t know what is.
I scrolled down to write just this same thing. They’re like 70% married to each other in the movie anyway.
Beat me to it!
Same. I think the Cosmo/Kathy dynamic gets the short end in fic, but the two of them really like one another, and Cosmo probably shares tips for handling Don’s diva tantrums, and reveals how much he notices what Kathy’s about too. I love those two kids. <3
Honestly, I kind of just want Kathy to end up with Cosmo, full stop.
Honestly? I do too. Don’s an ass. Cosmo’s adorable.
I feel like this is the only place in the world where I can brag that my 3.5 year old daughter can recite ever increasing chunks of Moses Supposes. Hashtag parentinggoals, yes?
If she follows my trajectory she’ll be singing all of beautiful girl by the time she’s 5
Coming down here to say the same thing. No one needs to choose, shhhhhhh.
(Everything else on the list is spot on, of course.)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Shaw wrote in a postscript to Pygmalion that Eliza married Freddy and was adamant that she not end up with Henry. When he saw the play’s ending had been changed to imply Henry successfully wooed Eliza he told the director “Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot.”
Poor Shaw! This was always happening to him. In the preface to Three Plays for Puritans, he goes on a rant about how he made it perfectly clear that the hero of The Devil’s Disciple was not in love with the minister’s wife, Judith, that he wasn’t in love with anybody, that his actions were entirely motivated by conscience and not even the tiniest bit by love – and yet while he, Shaw, was out of the country, the play’s director got around this by having the hero, while he’s telling Judith he doesn’t love her, sneak up behind her and kiss a lock of her hair.
One has to wonder whether people fucked with Shaw like this just because it was so hilarious to wind him up and watch him go.
He was also reportedly a huge jerk to other people a great deal of the time, so that may have made it even more enjoyable.
Shaw is one of my favorite playwrights (perhaps my very favorite), and his ideas and art are a major inspiration to me, but I sincerely doubt I’d want to be his friend. (And I have to take a whole lot of what he said with several grains of salt, because have you ever *read* MAN AND SUPERMAN?)
Yesss, like the Monty Python sketch: “Oh that’s one of Shaw’s. Come on, Shawie.” https://youtu.be/UxXW6tfl2Y0
Did Eliza and Henry have to end up getting married? I’ve always been comfortable assuming that Eliza kind of, I don’t know, hung around Henry’s place, and that the two of them were good platonic friends, and eventually she settled into a nice relationship with someone a little more stable than Freddy.
In the novel she and Freddy get married and open a flower shop. They both grow up both emotionally and in business sense. She remains friends with Henry, and is simultaneously exasperated and tremendously fond of him. It is a good ending.
I assume that, in the manner of musicals, Freddie is not *actually* lurking around her house for like three days having barely met her.
I sort of loved Shaw’s piece on the ending of Pygmalion. Like, Freddy and Eliza would be happy because Freddy has no idea working is embarrassing and doesn’t mind it, and also because he knows Eliza is cleverer and follows her lead.
I’m on Team Neither. Eliza can do so much better.
Sure, maybe Kathy and Don on their own won’t last, but Kathy/Don/Cosmo is an OT3 that can never be destroyed.
I LOVE this, and the last paragraph about Charade blew my mind. You’re completely right. No wonder I adore this movie so much.
Ditto!
The trivia behind this, if you aren’t an IMDB fiend comme moi, is that Cary Grant was wary of the age gap between him and Mz. Hepburn (I know, imagine that, LEO ARE YOU LISTENING) and agreed to a romance only if she was the one aggressively pursuing him
If he says it’s possible their child could grow up to be the President, well then…this movie came out in 1967, so that math’s actually pretty sound.
OMG.
MIND.
BLOWN.
I hadn’t done the math on that in any of the last 8 years.
it’s as if Amy Sherman-Palladino and Aaron Sorkin had a love child, and then that love child got addicted to coke.
They should really put that on the back of the DVD.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: yeeees. Different time and all, but to this modern viewer, it was hard to concentrate on the well-done racial issues when nobody really brought up YOU HAVE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR TWO WEEKS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Also he’s way older, IIRC.
