What in the Name of Robert Mitchum is Goin' On Here???

One night I can't sleep--a common occurence in recent years--so I'm up at three a.m. watching my favorite Robert Mitchum movie in one of the greatest Films Noir ever slapped to celluloid, Out of the Past, from 1947; it's the year's best Noir in Noir's best year. Anyway, since I'm up late and don't want to disturb my sleeping wife, I watch with the volume down and the subtitles on.

I was blissfully relaxed until the following:

There's an apartment scene with Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) and Meta Carson (Rhonda Fleming) pretending to be cousins. They're visiting Fleming's boss, Leonard Eels (Ken Niles), who's making cocktails. Eels asks Mitchum "Have a Martini?" but the subtitles read: "Apple Martini"!!! There's no way in this old brown world that a hardboiled 1940s Noir film is going to have a yuppified drink ---which was most-likely concocted by the writers of Sex and the City--- like that in a movie where just watching Mitchum light cigarette after cigraette in every single scene can produce emphysema-like symptoms in the viewer...in fact, I was so taken aback with a combination of shock and amusement that I lost count of how many unfiltered coffin nails ol' Mitch was firing up (and speaking of Mitchum's smoking in Out of the Past, imagine how many he lit and dragged from in the out takes!)

The subtitle gaffe isn't a huge deal, I guess, at least to those of us among "The Annointed", and who love classic movies so much that they write an occasional blog post, but what if a younger person, born of CGI parents and weaned on Yu-Gi-Oh cartoons is watching Out of the Past for a school assignment and thinks that something like an "Apple Martini" was commonplace among the WWII generation. I can hear it now: "Well, Hitler's dead, let's sit in our favorite sports bar and sip a sugary Apple Martini and eat low-carb food."

I exaggerate for comic effect...

The subtitle gaffe is amusing and I eventually moved on, but that one error says volumes about how a terrifying, monolithic, fire-breathing corporation like Warner Brothers works: They have barely-paid--if at all--indentured servants from one of the film school mills work as interns in a hot basement using the most rudimentary of tools to scratch out the dialogue and submit it like a typical data entry drone in some office. Out of the Past is a revered film in Film Noir circles, and hopefully any self-respecting classic movie lover will have seen it. It's not as famous as Gone with the Wind or Transformers 2, but it's an okay film. If companies like Warner Brothers farms out their subtitle crew to such incompentents, can you imagine who Universal Pictures selected to store their film and TV library?

Self Pluggery: A Frightening New Blog

I'm so nervous I feel like Warner Baxter in 42nd Street! I've started a second blog focusing on the 1960s and '70s! That's right, Hollywood Dreamland can now experience the Generation Gap! The Neo-Edwardian Hipster: Movies, TV, and the Pop Culture of 1965-1975 is open for business. Hollywood Dreamland will soldier on--do you think I could gush about Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers with '70s people??? However, I do need an outlet for my '60s and '70s love too, so we'll see how it goes. It's kind of fun to start over in terms of building followers but I hope that there are enough 1960s-'70s fans out there.

Priceless Expressions

In this scene from The Philadelphia Story, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) and George Kittredge (John Howard) react at the first sight of a hungover Macaulay Connor (James Stewart; Oscar winner--get used to it Fonda fans) singing "Over the Rainbow" while carrying a hungover Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) back home at dawn...on her wedding day(!). Not only is the above-shot priceless, so is the dialogue in the subsequent scene. As many times as I've seen the film, it was only recently that I noticed how good John Howard's reaction is here.

By the way, there have been some tremendous comments in the Katharine Hepburn: The Philadelphia Story (1940) entry! It's amazing how much fascinating insight can be read into this marvelous movie.

Katharine Hepburn: The Philadelphia Story (1940)

It’s been mentioned here before how totally Hepburn becomes her character, Linda, in 1938’s Holiday, another Philip Barry play co-starring Cary Grant and directed by George Cukor, and how there’s nary a trace of Kate the iron-willed individualist that audiences have come to know. I was floored by how wonderfully vulnerable she was, yet with a nascent strength brought out by Cary Grant’s Johnny Case character. That film is a dry run for The Philadelphia Story, as all the main players are present: Hepburn, Grant, writer Barry, and director Cukor. Alright, so there’s precedent to The Philadelphia Story; everyone works well together…

Katharine Hepburn’s performance in The Philadelphia Story is widely considered her comeback role, after being branded “Box Office Poison” during the 1930s. As insane as that is to comprehend today; I find it more difficult to explain why I like Kate’s performance so much. Yes, it’s on the short-list of Hepburn’s career-defining performances and it’s a part the actress played on stage before bringing the play to MGM, so she had ample time to hone the Tracy character. In writing this assessment of Hepburn’s performance, I’ve discovered that it’s impossible to separate her role from the film itself, as The Philadelphia Story is truly an ensemble cast, and while Hepburn is undoubtedly at its center, her role can’t be easily described, at least by this blogger.

Kate’s Tracy is the focal point of The Philadelphia Story. It is her reactions to everyone else’s views of her that makes the story. She’s a symbol of strength yet possesses a hidden vulnerability that no one sees; she’s a vision of perfection and put on a pedestal. More than once she is referred to as a “Goddess.” Tracy holds those she loves to impossibly-high standards and when someone in her life doesn’t measure up—whether it is her ex-husband (C.K. Dexter Haven) or her own father—she casts them aside. Tracy's refusing to forgive Dexter's past weakness for alcohol was what caused their breakup, and her father's dalliance with a dancer is another point of contention leading to yet another strained relationship. And though her scene with her father misses the mark—Seth’s reasoning for his philandering is beyond belief---Hepburn and John Halliday sell the concept--at least on one’s first viewing of TPS, with conviction. It is this Goddess appellation and how she deals with it that is the center of The Philadelphia Story. Tracy has to forgive her father and her ex-husband in order to rid herself of the unwanted "perfection personified" label. That in itself is just one more aspect of this brilliant movie. She is conflicted, yet those who figure prominently in her life: husband, father, and even James Stewart’s Macauley “Mike” Connor—know this about her.

Katharine Hepburn is amazing here. While she's on the cusp of becoming her well-known onscreen personality, TPS captures her at this tremendous moment in her career. She inhabits her character so completely that I’m only vaguely reminded that she’s acting. Only her trademark accent gives her away. I’m never sure where the actress ends and the person begins but if Hepburn adheres to Jimmy Stewart’s remarks about acting: “You play yourself in deference to the character:--then that works marvelously. It also helps Hepburn and the rest of the cast that they have that wonderful Philip Barry dialogue to carry the story; and unlike the majority of plays turned into films, The Philadelphia Story never comes off as stagy—credit director George Cukor, who was and remains the master of this concept.

Trying to describe to someone about what's great about Katharine Hepburn’s performance in The Philadelphia Story is best remedied by watching the movie. Remember that the film is not a comedy or a straightforward drama but something fascinatingly in between. Like all great art, The Philadelphia Story defies easy categorization and is endlessly interesting. Every time I see it, there’s yet another aspect of it I discover, another layer to be enjoyed. “Constant, unfolding joy” is the term that comes to mind and Hepburn’s performance, while tremendous on its own merits, works best when viewed as part of the entire film. Hepburn’s is the most unselfish performance in the most unselfish film ever made.