favorite movie #104 - holiday edition: the lion in winter

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #104 - The Lion in Winter (1968) - It's Christmastime, 1183, and King Henry II (Peter O'Toole) wants his youngest son John (Nigel Terry) to succeed him. His wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), does not. She wants their eldest son, Richard (Anthony Hopkins) to be king of France and England. Middle son Geoffrey (John Castle)? No one seems to want him. Just a typical marital spat between powerful rulers? Not exactly. Henry has had Eleanor imprisoned for years, to punish her for suspected treason and to curb and control her power. The Lion in Winter is not history exactly, but it is a wonderful imagining of how this historical family may have interacted. Mostly it is delightful to watch.

Eleanor (Katharine Hepburn) and Henry (Peter O'Toole)

L-R: John (Nigel Terry), Eleanor, Richard (Anthony Hopkins), and Geoffrey (John Castle)

Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn): I adored you. I still do.
Henry II (Peter O'Toole): Of all the lies you've told, that is the most terrible.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: I know. That's why I've saved it up until now.

favorite movie #100 - holiday edition: desk set

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #100 - Desk Set (1957) - Tracy and Hepburn. Librarians. New York City at Christmas. The early integration of computers (super-computer EMERAC) into the working world. Desk Set is just fun, fun, fun. Gig Young plays his usual leading-lady's-second-choice role and Joan Blondell and Dina Merrill get a few snappy lines as Katharine Hepburn's friends and research library assistants. Desk Set is Tracy and Hepburn's first color outing and their eighth and penultimate film together. They are always a wonderful screen duo, but this is my favorite of their teamings.

Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) introduces Bunny Watson (Katharine Hepburn) to EMERAC

The gals check out EMERAC (L-R: Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill, Sue Randall, Katharine Hepburn

Richard Sumner takes Bunny Watson "out" for lunch

Bunny Watson (Katharine Hepburn): Just for kicks. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. I mean, don't dwell on the question, but I warn you there's a trick in it: If six Chinamen get off a train at Las Vegas, and two of them are found floating face down in a goldfish bowl, and the only thing they can find to identify them are two telephone numbers - one, Plaza Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh, and the other, Columbus Oh-1492 - what time did the train get to Palm Springs? 

Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy): Nine o'clock. 

Bunny Watson: Now, would you mind telling me how you happened to get that? 

Richard Sumner: Well, there are eleven letters in Palm Springs. You take away two Chinamen, that leaves nine. 

Bunny Watson: You're a sketch, Mr. Sumner. 

Richard Sumner: You're not so bad yourself.

Link to Christmas: It's holiday season in New York, right before the Christmas break

p.s. It's got a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes!

katharine hepburn: the making of the african queen

In the extremely engaging The Making of the African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind actress Katharine Hepburn recounts her adventures in Africa while making the film classic The African Queen. She set off with director John Huston and Humphrey Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall in 1951 for what she still calls (more than thirty years after the fact) the adventure of her life.

The intrepid Hepburn, always the iconoclast, stylish as always

Hepburn is endlessly self-deprecating, the first person to admit her quirks and foibles, but she also makes it quite clear that she is also persnickety, demanding, and at times, a real pain to deal with. She is, as Spencer Tracy called her, "A rare bird," and more than a bit old-fashioned about her creature comforts and her focus (even as a 40-something woman at the time) on her Father with a capital "F." She asks him for a letter of credit for her big African trip (didn't the successful actress have her own money?) and is very particular about selecting the perfect gift for him — a hand-carved to order ebony cane.

“Heaven to be the first one up and to eat breakfast all alone.”

She knows what she wants and thinks ahead — carrying her own furniture and other accoutrements. She decides to go off on her own to explore the flora and fauna, refusing to help Lauren Bacall arrange their meals (or take the traditional woman's role?) Hepburn was a vanguard for the time with her style and predilection for menswear, but it really paid off in the jungle, protecting her from bugs and being less binding and layered than women's clothing. Where she ran into trouble was with her holier-than-thou urologist's daughter's insistence on drinking lots of water. She ended up getting sick as a dog. Bogie and Huston stuck to whisky and never got sick.

Reading between the lines, she most definitely seems to have had a crush on Huston. She complains about him constantly, but her brief description of her life with Spencer Tracy suggests that she was used to, and attracted to, difficult men. Although she is against the hunting and killing of animals she is beyond thrilled to join Huston on one of his hunting forays into the jungle. Bogie had no interest. She praises Bogie's bravery and professionalism, but it is clear that he was too no-nonsense, direct, and practical for her to fall for him. But she and Bogie did form a lifelong friendship after making the picture. She briefly describes visiting him frequently with Spencer Tracy when he was dying of esophageal cancer.

“To put it simply: There was no bunk about Bogie. He was a man.”