The Sidney Poitier character is written to be perfect, so there’s no reason to object to him other than his race. In 1968 eyes. To my 21st century eyes he’s scary and controlling.
He was also widowed! There are so many complications that would make their marriage seem tricky, even without the racial element. Anyone’s parents would be a little freaked out if you came home and said “Hey, here’s this cute guy I met on vacation. We’re gonna get married and move to Europe tomorrow byeeeeee.”
That man is a stone-cold fox hiding behind a comic relief exterior.
Re: Donald O’Connor
I HAVE TO BUTT IN HERE TO SAY
have you seen the early comedians in film? have you SEEN how buff they were? jesus christ Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton and even Douglas Fairbanks until they realized how hot he was and let him do 80% of his scenes shirtless (or trouserless have you seen The Thief of Baghdad i mean honestly) – they dressed in frump and loose and then you see their guns and ha ha what I’m saying is that no one should be surprised that Donald O’Connor’s character outranks Debbie Reynolds’s character on the hotness scale.
Very true!!
My partner is a silent film historian, and he pointed out to me a few shots in “The Thief of Baghdad” where Fairbanks’ trousers are basically see-through and nothing is left to the imagination.
Buster Keaton was a hell of an athlete, and pretty muscular for a rather svelte guy.
It’s such a pity that modern film comedians just don’t go the same slapstick route, so they’re all tweedy or dumpy, and if they do get their muscles on, they get relegated to the action hero roles. (I mean, the Rock is really good in his comedy stuff! But they don’t let him really ham it up like they could.)
Also, I was frankly shocked at how you could almost count Fairbanks’s balls in one back-lit scene with his sheer puffy trousers in Baghdad. “Aren’t there any standards of decency?!” i gasped at the screen, even as I chortled at it and enjoyed imagining all the women of 1923 having vapours in the cinema, and going back for more.
would there be a link of this particular image available anywhere? I feel like some vapours but I daren’t google ‘douglas fairbanks balls’ in work, even on incognito.
I can’t find any stills on google, and I don’t seem to have take any when I saw it a few weeks ago, but he did intentionally go 100% naked in The Half-Breed in order to thumb his nose at the censors and prudes. You only see him from behind, but:
EtA: I looked again and realized I didn’t get the sheer pants still, but I did get one where you can measure his dick anyway, with the commentary:
“If any straight girls or queer boys would like to know, it took douglas fairbanks almost an hour to put a shirt on in this movie”
then
“follow-up: the shirt came off again not 20min later” with this screengrab:
Oh my! THANK you.
Oh my stars and garters.
I had this same conversation with myself about Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendall from North by Northwest. So he’s going to go back to being an ad man, and she’s going to give up the spy life to be his wife in some large but still confining apartment in Manhattan? Um, no. He’ll get bored and so will she; the difference is that he’ll find someone else to compare to a box of chocolates, and she’ll go back to the spy life, and she’ll definitely be better off.
Probably some hot sex for them until that happens, though.
Tommy Albright and Fiona MacLaren (as portrayed by Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse), Brigadoon:
Falls apart shortly after the honeymoon. The townfolk of Brigadoon realize that they don’t have the resources to sustain themselves without outside support. After a particularly bad fight with Fiona about haggis (again) for dinner, Tommy stalks off, beyond town limits, thereby dooming everyone.
Alternatively, two days after Tommy and Fiona get married, Brigadoon reappears circa 2140 into an environmental wasteland. Everybody dies. Either way, Tommy and Fiona don’t last.
Donald O’Connor is the absolute best. If you haven’t seen any of his other movies, do yourself a favor and remedy that immediately. Or at least go find the scene in Call Me Madam where he pops balloons with his feet while drunkenly tap dancing.
Also that movie gives us George Sanders a.k.a Shere Khan a.k.a. Addison deWitt a.k.a. First of the Kinky Daddies singing. Which, as you might infer, I am About.
One of my very favorite (non-musical) films is Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent”, which is basically George Sanders and Herbert Marshall having a Suave-Off for 2 hours.
I just found it in Blu-ray quality on YouTube. I’m excited. (Also, great username!)
Thanks!! <3
Robert Benchley (whom I also adore) is in it as well.
