Again Against The Grain
Tension Beneath Holiday Cheer
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| Robert Ames, Mary Astor, and Ann Harding in the 1930 Version of Holiday |
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| George Cukor Directing The Cast |
posted by John McElwee at 6:01 AM
Monday, May 25, 2020
Tension Beneath Holiday Cheer
14 Comments:
I don't believe anyone can identify with "Cary Grant." "Cary Grant" is a stand alone character. Even Archie Leach couldn't identify with him.
Great post.
Whoa, John! Nice work! Congratulations on giving us a fresh take on this picture. You say "something queered HOLIDAY" at the box-office; I submit that it was Katharine Hepburn, cited as boxoffice poison that year. Columbia was always picking up castoffs from other studios (John Gilbert, Mae West, Judy Canova, Jane Withers, and on and on).
Hepburn's Linda Seton is "unconventional," in sharp contrast to her starchy father and sister. I always thought that Cukor/Columbia succeeded in making Hepburn a sympathetic figure for the first time since THE LITTLE MINISTER four years before. More down-to-earth than the rarefied characters she usually played, and that's why I like Hepburn in HOLIDAY.
You've got me thinking about the "emotionally disturbed" thing. My own candidate for a movie with Hepburn in an "emotionally disturbed" state is BRINGING UP BABY. She's downright dizzy, and oblivious to the turmoil and confusion she leaves in her wake.
Scott -- I've often wondered why "Cary Grant" doesn't run away screaming from some of Kate's character's antics in BRINGING UP BABY. Dizzy? She's downright NUTS.
I've always had issues with HOLIDAY, find its thoughts on nonconformity if not completely smug, then at least a little smuggy (or is that smug-ish?) As to BRINGING UP BABY... yeah, Hepburn, but also a lot of Hawks, who liked his leading ladies a little loonie and seriously stalking.
Several of the Tracy-Hepburn pairings were about a too-strong woman being tamed, or at least Educated. And likewise "The Philadelphia Story". And even "The Little Minister", where Kate's an ever-so-cute-and-saucy gypsy wench who toys with a stern yet boyish vicar until he lays down the law (one of the funniest bits in the film is her passionately demanding a man who will rule her, and John Beal trying to oblige).
Then you have the ending of "Pat and Mike", where she fakes helplessness so Spence can fumble to her rescue. That wasn't surrendering to the status quo. That was actively propping it up.
As for "Bringing Up Baby", we've already poked at how she and other screwball heroine foreshadowed the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the fantasy of playful fun and sex, who inexplicably makes it her life's work to loosen up a repressed male more or less against his will.
But back to Hepburn the Tamed Shrew. You can argue that even here, Hepburn's silly heiress is being domesticated by Grant. Sure, his mantra is what was eventually mocked as "finding yourself", but it's a step closer to adulthood from hanging out in your childhood playroom and spouting witticisms. And it's an idea that probably resonated a little more strongly in the twenties, when it was assumed the boom would still be booming when you came back from sabbatical. It may even have resonated in the early thirties, when fortunes collapsed and left many with nothing for years spent in pursuit of same (the latter is the moral in "Our Vines Have Tender Grapes" (1945), where Edward G. Robinson's hardworking farmer sees a neighbor's sacrificed-for dream go up in flames.)
No surprise "Holiday" found its audience in the postwar generation. For them the big bad wolf had been banished, all the houses looked like brick, so why not step back a bit and chill rather than adding a second or third layer of masonry? Now that we've lost that unquestioned security, Grant's choices look questionable again.
It is a shame they didn't take a little time on Grant's backstory; I guess for the original Broadway audiences it was progressive enough that the hero didn't inherit his wealth. Contrast to "The Philadelphia Story" by the same author, where the self-made man is quite the opposite despite preparing to marry into high society. He's more stodgy than the genuine gentry and the "intellectual" reporter; that supposedly negates his trumpeted virtues. Does his exit speech play different for you now?
By the time of the "High Society" version, they add a strange scene of Grace Kelly driving Frank Sinatra around and telling him how the rich aren't as rich as they used to be. She -- and the movie -- demand sympathy for this class.
Ah … Holiday. Always a problem.
When I first saw the film, I liked "neither" side of the equation. I thought Grant impossible and the family … chilly. And Horton and Dixon are no help.
Then, in the early 1990s, I saw a revival of the play at Circle in the Square in New York and LOVED it. And here's the conundrum: on stage, Holiday is about trying to live life deliberately. What does that mean and how to achieve it? Well, it all depends on our circumstances, and what we mean by deliberately.
I doesn't work on film because Grant and Hepburn (and Horton and Daniell, etc.) bring this "baggage" to it. We "know" who they are, so the question becomes muted or distorted.
