Thanks Hep for those wonderful reports. Judy, are you going to give us your "report" as well???
Sigh. Sydney is sooo far away.
Sorry this has been so long in coming, but I hope it’s worth it…Sherry and I took notes at Katharine Houghton’s talk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – well, Sherry took ’em, I just butted in with my two cents every now and then….So here, to supplement Alyssa’s report, is ours:
Friday, June 13, 2008
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Movie Legends at the Met
Saucy Gamine, Reluctant Penitent, Glorious Conqueror, How Katharine Hepburn Became a Super Star by Katharine HoughtonThe lecture explored three of Kate’s films that represent three very different times in her career and showed how she evolved various elements of her persona into the Katharine Hepburn we know and love today.
The films discussed were:
1936 -
Sylvia Scarlett, where she was, in Katharine’s words, “the saucy gamine.”
1937 -
Stage Door, where she displayed “the reluctant penitent.”
1940 -
The Philadelphia Story, where she emerged “the glorious conqueror.”
Katharine spoke at a lectern on stage and in the center of the stage was a large screen. During her talk she showed brief film clips to illustrate her points.
She stated that the elements of Kate’s screen persona were all present in these earlier films and that The Philadelphia Story brought them all together and established the screen persona that remained for the rest of her career.
Saucy GamineKate began filming
Sylvia Scarlett in the summer of 1935 under the direction of good friend George Cukor. By 1935, Cukor said that he knew two fundamental things about Kate which were diametrically opposed to one another; namely, that she thought she was better than anyone and that she was frightfully insecure. Katharine H. noted that they remained friends for over 50 years until he died in 1983. She also pointed out that Kate moved back to the East permanently after Cukor passed away.
Cukor and Kate had fallen in love with the book by Compton MacKenzie and were anxious to do it. Unfortunately, the Hays Office which dictated what was acceptable in films objected to the film’s content. The censors attacked the film on August 15, 1935 and forced Cukor to truncate certain scenes thereby removing some of the comedy from the film and making those scenes appear awkward. Katharine showed the scenes as they appear in the film and then described the manner in which they had been cut. Two prime examples are the bathroom scene and the kiss between Sylvester and Maudie.
The Bathroom SceneWhat’s in the final film: Sylvester, trying to duck Cary Grant’s character during the ferry crossing, in a panic, enters the ladies’ room. The camera focuses on the door and we hear shrieks and yelling and ultimately, Sylvester flies out the door.
What was cut:Cukor had shot this scene showing the action inside the ladies’ room – in addition to the shrieks, he filmed the women scuffling with Sylvester and then throwing him out.
The Kissing Scene in the CaravanWhat’s in the final film:Sylvester is sitting on a stool drying dishes and Maudie teases him about having a smooth face like a girl’s. He says he’ll grow a mustache in a few years – a thin one, “like Ronald Coleman,” Maudie says. She then uses her eyebrow pencil and draws a mustache on Sylvester and says she always wanted to kiss a man with a mustache. She then grabs Sylvester and kisses him. He’s shocked and squirms out of her embrace asking, “Now why’d you do that?” and states that he already has a girl. There is an awkward fade and the next image on screen shows Maudie on the bed, with Sylvester having pushed her away from him as he walks quickly to the door of the caravan.
What was cut:After the kiss, Cukor had filmed Maudie pulling Sylvester on to the bed where they began to roll around as Sylvester tried to push Maudie off in order to escape.
Cukor felt that those two cuts robbed the film of a lot of the comedy in those two scenes and that hurt the film with the audience.
Subsequently, Cukor was also required to tack on the opening sequence in which Kate appears in braids as the mousy daughter learning of her father’s crooked ways. In that scene, she cuts off her braids and assumes her Sylvester guise. The Hays Office felt that this was a necessary addition in order to emphasize that Kate’s character REALLY was a woman.
In this film, one of the attractions for Kate was that it allowed her to let loose her “Jimmy” persona. Houghton emphasized that “Jimmy” had nothing to do with Kate’s sexual orientation but rather was the side of her that insisted on being able to do anything that the boys could do. It was a manifestation of her need to be strong and powerful and it was a way of staking her place in Hollywood.