Just watched it: it was good! Young George Sanders was actually kind of more…cute? Which I was not expecting from George Sanders Content, but, no complaints. 🙂
I’m a huge fan of There’s No Business Like Show Business simply because it pairs him with Marilyn Monroe. And has Ethel Merman as his mother. It’s pretty great.
Ethel Merman, le sigh!
yes yes yes yes to the Fred and Ginger one. Their movies are my fluffy, no calories, happy place movies. Everything is perfect, everyone can dance, the outfits are always divine, there is no real world, everything can be resolved in an hour and a half or so. If I could live in a movie it would either be one of theirs or The Women.
Me too!
Ideally, I’d be Ginger’s wisecracking co-worker who looks like a young and blonde Lucille Ball.
It is Lucille Ball! She was a model (and blonde) in the ’30s. She pops up in Roberta and a few other Fred & Ginger pictures as well.
That’s what I meant, I just want to look like her 🙂
Ding-ding-ding, are you me?! Here for Ginger and Fred, and for The Women! (You may recognize my username.) My other marshmallow movies are Stage Door and Born to Dance.
I assume Stage Door minus the abrupt tone shift in the last 15 minutes?
I really think you may be me/I may be you. Born to Dance, y’all. Born to Dance. My love for Eleanor Powell borders on the ridiculous. Have you seen Broadway Melody of 1940? The first time I saw the Begin the Beguine number in that my heart stopped. It may be sacreligious, but I think she danced better with Fred than Ginger did. And Ship Ahoy? Eleanor was a beast of a dancer.
Donald O’Connor is the real star of Singin’ in the Rain and I will not hear a WORD of disagreement on this matter
What we don’t see, immediately following this, is Eliza having an epiphany that Higgins will never appreciate her. She chucks the slippers at his head, and walks out.
And she would not end up with movie!Freddy Aynsford-Hill, either. Because he didn’t Show Her. She’s sick of men.
Meanwhile, I absolutely love Charade and yes, Regina and whatever-the-hell-Cary-Grant’s-character’s-real-name-is would have a very fun relationship after the film.
George Bernard Shaw was pretty clear that she had two bad options. Freddy was too much of a wuss and she’d spend the rest of her life having him fetch her slippers for her. Henry Higgins was, well, Henry Higgins and she’d spend the rest of her life fetching his slippers. Eliza SHOULD have a real partner but that wasn’t on the list of options so she went with Freddy the Wuss.
I was in a production of PYGMALION a few years ago, and was musing on the fact that I could not think of a contemporary story that ended with the woman saying “Noooooope!” to the guy who didn’t deserve her, particularly not one in which this was a happy ending. Some things have maybe regressed in the past century?
A few years ago the BBC did an updated version of Much Ado About Nothing with Billie Piper as Hero, and it finished with her and Claudio sitting on a beach together having made friends, and he says, “So, are we back together?” and she goes, “lol, no. You completely humiliated me in front of everyone we know, so, no.” I LOVED that they decided that what Claudio does to her was unforgiveable.
I saw one televised version of Pygmalion where it was heavily suggested she ended up with Colonel Pickering, which is preferable to the other two (she makes a point of saying to him that he showed her respect all throughout).
Missing my favorite not gonna work out couple: Audrey & Fred in Funny Face. She’s going to ask him to read something on the plane home and he’s going to dismiss it and it’s over before then land in LaGuardia.
and good riddance !
Although he doesn’t deserve it, I think Fred’s character in that movie would make a great couple with Kay thompson’s. they’ve got chemistry good enough to turn that pretty insufferable ‘beat’ musical number into high entertainment
Yeah, there’s no way this one works out. Fred even says that the sleazy professor is “about as interested in your intellect as I am.”
I must respectfully disagree with you on His Girl Friday. He pulled so much shit to trick her into getting back together with him–lying, stealing, framing her fiancé for picking up a prostitute–I felt light the relationship would easily become gaslighty, if it wasn’t already.
I must register my strong agree with NeuroticChihuahua’s disagree on this point. Hildy was amazing, Walter was terrible, and it’s an injustice for them to be together. I watched it with a couple friends and we were all pretty mad by the end.
