The Mayfair Swells
Without The Music-Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant And Jimmy Stewart’s “The
Philadelphia Story” (1940)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Associate Film Critic
Alden Riley
The Philadelphia Story,
starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, directed by George
Cukor, 1940
[A while back my “boss”
in this space Sandy Salmon the long time film critic for the American Film Gazette who took over the
chores here from the retiring Sam Lowell did a review of Howard Hughes’
production of the film adaptation of the successful Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur play The Front Page where
he ruminated that he thought that he had already reviewed the film since the
story line seemed very familiar. Sandy thought he was having a senior moment,
thought maybe he had seen one too many films and had scratched his head over
the plotline and message behind too many such efforts as well. As it turned out
he had merely “confused” himself with the fact that he had previously reviewed His Girl Friday starring Cary Grant and
Rosalind Russell which was just the distaff perspective, Sandy’s word, of the
same story, in other words a woman is the ace reporter who can’t give up the
newspaper rat race when a big story hit her right in the face despite her
avowal she was going for the white picket fence, dog, three point two children
and a nine to five guy to bring home the bacon.
The same thing, that
deja vu thing has happened to me recently, and I am far younger and less
fragile than Sandy, when I reviewed a 1950s musical extravaganza called High Society starring vivacious Grace
Kelly in her last role before becoming a fairy queen, princess, you know
royalty, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Somebody, maybe Sandy, had shortly
thereafter suggested that I check out the film to be reviewed below which
except for the music is very much the same freaking story. Let me tell you this
and be done with it this is the last time I will be reviewing this story line
although somebody, not Sandy, says there is yet another version of this same
sappy, soapy story line if I want to disturb my sleep futher than it already
had been to no good purpose. Enough. Alden Riley]
******
The Mayfair swells whether
in plush Main Line Philadelphia (of which the very underrated novelist from
nowhere Pottsville, Pennsylvania made a literary career out of detailing
starting with Appointment At Samarra
if you really want to get the load down on their work habits and sexual
inclinations) or high end summer watering holes like Newport which a guy like
Henry James would have had a field day “celebrating” if he hadn’t gone
Anglo-exile, certainly have their problems. Whether or not they have musical
abilities or not. Can croon to make the angels blush for their inadequacies or
not. And no matter what time frame from the edge of the Great Depression which
they, at least the survivors of 1929 had heard about in passing or in the dead
of the red scare Cold War night as one film critic has described the 1950s.
When I first saw this film I said to myself in some disbelief that I had
already seen the film, or at least knew the story-line because I had just
reviewed a Technicolor production of High
Society with Grace Kelly (before she went off to be the real queen of Sheba
or some kind of royalty in some fake kingdom by the sea), crooner Frank Sinatra
(last reviewed in this space as a psycho hired assassin in Suddenly, no that is not right it was his well-deserved
Oscar-winning performance in the film adaptation of James Jones’ From Here To Eternity) and crooner Bing
Crosby (last seen probably in an un-reviewed Going My Way ) getting into mischief down in sunny Newport during
the Jazz Festival.
That mischief, as here,
involved the nefarious, yes, nefarious schemes of one Dexter Haven a high-end
Mayfair swell tunesmith (figures for crooner Crosby) to get his ex-wife comely
high-spirited and high-minded Tracy Lord (played by Princess Grace before she
was Princess Grace) back in the fold. Problem: a big problem was that Ms. Tracy
was getting ready to democratically marry a non-Mayfair swell the very next weekend.
Here Dexter, played by cavalier Cary Grant, is nothing but a scheming high-end
nautical architect slumming in the leafy suburbs of Main Line Philadelphia (you
know among the Quaker-influenced old line gentry). Old Tracy, played by
handsome and bright Katharine Hepburn, though is hard to get what with those
high-spirited and high-mined ways that either version of the Mayfair swell assertive
young Tracy held in hand. So the chase was on to see if old Dexter, or somebody
could make Tracy see reason and dump this snobbish upstart who is looking to go
up the social food chain by this timely marriage.
Enter Spy magazine in the person of frustrated
writer Mike, played by Jimmy Stewart, who is hack writing for this scandal rag
to keep the wolves from his door. In fact to have a door to keep them at bay
with otherwise tossed out on the mean streets. This tainted high society marriage
idea is meat for that publication. Mike, a hard-boiled, realistic, witty,
sardonic guy is smitten, seriously smitten, by the upscale Tracy. Now the chase
really was on. The three suitors spent the rest of the film jockeying for
Tracy’s affections. Naturally the upstart guy she is supposed to marriage will
be left at the altar and was a non-starter. Mike almost made the whole distance
when Tracy had an epiphany after a drunken pre-nuptial reverie and was ready to
go down and dirty to push Mike onto that serious writer’s career he longed for.
But in the end, in the almost inevitable end among the Mayfair swells old-line
class and breeding won out as Dexter’s anaconda strategy paid off.
Like I said I have
already covered this plot-line. Enough. No mas. Even if it is a great story
well- acted.
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