This film allowed her to do the stuff that “Jimmy” liked to do and that was typified by her refusal to allow a stunt person to perform dangerous scenes in the film. Kate did her own stunts and in one instance she fell from a drainpipe which she’d climbed in an attempt to burgle a house. You can see the sequence in the film today when Hepburn’s hands slip from a window ledge before the scene cuts to a shot of Cary Grant pulling her in.
She and Natalie Paley almost really drowned in the scene where Kate dives into the waves to rescue a drowning Paley. The scene was filmed at Trancas Beach in October when the water is quite cold and the Pacific is not very pacific.
Houghton mentioned that Kate was always proud of her athletic ability and her body movement and this film was one that allowed her to demonstrate those aspects of herself. Watching the film, reveals the many opportunities Hepburn has to run, effortlessly leap over a railing, swim, hang upside down on rings in Aherne’s studio, and perch gracefully on a banister.
She also told the story of Pandro Berman’s reaction when after the first disastrous preview, Kate and Cukor offered to do another film for him for free and he responded that he “never wanted to see either of them again.” And about about Cary Grant’s good friend Howard Hughes buzzing the film set in his airplane and attempting to impress Kate by landing in order to meet her. Kate ignored him that day but within the year, they were inseparable.
Katharine also mentioned that Cary Grant “stole” the picture and it was this film that made him a film star. But the film was disliked by the critics and the public which hurt Hepburn’s career Kate’s career had begun to run into serious problems because of her problem with connecting with a broad audience which eventually led to her being labeled “box office poison.”
Her “Jimmy” persona exemplified by the “saucy gamine” had to learn to be softened and become less obvious if she was to succeed.
Reluctant PenitentIn 1937 she began work on
Stage Door. Houghton said that
Stage Door was a challenging film but not a happy film. The film was a comedown for Kate. It was the first time Kate was cast as part of an ensemble. She also was not getting star billing because that was going to Ginger Rogers. Plus, due to her drop at the box office, Pandro Berman the producer did not want to pay her the usual fee that she received.
Unlike her other films and plays for which she kept many items, Kate kept only one item from this film in her career archive. Further testimony to how difficult this film was for her. Fortunately, Kate had a fighting spirit and with the help of Howard Hughes who owned a percentage of RKO and her agent, Leland Hayward, prior to the start of the film, they were able to get Kate a better salary and to negotiate improved billing for her.
At the time, in a poll of who had box-office appeal, Ginger Rogers ranked third while Kate ranked 70th. Katharine Houghton stated that because Kate was “wildly competitive” this couldn’t have made her happy.
Houghton stated that director Gregory La Cava was “a fighting drunk and that always appealed to Kate.” La Cava was inventive and unconventional in his approach to film and in fact asked the women to adlib the group scenes on the set. He wanted them to react verbally by saying the sort of things that people say in a group. After this happened, their adlibs were returned to them in the script as dialogue.
Grappling to get at her character in the film, Kate asked La Cava “who am I?” to which he responded, “You are the human question mark” which elicited this response from Kate, “what the hell does that mean?”
In regard to her Terry Randall character, Kate thought, “I’m rich, arrogant, and mean.”
Meanwhile, La Cava was observing Kate closely – her personal speech, mannerisms, movements etc. taking it all in and deciding how to incorporate it into the character.
Finally, he asked Kate if she was a quick study -- had a good memory. She said, “Yes.” He presented her with the curtain speech which he’d just written. The curtain speech is the scene in which Randall steps in front of the curtain and gives the credit for her performance to the Andrea Leeds’ character that had killed herself because of the disappointment she’d suffered when Randall got the role she’d coveted in the play.
From that moment on, La Cava decided that the movie would be told from Terry Randall’s point of view.
La Cava also recognized Kate’s sexual magnetism and Katharine read the quote from La Cava in which he expressed his opinion that with a strong leading man, a co-star who was her equal, she would be a sight to behold and it would make her more appealing to mass audiences.
