About Last Modified 05/5/05 02:30 Cast
Cary Grant .... C. K. Dexter Haven
Katharine Hepburn .... Tracy Samantha Lord
James Stewart .... Macaulay 'Mike' Connor
Ruth Hussey .... Elizabeth 'Liz' Imbrie
John Howard .... George Kittredge
Roland Young .... Uncle Willie
John Halliday .... Seth Lord
Mary Nash .... Margaret Lord
Virginia Weidler .... Dinah Lord
Henry Daniell .... Sidney Kidd
Lionel Pape .... Edward
Rex Evans .... Thomas
Hillary Brooke .... Main Line Society Woman (uncredited)
Veda Buckland .... Elsie (uncredited)
Lita Chevret .... Manicurist (uncredited)
Russ Clark .... John (uncredited)
David Clyde .... Man (uncredited)
Robert De Bruce .... Dr. Parsons (uncredited)
Dorothy Fay .... Main Line Society Woman (uncredited)
Claude King .... Uncle Willie's Butler (uncredited)
Florine McKinney .... Main Line Society Woman (uncredited)
Lee Phelps .... Bartender (uncredited)
Hilda Plowright .... Librarian (uncredited)
Helene Whitney .... Main Line Society Woman (uncredited)
Information
Directed by: George Cukor
Released: 1940
Writing credits: Philip Barry (play)
Donald Ogden Stewart (screenplay)
Waldo Salt uncredited
Produced by: Joseph L. Mankiewicz .... producer
Original Music by: Franz Waxman
Cinematography by: Joseph Ruttenberg
Film Editing by: Frank Sullivan
Art Direction by: Cedric Gibbons
Set Decoration by: Edwin B. Willis
Costume Design by: Adrian (gowns)
Makeup Department: Sydney Guilaroff (hair stylist) & Jack Dawn (makeup artist) (uncredited)
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director: Edward Woehler (assistant director) (uncredited)
Art Department: Wade B. Rubottom (associate art director)
Sound Department: Douglas Shearer (recording director)
Production Companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) [us]
Distributors: Atalanta Filmes [pt] (Portugal) (re-release) & Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) [us]
Runtime: 112 min
Country: USA
Language: English / French
Color: Black and White
Sound Mix: Mono (Western Electric Sound System)
Certification: Argentina:Atp / Australia:PG / Finland:S / Portugal:M/12 / Sweden:15 / UK:PG / USA:Approved
Academy Award:
Best Actor - James Stewart
Best Screenplay - Donald Ogden Stewart
Academy Award Nomination:
Best Picture
Best Actress - Katharine Hepburn
Best Supporting Actress - Ruth Hussey
Best Director - George Cukor
Plot Synopsis
We open on Philadelphia socialite C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) as he's being tossed out of his palatial home by his wife, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). Adding insult to injury, Tracy breaks one of C.K.'s precious golf clubs. He gallantly responds by knocking her down on her million-dollar keester. A couple of years after the breakup, Tracy is about to marry George Kittridge (John Howard), a wealthy stuffed shirt whose principal recommendation is that he's not a Philadelphia "mainliner," as C.K. was. Still holding a torch for Tracy, C.K. is galvanized into action when he learns that Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell), the publisher of Spy Magazine, plans to publish an exposé concerning Tracy's philandering father (John Halliday). To keep Kidd from spilling the beans, C.K. agrees to smuggle Spy reporter Macauley Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) into the exclusive Lord-Kittridge wedding ceremony. How could C.K. have foreseen that Connor would fall in love with Tracy, thereby nearly lousing up the nuptials? As it turns out, of course, it is C.K. himself who pulls the "louse-up," reclaiming Tracy as his bride. A consistently bright, bubbly, witty delight, The Philadelphia Story could just as well have been titled "The Revenge of Katharine Hepburn." Having been written off as "box-office poison" in 1938, Hepburn returned to Broadway in a vehicle tailor-made for her talents by playwright Philip Barry. That property, of course, was The Philadelphia Story; and when MGM bought the rights to this sure-fire box-office success, it had to take Hepburn along with the package -- and also her veto as to who her producer, director, and co-stars would be. Her strategy paid off: after the film's release, Hepburn was back on top of the Hollywood heap. While she didn't win the Oscar that many thought she richly deserved, the little gold statuette was bestowed upon her co-star Stewart, perhaps as compensation for his non-win for 1939's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Donald Ogden Stewart (no relation to Jimmy) also copped an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Philadelphia Story was remade in 1956 with a Cole Porter musical score as High Society. Quotes
Tracy Lord: I'm going crazy. I'm standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy.
Macaulay Connor: Oh Tracy darling...
Tracy Lord: Mike...
Macaulay Connor: What can I say to you? Tell me darling.
Tracy Lord: Not anything - don't say anything. And especially not "darling."
Macaulay Connor: It can't be anything like love, can it?
Tracy Lord: No, no, it can't be.
Macaulay Connor: Would it be inconvenient?
Tracy Lord: Terribly.
Macaulay Connor: Hello you.