Undecided about her and fiancewhat’shisface, but she seemed to be 100% in charge of him and loving it, so I could more easily see some dom/sub stuff working out there.
What About Jerry and Osgood Fielding III in Some Like it Hot?
They live happily ever after and deed Osgood’s enormous fortune to the Chicago public schools music programs.
I’m glad of that, because Joe and Sugar are goin nowhere
Jerry is going to be a fabulously wealthy widow who speaks very fondly of her late husband during boozy brunches with Sugar in, like, two years after that movie ends. I’m so happy for her.
“Nobody’s perfect!”
Yup, I was reading to the end expecting to find them at the bottom of the list!
Those kids are gonna make it
This list is pretty damn spot on. Can we make it a series!?
Also, my husband is the child of two journalists and I still cannot get him to sit through His Girl Friday. Should I divorce him now or should I try to find a dumb tennis player on a train to pin the murder on?
What are you talking about, you crazy woman? I watched that movie last year in its entirety. Stop slandering me on the internets!
Dumb tennis player, obvi
This was great fun.
But the takeaway, for me, is that I need Ginger’s coat. (Bargain Bin, are you listening?)
I would accept that Godfrey & Irene make it a while, but eventually in my headcanon I desperately want them to break up so he can get with Cornelia, because they have much feistier chemistry.
Lombard is obviously perfect, but goddamn if I don’t adore Gail Patrick.
I know what I’m watching later.
I didn’t watch that movie until a year ago and was SHOCKED they didn’t get together at the end.
never a promising note to end things on: “Just close your eyes Godfrey, it’ll all be over in a minute.”
Strong couple: The mother and her protégé Carlo
CORNELIA. Gail Patrick was sleek hotness in a fabulous dress with giant sunflowers on it.
There is a pre-Code movie called “Murder at the Vanities” where she all-too-briefly plays a sassy PI in wide-legged pants.
I have issues with My Fair Lady because I love everything about it except I have to fast forward all the parts where Henry Higgins is singing or talking or onscreen.
I like this ending (where within 5 minutes she realizes her mistake and leaves him and goes on to have a happy life where he doesn’t matter in the slightest) almost better than the one in my headcanon (where everything in “Just You Wait ‘Enry ‘Iggins” comes true).
Higgins is an r/redpill bro and no one can tell me different. *tips top hat* M’Fair Lady.
Ugh I have a terrible ex who thinks of ‘Enry ‘Iggins as his personal hero. That would explain a lot.
Worst case scenario:
Kathy and Don have a private understanding, sleep in separate bedrooms, and frequently welcome their dear friend and houseguest Cosmo, who, it is rumored, has his own room at the Lockwood mansion. He in fact does not, and Don and Kathy’s bedrooms are the only ones that ever get used.
The household staff know what goes on, as do the tabloids, but the more intrusive stories are not given much weight in the mainstream media until after Don’s death in the mid ’70s, although Cosmo is still euphemistically referred to as an “upside-down chimneysweep.”
Any thoughts on Holiday, with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn? I think that’s one classic movie relationship that could really last.
I was JUST coming here to say that! Johnny and Linda will travel the world having wonderful experiences and adventures. They will use the Potters’ home in Europe as occasional refuge from their travels and as the site of fantastic dinner parties with daring countercultural figures. They will also work out how to get Ned the help he so desperately needs.
As much as I love Bringing Up Baby, I am not sure if David and Susan will be similarly situated, but maybe they will! If David unclenches a little and Susan works on her propensity for breaking things they could go on digs together and have a wonderful time.
David is headed to an asylum within two years, tops.
Nooooooo.
(probably true tho)
“Accidental leopard mauling” is also a possibility here
I think any one of a number of Darwin Award-worthy mishaps might befall David. That is if the rest of that brontosaurus skeleton didn’t collapse and kill him just after the credits rolled…
This times a million. Poor Ned. The way that film ended always made me sad for him.
I love Holiday and that entire romance… This list had to be pretty limited when it came to the entire scope of classic Hollywood, but in a relative sense, considering old Hollywood values, I think they definitely have what it takes to make it in Holiday.