La Cava wasn’t afraid to draw on Kate’s entire persona including the one she had in Hollywood of being “Katharine of Arrogance.” He used that successfully along with her mannerisms. He also inserted the “calla lily” scene from the play The Lake which had been a disaster for Kate when she played it on Broadway. It was the play that induced Dorothy Parker’s infamous “go to the Martin Beck and see Katharine Hepburn run the gamut of emotion from A to B.” Katharine laughed and emphasized that when Kate told the story she pronounced it “ga- mut-t-t” for emphasis. This play had been a huge embarrassment for Kate so the fact that she was willing to allow herself to be mocked on screen by her personal stage disaster shows that she understood this was a humanizing moment for her personally. At another point in the film, Adolph Menjou’s character is describing to someone what a pain Randall is to work with -- that she has too many opinions and ideas and argues with everyone and wants things her way. These were many of the same things that were being said in real life in the Hollywood community about Katharine Hepburn. Thus, this scene served as a sort of public humiliation of Hepburn – bringing her down a peg or two and showing the audience that she was penitent about some of the things that had happened earlier in her career and was willing to allow fun to be poked at her in film. She was willing to hide her “Jimmy” persona a bit and to show her vulnerability and real feeling.
Katharine did interview Jean Rouverol who played “Dizzy” in the movie. She said that during filming she wasn’t aware of tension between Kate and Ginger but did say that both of them “kept to themselves.” She also said that she was in awe of Kate but one day she was looking at Kate’s wrist and it dawned on her that “she is just like the rest of us.”
The film was a success but despite that and Kate’s good reviews along with raves for Ginger Rogers and Andrea Leeds, it was too late and even her next two films,
Bringing Up Baby and Holiday couldn’t save her. She was labeled box-office poison by the motion picture exhibitors association. When she was offered Mother Carey’s Chickens as her next film, she bought out her RKO contract. It appeared her film career was over and she headed back to her family home in Connecticut.
Glorious ConquerorThe Philadelphia Story captured the “benign chaos of the Hepburn house” according to Katharine Houghton.
Howard Hughes recognized early on the importance that this vehicle would have for Kate. He invested in the play and he purchased the film rights for her to ensure that she would get to play the Tracy Lord role when the film was made.
Philip Barry had known the Hepburn’s since 1929. He’d observed them and he certainly knew Kate well and it was around this knowledge that he came to visit her at Fenwick with the idea for a play. Kate liked what she heard.
He knew the stories of the visits of Kate’s male friends to Fenwick and he incorporated some of the essence of those visits and those men into the play.
He used a lot from Kate’s own life to inform the play – such as the fact that her parents liked her ex – Luddy – just as the Lords did CK. Or that little sister Dinah was based somewhat on Houghton’s own mother Marion, who also was very attached to Luddy and was upset when they were divorced.
And, so, Barry based some of the play on Kate’s family and her persona. In the play, all four men “teach” Tracy something: her father, her ex-husband, her husband-to-be, and the newspaperman who falls in love with the vulnerable woman that he detects beneath the strong, arrogant front that she threw up at the beginning of the play.
The play was a huge success for Kate. Barry had created the Tracy Lord character by integrating the many aspects of Kate’s personality that had been there from the start; the saucy gamine, the penitent, and the conqueror.
As Hughes had predicted, Hollywood came calling and because Kate owned the film rights, Louis B. Mayer bought them with her as the leading lady.
Houghton said that perhaps the most important scene in the film that re-established Kate’s career is the one with James Stewart by the pond in the garden. Tracy is lecturing his Connor character that he cannot become a first class writer until he learns to have some small regard for human frailty… and she stops herself because she realizes she is repeating the words that were said to her in an effort to make her realize that human frailty is the commonality that we all share and with which we can empathize. The scene was shown on the theatre screen and it goes on through the “professor” sequence to the moment when Connor really pierces through Tracy’s heart to the real woman when he does the “hearth fires and holocausts” speech and she melts into his arms. At that moment, the complete Hepburn persona had arrived on screen. The film garnered her rave reviews and an Oscar nomination.
Kate was fortunate that two men who loved her as a friend in real life, Philip Barry and George Cukor, understood what she had and how best to present that to an audienc. They jumped in to help present her in the perfect light in that film and play which allowed the public to finally see the many facets of Hepburn’s persona.
Kate realized that the secret of her success rested in showing off the saucy gamine, the reluctant penitent, and the glorious conqueror. This is the integrated persona that makes her the iconic figure that she is today.
And so ends these long notes.
JS