The play itself is a pleasant frolic and mediation, the movie is overly invested because we're overly invested in the players.
Caught a bit of "Big Bang Theory" this evening -- It's impossible not to, the show being as omnipresent as "I Love Lucy" used to be. Noted that the show's early seasons milked easy laughs from obnoxious supergenius Sheldon being born to a yokelish Texas family.
As time went on, they treated Sheldon's family with a lot more sympathy (especially his mother, who'd appear with some frequency) and addressed what it was to have a brilliant but high-maintenance kid sucking up all the oxygen. They came to the inevitable group-hug episode where Sheldon finally grasped his prank-playing older brother had reason to pee in his shampoo. That became the core of the "Young Sheldon" spinoff: an imperfect but well-meaning family struggling with a demanding, troublesome prodigy.
I doubt the show's writers gave thought to Sheldon's roots beyond laugh lines in the first season or two. The show's long run forced them to dig deep for story ideas, and that obliged them to flesh out the Cooper history in a semi-realistic way (in time, nearly every character's relatives fueled episodes and even story arcs).
Sheldon might be compared to Linda, gifted in some respects but insufferable in others. By the standards of the Setons' level of society she was pretty enough and clever enough to Marry Well, and her antics never crossed the line into scandal. It was worth humoring her, so long as it kept her from eloping with the stableboy or smacking a pedestrian with the Rolls Royce. Julia played by her father's rules, to the point of trying to remake her fiancé to his liking. She thus secured her father's approval, perhaps because she couldn't demand his time and attention the way her flamboyantly troublesome sister could.
And that's my Midnight Rant.
Another great, thought provoking post, John!
A friend’s family is doing a rotating “who-picks-the-quarantine-movie-tonight,” and after sitting through all 9 STAR WARS movies (the 13 year old son’s choice) my friend chose BRINING UP BABY, thinking a classic screwball comedy would be a slam dunk. It’s impossible to describe the level to which the 13 year old loathed it AND Hepburn. (They sent me a video of him tearing around the house shouting, “Oh, David, look! Oh David, come back! Oh David, where’s the bone?!”). I’m hesitant to return to it myself now, ditto HOLIDAY and MY MAN GODFREY after your reassessments...
I had a similar reaction upon revisiting THE STERILE CUCKOO. It’s still probably the best work Minnelli ever did, but the character of Pookie Adams is seriously psychotic — I was concerned for Wendell Burton’s safety at points. I had the same reaction to her Sally Bowles during a recent revisit to Cabaret — Sally is really a horrible, selfish person.
Not sure at this point if it’s the actors or the characters, but I too am finding some performances I once loved now come down on the wrong side of just plain annoying. And a movie-watching buddy who has never seen ARTHUR suggested it for our next movie night, and I’m wondering how Dudley Moore’s “charming” drunk will play now...
I've always found Hepburn to be cold at best, annoying at worst. For some reason, I never got around to watching "Holiday" on its occasional TCM appearance, and now I know I never will.
As for how "Arthur" would play now... When I saw it on its original release, I thought it was hilarious. I caught it again two years later when it was running endlessly on HBO. I couldn't believe how unfunny it was, particularly when it came to drunk driving. I'm not sure another movie ever dated (at least in my eyes) so quickly.
Thinking of a lady friend about my age (retirement) who always hated the Three Stooges because they'd break things and ruin nice homes. Myself, as a kid I felt cheated unless there was major property damage. And I still laugh when Stan and Babe blow up an apartment or preside over mass destruction of cars, pants, etc. But on revisiting "Mad Mad Mad Mad World", I was a bit bothered at being expected to laugh at a couple of harmless schleps having their shiny new gas station destroyed, or Scatman Crothers's truckload of furniture being scattered over the landscape after being forced off the road, or other mayhem inflicted on innocent bystanders. The no-expense-spared effects and stunts are still impressive, but not funny.
If somebody's going to be a comic eccentric or a troublemaker, like W.C. Fields or the Marx Brothers, you have to crank everything up to cartoon levels. Margaret Dumont was never a villain per se, but so exaggerated as a symbol of snobbishness that you allowed Groucho to abuse her as you allowed Bugs Bunny to abuse Elmer Fudd even when the latter wasn't a hunter. Fields was generally surrounded by people who made alcoholism look like a sensible response. Even when he was a swindler, his victims were mostly crooked themselves or so unappealing you couldn't muster pity.
