Holiday

A "woman's director" known for his collaborations with a bevy of talented actresses, George Cukor's best known match-up was perhaps with Katherine Hepburn, an actress rarely understood by Hollywood executives but advantageously employed by the director. The vibrant star of his 1938 screwball comedy Holiday, Hepburn began her mutually beneficial collaboration with Cukor in 1932's A Bill of Divorcement and starred in eight of the director's sly, sophisticated film productions.

In Holiday Hepburn stars as the unconventional, idealistic daughter of a wealthy businessman who dreams of escaping the suffocating boredom of her home, but lacks the confidence to break away. When a brash, exciting man from the wrong side of the tracks, Johnny Case (Cary Grant), enters the Seton household to marry her beautiful sister Julia (Doris Nolan), things seem to be changing for the better. But propriety, routine and the temptation of great wealth threaten to derail Johnny's dreams too in this tale of non-conformists versus the establishment.

An actor who spent his career playing debonair, moneyed gentleman in films like The Philadelphia Story (1940) and North by Northwest (1959), Grant plays humorously against type in Holiday as an eccentric trying to impress Julia's rich father and win his daughter's hand in marriage.

Hepburn was singled out with ample praise for her poignant, charismatic portrait of a repressed rich girl in Holiday though, ironically enough, she was rejected more than once for the part of Linda Seton. Hepburn had been an understudy for the role of Linda when Philip Barry's popular play appeared on Broadway, but the role in a 1930 Hollywood version went to Ann Harding. When Holiday was remade by Cukor in 1938, Columbia president Harry Cohn pressed for Irene Dunne, who had played opposite Grant in The Awful Truth the previous year. Hepburn had recently been named "box office poison" by the Independent Theater Owners Association and it seemed unlikely the idiosyncratic actress would beat out Irene Dunne for the part of Linda. But Cukor insisted on Hepburn, who bought herself out of her contract at RKO and went to Columbia to make Holiday.

Hepburn's persistence was rewarded with positive critical reviews, including the New York Herald Tribune which noted her "first-class screen acting." Grant, who worked on a number of productions with Hepburn including Sylvia Scarlett (1936), Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Philadelphia Story, raved about his co-star in Holiday calling her "the most completely honest woman I've ever met."

Holiday was adapted to the screen by Algonquin humorist Donald Ogden Stewart, who also scripted The Philadelphia Story, Keeper of the Flame (1942) and Without Love (1945), all starring Hepburn. And Stewart's path had intersected with Hepburn's long before their Hollywood collaborations. Stewart had played Johnny Case's friend Nick Potter (a part Barry wrote with Stewart in mind) in the same Broadway stage version of Holiday in which Hepburn understudied Linda Seton.

Director: George Cukor
Producer: Everett Riskin
Screenplay: Donald Ogden Stewart, Sidney Buchman based on the play by Philip Barry
Cinematography: Franz Planer
Production Design: Stephen Goosson
Music: Sidney Cutner
Cast: Katharine Hepburn (Linda Seton), Cary Grant (Johnny Case), Doris Nolan (Julia Seton), Lew Ayres (Ned Seton), Edward Everett Horton (Nick Potter), Jean Dixon (Susan Potter).
BW-95m. Closed captioning.

by Felicia Feaster

"So daring -- so tender -- so human -- so true -- that everyone in love will want to see it!"

So reads the poster art for George Cukor's 1938 romantic comedy Holiday, but the marketing guys could just as well have sold it with, "The rich are different." This is a romantic comedy for the Depression years, in which "meet cute" meets Marx. Heady arguments about the true role of money and the meaning of life bump up against playful slapstick, and at one point Cary Grant shows his true feelings for the snobbery-set by hailing them with a Nazi salute. Who says screwball wasn't political?

Grant plays Johnny Case, the very embodiment of America's work ethic. A poor boy orphaned at a young age, Johnny has been obliged to work for a living since he was 10 years old. Now, a modestly successful financier, he has fallen head over heels for Julia Seton (Doris Nolan), first daughter of the storied Seton family, one of the nation's most prominent and stuck-up bunch of richies.

The patriarch of the Seton clan (Henry Kolker) dislikes the idea of his daughter marrying so palpably beneath her station, but Johnny's unyielding determination and natural charm bring him around. If the Seton family grudgingly accepts Johnny into its fold, no such patience is offered Johnny's dearest ambition: to "retire young and work old." Having become a self-made man, he has no interest in the Seton money, but simply wishes to go on an extended holiday while he is still young enough to enjoy life. Later, when he is older and wiser, then he'll return to work.

This is a wholesale rejection of the Seton's values. To the Seton clan, Johnny's ideas are practically communist, a blasphemy against the god of money.

Only Linda (Katharine Hepburn), the self-professed "black sheep" of the Setons, sees things Johnny's way. Too bad he's already engaged to her sister...

Loosely based on the life of Gertrude Sanfred Lejean, a real-life "Linda Seton" whose free-thinking ways made her a proto-feminist, Holiday began life as a 1929 Broadway show by playwright Philip Barry. Two years later it was adapted into a feature film by director Edward Griffith-but in the interim, the stock market had crashed, radically changing the context of the story. By 1938, the story's obvious anti-rich attitudes resonated even deeper with audiences than before, and gave the material a sharper edge than the usual screwball romance offering.

Cukor was in waiting at the MGM lot while his next gig, Gone With the Wind, lumbered slowly into readiness-to bide the time he was loaned out to Columbia to helm a remake of Holiday. Borrowing talent from other studios was Columbia's standard operating procedure in those days-why pay people all the time when you could hire them out on a per-job basis, thought Columbia exec Harry Cohn?

Bridging the production to past incarnations of the story, character actor Edward Everett Horton joined the cast playing the same supporting role he had originated in the 1930 film. That role, of Johnny's friend Nick Potter, had in turn been played onstage by Donald Ogden Stewart, who was hired by the producers as the screenwriter for the 1938 remake.

For the male lead, Columbia tapped freelance actor Cary Grant, already on a fast trajectory to stardom despite lacking a studio to call home. For his costar, Columbia turned to Katharine Hepburn, whose unconventional behavior at RKO had given her a reputation as box office poison. Indeed, Hepburn was as willful and independent as the character of Linda Seton, whom she had understudied during its Broadway run. Hepburn had even used one of her scenes from the stage version of Holiday in her very first screen test. If anyone was to do this right, it was her, and Columbia's quick-thinking publicity mavens promoted her appearance with such slogans as "Is It True What They Say About Katharine Hepburn?" They proved their point, and Hepburn successfully shed her old reputation in favor of a new stardom.

Following Holiday, Hepburn bought the rights to another Philip Barry play, The Philadelphia Story, so that she could control her next film and negotiate her own terms: these involved reuniting with director George Cukor, costar Cary Grant, and screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart all over again.

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by David Kalat