YES. Absolutely accurate. Hildy/Walter and Ellie/Peter + bantering/sexy/driving each other crazy/wacky kinks for the next 50 years. I am aboard those ships. Also I need to have an old-movie fest now.
Question: what is the Toastie general feeling about Nick & Nora Charles from The Thin Man? Given that we see them actually married and nothing of their courtship. I’ve only seen the first two movies and I hear they get very traditional in the later ones but I always thought they were in it for the long haul.
They remain happily drinking and having great sex forever, I will not hear a word otherwise
Going off the books, yeah, they are in it for the long haul, Nick is so in love with how bright and spirited Nora is. You get a tiny bit more backstory on their courtship and they just seem so happy with each other.
Oh man, I got so excited for a second that there was a book sequel that I’d never read. Sadtrombone
Nevertheless, it reminds me that I haven’t read the novel since high school and should revisit it!
I’m way late to this thread, but I was just at the library yesterday and ran across “Return of the Thin Man,” which is two sequel novellas that Hammett wrote specifically for the movies published just a few years ago. I haven’t started it yet, but I’m cautiously excited about it!
Sorry, accidental plural! that was misleading, wasn’t it.
This list was killing me until you got to His Girl Friday. They are totally going to shag it out well into maddened but happy old age. Yes!
Future editions should definitely cover:
*Linda and Johnny (Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn) from Holiday
*Susan and David (same as above) from Bringing Up Baby
*Holly and whatever-his-name-is (Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard) from Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Off the top of my head I’d say “make it” “break up almost immediately” and “nope” but I have to give it some further thought.
Holly would check out of that relationship so fast. Dude would never see it coming. He’d go to a lunch meeting with his publisher one day and come home to an empty apartment.
oh you cynics!
No, no, no–Cat will stay with him. He knows who’s providing the food.
Susan and David are basically my parents and my parents have been married more than 35 years. So I 100% believe they make it, and that things only calm down slightly in the following decades.
Yep, as soon as I read the title of the article, Holly and What’s His Name popped in my head as a definite and glaring NOPE. They should never have shoehorned the romance into the movie.
This list is perfect and 100% accurate, thank you.
Nick and Nora Charles will continue bickering, getting into jams, and trading bon mots until they are very old. They will die within a day of each other. No other ending is possible.
Too true. You just made me miss the Thrilling Adventure Hour so badly, though; if you haven’t listened to Beyond Belief, go do that. This has been a PSA. http://nerdist.com/thrilling-adventure-hour-76-be…
I address every Airedale I ever meet as “Asta”.
The film version of Freddie in My Fair Lady is my everything. Young Jeremy Brett foreverrrrrrrr. When I was young and naive I thought the Higgins/Eliza pairing was great, mostly because I was blinded by Rex Harrison’s rumpled charisma, but I saw the light when I got older.
I still root for him in Cleopatra, for crying out loud. Some men.
They really stacked the deck by making Film Freddie so ridiculously handsome. In the play, I think he’s supposed to be more of an inbred, small-chinned moron…
As long as he can sing he still has my vote.
“rumpled charisma”
You have succinctly explained why my teen self thought Henry Higgins was dreeeeeeeeeamy. And, uh, some subsequent poor life choices.
Oh man, that MIND BLOWN moment when, as an adult, I finally put it together that Freddie and Holmes were the same person, having grown up watching both of those a milliondy times.
I, uh, just had that mind blowy moment? Seriously, I had NO IDEA.
WAIT, WHAT?!??!?!??!
WHAT
I
WHAT
SHERLOCK HOLMES
I watched MFL dozens of times as a child/tween/teen but not since then, and have watched straight through the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes shows at least twice as an adult and I literally never ever I mean
I think I’m losing consciousness, send help
When I was in middle school, watching My Fair Lady for perhaps the dozenth time, my mother walked past just as it was ending and said, “She should’ve married Freddie.” It hit me right then that she was absolutely, unavoidably right (and at the time we did not even know that Shaw agreed with her).
I actually have a running list of movies my mother ruined for me with one well-timed comment.
That running list + the comments would make a great article, just saying….
