Box Office Poison

The Philadelphia Story, showing tonight at the Walker’s Summer Music and Movies in Loring Park.

According to an History of the Movies class I took at Michigan State University–taught by one of the screenwriters of Top Gun, for God’s sake–when The Philadelphia Story was released, Katherine Hepburn was considered “box office poison”. Kate being Kate, she decided to expand her horizons, extended Hollywood her middle finger, and headed east to act on Broadway. They didn’t like that, naturally, so they said she was poison. Well, Kate being Kate, she was wise enough to buy the rights to the thing she was wowing them with in New York, namely “The Philadelphia Story”. Since it was a huge hit on Broadway, suddenly the moguls desperately wanted it, and discovered they had to go through Kate. So they gave her scads of dough for the rights to the story, and the lead role. Thus, the legend continued.

Frankly, I think The Philadelphia Story is the weakest of this lot, but I still enjoy the thing. Why they gave Jimmy Stewart his Oscar for this vehicle remains a mystery (he wasn’t even nominated for Vertigo), but you can do no better than spend a balmy evening watching this classic on the big screen. And take note: Stewart works for Spy Magazine, for which a short lived humor mag was named, and Hepburn’s character is named Tracy Lord, for which young porn star and John Waters ingenue Traci Lords named herself.