Tracy Lord: Hello.
Macaulay Connor: You look fine.
Tracy Lord: I feel fine.
Margaret Lord: The course of true love...
Macaulay Connor: ...gathers no moss.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: What's this room? I've forgotten my compass.
Macaulay Connor: I'd say, south-by-southwest parlor-by-living-room.
Macaulay Connor: This is the Bridal Suite. Would you send up a couple of caviar sandwiches and a bottle of beer?
Margaret Lord: What? Who is this?
Macaulay Connor: This is the Voice of Doom calling. Your days are numbered, to the seventh son of the seventh son.
Margaret Lord: Hello? Hello?
Tracy Lord: What's the matter?
Margaret Lord: One of the servants has been at the sherry again.
Tracy Lord: I never knew such a man.
Macaulay Connor: You're not likely to dear. Not from where you sit.
Macaulay Connor: Doggone it, C.K. Dexter Haven. Either I'm gonna sock you or you're gonna sock me.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Shall we toss a coin?
[Dexter has just proposed]
Tracy Lord: Oh Dexter you're not doing it just to soften the blow?
C. K. Dexter Haven: No.
Tracy Lord: Nor to save my face?
C. K. Dexter Haven: Oh, it's a nice little face.
Tracy Lord: Oh Dexter, I'll be yar now, I promise to be yar.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Be whatever you like, you're my redhead.
Uncle Willie: [hung over] Awww... this is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed.
C. K. Dexter Haven: [looking for the "hair of the dog"] Do you s'pose, sir, speaking of eye-openers...?
Uncle Willie: Oh, that's the first sane remark I've heard today. C'malong, Dexter, I know a formula that's said to pop the pennies off the eyelids of dead Irishmen.
Macaulay Connor: I'm testing the air. I like it but it doesn't like me.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Oh it's all right Tracy. We all go haywire at times and if we don't, maybe we ought to.
Tracy Lord: Put me in your pocket, Mike.
Macaulay Connor: The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.
Tracy Lord: The time to make up your mind about people is never.
Tracy Lord: You hardly know him.
C. K. Dexter Haven: To hardly know him is to know him well.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Of course, Mr. Connor, she's a girl who is generous to a fault.
Tracy Lord: To a fault.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Except to other people's faults.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Sometimes, for your own sake, Red, I think you should've stuck to me longer.
Tracy Lord: I thought it was for life, but the nice judge gave me a full pardon.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Aaah, that's the old redhead. No bitterness, no recrimination, just a good swift left to the jaw.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Orange juice, certainly.
Tracy Lord: Don't tell me you've forsaken your beloved whisky and whiskies.
C. K. Dexter Haven: No-no-no-no. I've just changed their colour, that's all. I'm going for the pale pastel shades now. There're more becoming of me.
C. K. Dexter Haven: I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know one time I secretly wanted to be a writer.
Margaret Lord: We both might face the facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy Lord: We just picked the wrong first husband.
Seth Lord: You have everything it takes to make a lovely woman except the one essential: an understanding heart. And without that you might just as well be made of bronze.
Tracy Lord: Oh, we're going to talk about me again, are we? Goody.
Sidney Kidd: I understand we understand each other.
Macaulay Connor: Champagne's funny stuff. I'm used to whiskey. Whiskey is a slap on the back, and champagne's heavy mist before my eyes.
Tracy Lord: You haven't switched from liquor to dope, by any chance, have you Dexter?
Tracy Lord: I never thought that alcohol would - Oh shut up.
Tracy Lord: Dexter, say something.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Well, I...
Tracy Lord: Oh, I'm such an unholy mess of a girl.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Well, now, that's not conversation.
Macaulay Connor: I would sell my grandmother for a drink - and you know how I love my grandmother.
George Kittredge: You're like some marvelous, distant, well, queen, I guess. You're so cool and fine and always so much your own. There's a kind of beautiful purity about you, Tracy, like, like a statue.
Tracy Lord: George...
George Kittredge: Oh, it's grand, Tracy. It's what everybody feels about you. It's what I first worshipped you for from afar.
Tracy Lord: I don't want to be worshipped. I want to be loved.
Tracy Lord: You're too good for me, George. You're a hundred times too good. And I'd make you most unhappy, most. That is, I'd do my best to.
Tracy Lord: You seem quite contemptuous of me all of the sudden.
C. K. Dexter Haven: No Red, not of you, never of you.
Macaulay Connor: I don't think you're being fair to me, Mr. Kidd.
Sidney Kidd: No?
Macaulay Connor: No. You're treating me like you treat all your other writers.
Tracy Lord: These stories are beautiful. Why, Mike, they're almost poetry.
Macaulay Connor: Don't kid yourself, they are.
Dinah Lord: Nothing ever possibly in the least ever happens here. Mother, how do you get smallpox?
Macaulay Connor: [speaking of Tracy] What are her leading characteristics?
C. K. Dexter Haven: She has a horror of men who wear their hats in the house.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Leading characteristics to be filled in later.