Seconded
thirded.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes YES
although
I feel I must dispute the happiness (though perhaps not the durability) of claudette and Clark because pretty much fifty percent of his romantic banter involves ‘slapping’, ‘slugging’, or ‘spanking’ her. Not charming.
Can we do this with more contemporary movies?
When Harry Met Sally – yes
Nottinghill – no
You’ve Got Mail – hell no
Four Weddings and a Funeral – probably not
Sleepless in Seattle – I really don’t know
Love, Actually – too many couples to call but I’m sure the prettiest model from Milwaukee dumps whatzisname sooner rather than later
Keira Knightly and Chiwetel Ejiofor: Stay together. One of them is now on the borough council.
Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon: Not longterm, but she does level up in self-confidence and he reconnects with ordinary Britons, so win/win. They still exchange Christmas cards.
Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman: Break up after two or three years, because she just can’t bring herself to trust him and he hasn’t done the work necessary to show he’s worthy of her trust. However, they did live in the same house (different bedrooms) for several years after their break-up because London real estate prices.
Colin Firth and Lucia Moniz: Surprise! They’re still together! And they both seem genuinely happy. (I know.)
Liam Neeson and Claudia Schiffer: They go out for six months when they realize that the only thing holding them together is sex. So they casually dated for a couple more years, both seeing other people, until she found love with Naomi Campbell. (Is model RPF a thing?)
Bill Nighy and Gregor Fisher: Quietly get a civil partnership in 2011. I *think* it’s for convenience/hospital visits/next-of-kin/power-of-attorney things, but….
Martin Freeman and Joanna Page: Didn’t work out.
The two kids: Are email pen pals for a couple of years and still see each other on Facebook occasionally.
brb writing lots of model RPF
As creepy as the majority of their courtship is, they both learned languages for each other. That’s fucking insane, especially when one of the languages is Portuguese.
Those crazy kids in Notting Hill are going to make it.
My Best Friend’s Wedding- the marrying couple break up in five years when the Cameron Diaz character realizes she is 27 and has only slept with one person. Julia Roberts’ character marries someone else at 35.
Pretty Woman- Lasts for far longer than it should; Richard Gere is chronically unfaithful and Julia Roberts doesn’t have enough dignity to break up with him.
Jules (Julia Roberts) would have like, two divorces under her belt by the time she hit 45 and would then just live the single life. No question.
I want Harry and Sally to break up cos I haaaaaaaaate Harry
But they’re both kind of insufferable? In a way of like “These two people are the ONLY two people in the world who could possibly stand each other enough to make each other happy.”
Notting Hill – at least for a while, for the kids.
YGM – History will repeat itself as far as Fox men are concerned. Kathleen will realize that she cannot reconcile Joe’s past in-person behaviour toward her with his NY152 persona who treated her so well, and it’ll be over.
Sleepless – Sam and Annie will do the bicoastal long distance thing for a while, but then they’ll come to the conclusion that either: 1) neither of them want to make the big move from Baltimore to Seattle or vice versa, or 2) while Annie really likes Jonah, and he still likes her, she sucks at the whole parenting thing. And it’ll end, but they all remain long-time friends and correspondents.
Big fan of Don/Cosmo here, also total agreement with the Charade pairing lasting forever.
I never liked the ending of My Fair Lady and after reading the Pygmalion post-script, it made me hate it intensely. Also Sugar Kane and Joe from Some Like it Hot definitely aren’t going to last
I was ready to never forgive you for taking Humphrey Bogart away from Sabrina, but then I remembered he belonged to Ingrid Bergman anyway. And YES Hildy/Walter, and IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT!!! Old screwballs are my safe place.
Does anyone remember the golden age of YouTube, when you could watch hundreds of them? Before they likely got slapped with copyright? We didn’t even know what we had back then…
His Girl Friday is actually out of copyright–they forgot to put that little “this is in copyright k” title screen in front of a printing and then whoosh! no more copyright. Because that is exactly how that should work.
I think today I am in a factoid mood.
How about the more explicit threesome of Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper, and Frederic March in Lubitsch’s “Design for Living” (1933)? Personally, I think they went on happily threesome-ing it up for many years.