It's a tricky business in a feature film, especially as plausibility and "real" characters became the norm. The eccentrics and troublemakers have to use their disruptive powers for good, generally involving young lovers or orphans. Targets had to have it coming. The comic hero's romantic rival usually had to be a hypocrite or worse (Ralph Bellamy in "His Girl Friday" a qualified exception: He was a nice guy; just wildly unsuitable). The banker who held the mortgage had to be an actual crook or sleaze, not just a detached businessman. The rival tenor in "Night at the Opera" isn't just an arrogant egotist -- He physically beats Harpo!
Sometimes moviemakers get careless or lazy. As Mr. Abbott pointed out above, familiar screen faces brought (and continue to bring) baggage, and often that baggage is meant to do the work. When Margaret Dumont appears onscreen, no matter how gracious and innocent she plays it we're going to laugh when the punch bowl in dumped on her. She's the symbol of all rich snobs, and takes lumps all their sins. And when an official star appears, he/she is generally forgiven everything, from creepily stalking in romcoms to other bad behavior. "Arthur" becomes less pleasant as we get further from memories of Dudley Moore's brief apex of personal popularity, which papered over flaws in the character he played. Do the kids today laugh at Bob Hope's egotistical coward, without the WWII generation's image of the beloved comic entertaining the troops?
A last note: In the end, Sally in "Cabaret" isn't meant to be a heroine. She's everything that's wrong in Berlin at that moment in history, combining seductive decadence with denial and fatalism about what's happening around her. And she ultimately doesn't believe she can do anything about it. Cliff falls for her and her city; it's a package deal. When he leaves, he has to leave both.
I had a long digressions about Benny Hill's "The Waiters", but this is more than enough.
What a perceptive analysis. I've often seen clips from HOLIDAY (usually Grant's acrobatics or Ayres' flippant lush). From those, I would have expected a fun screwball comedy. However, from your description, Hepburn's sister clearly dodged a bullet. Grant and Hepburn's characters deserved each other, so this was a win-win. Contrast this with HAPPINESS AHEAD: Josephine Hutchinson is a NICE rich girl, who's on the same wavelength as her kindly dad, John Halliday (neither enjoys or supports the pomposity or status-seeking that goes with money). And they both recognize the worth of working-class Dick Powell and his friends. Money and character don't always travel in tandem.
Just to pick a nit with DBenson, Scatman Crothers isn't in IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. That was Nick Stewart driving the truck piled with furniture.
I've never cared for HOLIDAY, mostly because I went into it expecting another BRINGING UP BABY and it ain't, so I found it all kind of ho-hum.
But I've always adored Katharine Hepburn and I still do.
If anyone gets a chance to see Mel Brooks talking about having lunch every day at the studio commissary with CARY GRANT/Cary Grant, don't miss it. His experience says tons about the poor man.
Dan Mercer has some thoughts on HOLIDAY:
You have identified precisely why I find myself so out of sympathy with Linda and Johnny and their crowd in “Holiday.” There is a certain sensibility that believes that, if you have the right ideas or the proper perspective, you can act as badly as you want. If you profess a great love of humanity, for example, you can treat individual human beings with complete indifference. The behavior of Johnny and Linda seems to suggest as much, and we’re expected to share in it.
Of course, you can make an argument that Johnny’s desire for an adventurous life is to be preferred to a one in commerce, with its own adventures. You might also argue that Johnny’s essential objection to settling down and working hard is the same one he would make to any kind of life that entailed commitment and the possibility of sacrifice. The movie obviously favors Johnny’s position, on the ground that a life should give expression to what one yearns for. The children’s room that is an upstairs hideaway for Linda and Ned is a metaphor for old dreams that have been crushed by family expectations. It is by no means an invalid approach and even an attractive one, for those who find themselves overburdened by obligations and far from what they might have wanted, once upon a time.
How does a desire for a free-spirited life, though, excuse the contempt with which Linda and Johnny hold her family? Throughout the film, Mr. Seaton and Julia seem always to be considerate of Johnny, if a bit baffled by him. I shouldn’t think, however, that this was a deliberate attempt to indicate that there is perhaps a store of decency on the other side as well. Rather, it was probably meant to demonstrate just how obtuse they were to the finer, more elevated approach to living personified by Linda and Johnny and, thus, even more deserving of the scorn they were shown.
I ought not to take this too seriously, however. “Holiday” is a comedy of manners, after all, and the objects of its derision must be identified. As William Ferry commented, everyone makes out pretty well at the end, in that Johnny and Julia are spared an entirely unsuitable marriage, Johnny’s high-flying ways will not be yoked to more mundane concerns, at least, not to those of the Seatons, and Linda will at last be free of her family, and they of her, if only for a time.
Is it possible, though, that Johnny’s affair with Linda will exhaust its natural capital, and we shall next find him in Hitchcock’s “Suspicion,” cadging a few coins from Lina McLaidlaw to pay his train fare?
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