Macaulay Connor: I can fill them in right now: the rich, rapacious, American female. There's no other country where she exists.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: And would I change places with Tracy Samantha Lord for all her wealth and beauty? Oh boy just ask me.
Margaret Lord: Oh, dear. Is there no such thing as privacy any more?
Tracy Lord: Only in bed, mother, and not always there.
Macaulay Connor: [drunk, to driver] Well, this is where Cinderella gets off, now you hurry back to the ball before you turn into a pumpkin and six white mice, goodbye.
Tracy Lord: Aren't you coming Liz?
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Well, it seems I've got to commit suicide first.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Where's my wandering parakeet?
Macaulay Connor: [drunk] You going my way miss?
Tracy Lord: [drunk] That's "Miss Goddess" to you
Macaulay Connor: Okay, Miss Goddess To Me.
Macaulay Connor: Tell four footmen to call me in time for lunch will you?
Tracy Lord: You're just a mass of prejudices, aren't you? You're so much thought and so little feeling, Professor.
C. K. Dexter Haven: I'm sorry, but I thought I better hit you before he did. He's in better shape than I am.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Hello, friends and enemies.
George Kittredge: I'm going to build you an ivory tower with my own two hands.
Tracy Lord: Like fun you are.
Uncle Willie: Must we ride in this thing? Wouldn't we be more comfortable on pogo sticks?
Tracy Lord: [a very drunk Tracy] My feet are made of clay. Made of clay, did you know? Good niiiggghhhttt little man!
Sidney Kidd: You really hate me, don't you Connor?
Macaulay Connor: Oh no!
[pause]
Macaulay Connor: I don't like you very much though.
Macaulay Connor: [telling off Sidney Kidd, his boss] Quote: No hunter of buckshot in the rear is cagey, crafty Connor. Un-quote. Close paragraph.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Close job. Close bank account.
C. K. Dexter Haven: The moon is also a goddess, chaste and virginal.
Tracy Lord: Stop using those foul words.
[Liz screams as Uncle Willie pinches her on the rear]
Macaulay Connor: Don't DO that!
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: I... I feel exactly as though I'd been pinched.
Seth Lord: Don't you think you weren't.
Margaret Lord: Are you one of the musicians?
Macaulay Connor: No!
Margaret Lord: Oh of course, you're Junius's friend. Only you're not. Do you have any violin strings?
Macaulay Connor: [digs in his pocket] I have an aspirin. Will that work?
Margaret Lord: I don't think so! It's for a violin. Oh well, no matter!
Dinah Lord: Oh, it won't rain. Tracy won't have it.
Macaulay Connor: [to the butler] The Queen will have bread and honey at the usual time.
[Mike discovers the intercom in the Lords' house]
Macaulay Connor: Uh-oh, Liz, what did I tell you? Look, how do you like this - living room, sitting room, terrace, pool, stables.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: That's probably so they can talk to the horses without having them in the house.
Librarian: What is thy wish?
Macaulay Connor: I'm looking for some local b - what'd you say?
Librarian: What is thy wish?
Macaulay Connor: Um, local biography or history.
Librarian: If thee will consult with my colleague in there.
Macaulay Connor: Mm-hm. Dost thou have a washroom?
[the librarian points]
Macaulay Connor: Thank thee.
Trivia
- Katharine Hepburn asked MGM to cast Clark Gable as Dexter and Spencer Tracy as Mike before she met either of them. Both Gable and Tracy were busy with other projects, so Cary Grant and James Stewart (I) were cast instead.
- Playwright Philip Barry (I) based the character of Tracy on Katharine Hepburn's public image at the time. She'd left her previous studio, RKO, on bad terms, which only worsened her (temporarily) unpopular image.
- This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1995.
- The film was shot in eight weeks, and required no retakes. James Stewart (I) thought of hiccupping in the drunk scene himself, without telling Cary Grant. When he began hiccuping, Grant turned to Stewart saying, "Excuse me." The scene required only one take.
- Katharine Hepburn starred in the Broadway production of the play on which this film was based and owned the film rights to the material; they were purchased for her by billionaire Howard Hughes (I), then given to her as a gift.
- James Stewart (I) had no plans to attend the Oscar ceremony the year he was nominated for this film. Just before the ceremony began, he received a call at home "advising" him to slip into a dinner jacket and attend the ceremony. He did and he received the award for Best Actor. This was in the days before an accounting firm kept the Oscar voting results secret.
- Although George Cukor was not usually a very physical director, Katharine Hepburn incorporated some of his mannerisms into her performance.
- Before shooting the scene where Connor passionately recites his poetry to Tracy, James Stewart (I) was extremely nervous and certain he would perform badly. Coincidently, Noel Coward was visiting the set on that day and, having been asked to say something to encourage Stewart by George Cukor, Coward off-handedly said something to Stewart like, "Did I mention I think you're a fantastic actor." Stewart shortly thereafter performed the scene without a hitch and went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor.
- James Stewart himself was of the opinion that his Best Actor Oscar was "… deferred payment for my work on Mr Smith".