Likewise Jean Arthur, Melvyn Douglas, and Fred MacMurray from Too Many Husbands.
Each movie has all three madly in love with each of the others, and trying to make it work by splitting apart in different configurations, but they keep finding themselves needing their third. They’re weirdly romantic, in the end. I couldn’t bear to imagine either set not living happily ever after.
Oh, I so hope so – that’s all I want for her, really!
RE: “Sabrina”
IF you read the actual play the movie is based on (which, as an adult, I read, fell in love with, AND got to play Sabrina), their relationship works out MUCH better. Like, there’s some implication that David probably wasn’t the real reason Sabrina came home, she worked for the mother-effing UN and had a badass life in Paris that wasn’t centered around the brothers Larabee, Linus and Sabrina have real conversations that aren’t just about his brother. Oh, and her dad drops the biggest fun twist at the ending.
Soooo…yeah. I love the movies, but check out the play and join me in my annoyance that they updated Sabrina in the 90’s but it still wasn’t as progressive as the original play.
a) i had no idea it was based on a play, and now I feel cheated
B) what’s the twist?!?!
3) i especially feel cheated that the 1990s remake didn’t seem to incorporate any of those play elements, but was based entirely on the movie. why?!
SPOILER (in case anyone else is reading this and is somehow going to hunt down the script to read)
He totally saved Larabee Industries during the great depression by using his savings and buying a boatload of stock in the company, all because he trusted Linus’s business sense. So he’s a millionaire, but just didn’t want to talk about it.
WHAT dang.
That is….really different from that dumb “front seat and back seat with the window in between” speech he made.
“if any of you out there haven’t seen [His Girl Friday], it’s as if Amy Sherman-Palladino and Aaron Sorkin had a love child, and then that love child got addicted to coke.”
Truer film analysis has rarely been spoken.
That’s all well and good, but what about the couple at the end of Some Like it Hot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYUfPTeE0DM&a…
Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemmon are obviously very happy together on their yacht!
I was just coming here to say this!
This had everything I could ever ask for from a Toast post.
Tom and Gerry Jeffers (Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert in “The Palm Beach Story”) will live happily on the fortunes of their new in-laws, Hunsacker (Rudy Vallee) and the Princess Centamilla (Mary Astor). Their twins, pressed into marriage with the Princess and Hunsacker? Not so much.
(The Jefferses’ Park Avenue duplex is my dream home.)
I really need to know where The Philadelphia Story falls in here, though.
The thing is, Wendy Hiller Eliza and Leslie Howard Higgins would probably make it. There isn’t such an age gap and he isn’t such a toolbag. (Freddie is much less hot in that version, as well.)
^THIIIISSSSSS.
Leslie Howard’s Higgins is more petulant, and immature, with glimpses of nobility, like the play Higgins’, instead of Harrison’s “crusty ol’ misogynist, who isn’t changing for anyone.” You get the sense that he’s actually maturing through the play instead of just throwing hissy fits.
I will love Rex Harrison’s Higgins fooorrreeeevveerrr because I love Lerner & Loewe’s approach to his songs (that “almost a posh rap” though) but I love Leslie Howard more and Wendy Hiller is frickin’ REGAL after her transformation. <3
*cough* I just love this play, guys.
Wendy Hiller was a jewel. I wish she’d been in more movies as a strong-willed, slightly gamine young woman, though I enjoy all her work as an Authoritative Old Lady.
All her life she had the most beautiful smile. So does Julie Andrews and so did Audrey Hepburn, of course, so maybe there’s a rule that you can only play Eliza if you have a smile that lights up the world?
Oh, man, I just read up on that- thank you for sharing and letting me know.
You'll want to read about Loretta Young's story.
Hepburn and Tracy’s characters in Desk Set stay together forever.
No question. That is a perfect film. They are a perfect couple.
Wendy Hiller was a jewel. I wish she'd been in more movies as a strong-willed, slightly gamine young woman, though I enjoy all her work as an Authoritative Old Lady.
All her life she had the most beautiful smile. So does Julie Andrews and so did Audrey Hepburn, of course, so maybe there's a rule that you can only play Eliza if you have a smile that lights up the world?