Partner told me that, at a recent training session, the trainer asked each member of the class: What’s your favorite
movie?
Partner found it an impossible question. Who has just one
favorite movie, after all?
I agree completely. I have about twenty favorite movies, a
few of which I’ve spoken about here: “Annie Hall,” “The Mask of Dimitrios,”
“Dodsworth.”
It’s a witty little Philip Barry play from the
1920, which was first made into a 1930 movie, and then (immortally) into this 1938
movie. The movie didn’t do well, supposedly because late-Thirties audiences
didn’t want to see a movie in which the hero didn’t want to work. Also, Katherine Hepburn had recently been declared "box-office poison."
Piffle.
Summary: Wealthy-by-birth Doris Nolan meets
wealthy-by-hard-work Cary
Grant at Lake Placid, and brings him back to New York City as her fiancé. Cary
meets Doris’s carefree sister Katherine Hepburn, and realizes within a few
days that he’s in love with the wrong sister.
There are lots of things to admire here: Lew Ayres
as alcoholic brother Ned, who’s pathetic but brave; Edward Everett Horton
and Jean Dixon
as Cary Grant’s funny best friends; George Cukor’s
quiet sympathetic direction.
Best of all, however, is the dialogue. Many of the best
lines are given to Hepburn, as follows:
Cary Grant has just admired an icky-poo doll once owned by
his fiancé (Hepburn’s sister), saying “It even looks like her.” This follows:
Linda Seton: [Hugging a toy giraffe] “Now
don't you a word about Leopold, he's very sensitive.”
Johnny Case: “Yours.”
Linda Seton: “Looks like me.” [turning its head in
profile]
Or,
when Hepburn’s horrible cousins appear in the doorway:
Linda
Seton: “Oh, for the love of Pete – it’s the witch and Dopey!”
Or, questioning Cary on his family background:
Linda Seton: “Do you mean to say that your mother wasn’t
even a Whoozis?”
This movie is a slice of lemon
meringue pie, cool and refreshing. I could watch it morning, noon, and night.
Do yourself a favor and take a look at it.