Bogart and Bacall, having breakfast in their cabin

Some of her statements about blacks and whites are far from poetically correct. But Hepburn is a reflection of the times, and frankly, her class. It is clear from how she approaches the trip and life in general that she comes forms privileged background and was used to having servants and helpers.

Quibbles aside, hers is a fascinating account — it's amazing the film ever got made, with the difficult physical conditions and Huston taking off to shoot elephants whenever he got the chance. Huston's laissez-faire attitude on set and his ability to come up with a classic film makes me want to read White Hunter, Black Heart and his autobiography, An Open Book, next.

Hepburn, Bacall, and Bogart relaxing between takes

The Making of The African Queen is chock-full of behind-the-scenes photos, too. But it is Hepburn's unique voice and perspective that shine through. What an odd assortment of individuals. What a strange experience. And what a great film that came out of it all.

bogart: in search of my father by stephen bogart

If anyone thought that being the child of famous parents was a walk in the park, they need go no further than read Stephen Bogart's memoir, Bogart: In Search of My Father. The book is half memories and anecdotes about his father, and half spiritual quest to quash, once and for all, his personal demons about spending his life in his father's shadow.

Stephen holds his dad's Oscar for Best Actor in The African Queen

Actor Humphrey Bogart was 44 when he met 19 year-old Lauren Bacall while filming To Have and Have Not in 1944. They fell in love while making the iconic film, but Bogie and Baby couldn't be together right away, as Bogart was still married to his third wife, Mayo Methot. He filed for divorce the following year, and Bogie and Bacall were married on May 21, 1945. Four years later their first child was born, a son, Stephen, named after Bogart's character's nickname in To Have and Have Not. A few years later, in 1952, Bacall gave birth to a daughter, Leslie, named after Bogart's friend Leslie Howard, who helped jump-start his film career to more serious roles by insisting he play in the film the role he created on the New York stage, of Duke Mantee, in The Petrified Forest.

Stephen was only eight when his father passed away from esophageal cancer. He does have memories of his father, but he fills in his kaleidoscopic portrait with great anecdotes from family friends like Katharine Hepburn: like his dad's notorious drinking (which helped both The Rat Pack), his early life, his marriages, his long and winding road to success as an actor, his iconic outsider role of Rick Blaine in the film classic Casablanca.

He also quotes his mother and echoes much of the biographical information she provided in her memoir, By Myself. As much as Bogart spent much of his life railing against being only known as "Bogie's son," one senses that the parent he really has issues with is his mother. In a terse but emotional passage he describes how his parents left him, at the age of two, to go on safari to Africa and film The African Queen. As Stephen waved goodbye to them as their plane took off, his nurse holding him actually suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and died, right there, on the tarmac. And, as Bogart tells his readers, once she was informed, his mother didn't come back. She continued on with the trip. It's clear he has never forgiven her.

The most heart-rending section of the book comes at the end, as he details his father's failing health, bout with cancer, surgery, and eventual death. Tough guy Bogie ended up frail and unable to walk downstairs, but he still met daily with friends like Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra. He kept his trademark "needling" humor intact, "Put me in the dumbwaiter and I'll ride down to the first floor in style." Neither Bogie nor Bacall ever talked about his impending death, to their friends, each other, or the kids, but the man himself knew, as Hepburn told his son, "Spence patted him on the shoulder and said, 'Goodnight, Bogie.' Bogie turned his eyes to Spence very quietly and with a sweet smile covered Spence's hand with his own and said, 'Goodbye, Spence.' Spence's heart stood still. He understood.'

In Bogart: In Search of My Father, the reader learns about Bogie along with his son. Bogart also includes stories about his youth post-Bogie, his rebellion, troubles with drugs and relationships. He tries to draw parallels to their lives, some of which stick, some don't. He had a major chip on his shoulder soon after his father passed away, "One day a kid said to me, 'Too bad about your father,' and I slugged him." It may have been a tough road for Bogart to accept his roots and learn about his dad's life. maybe even hardest to accept was how so many people loved his father, wanted to share his memory. But now Bogart has not only faced his demons and accepted his father's legacy, but he has embraced it. As the head of the Humphrey Bogart website and the driving force behind the now annual Humphrey Bogart Film Festival, he works hard to preserve and promote his father's legacy. He has come a long way.

evenings with cary grant

Article first published as Book Review: Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best by Nancy Nelson on Blogcritics.

Applause Theatre & Cinema Books has recently released a new paperback edition of Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best
. Grant's widow Barbara and his daughter Jennifer have contributed family photos and items from Grant's personal papers to help author Nancy Nelson create a collage-like portrait of the classic film star.

Cary Grant: "The only good thing about acting in movies is that there's no heavy lifting."

Born Archibald Alexander "Archie" Leach in 1904, Grant didn't know his mother. His father had her committed to a mental institution for profound depression when Archie was nine. It was believed she had never gotten over the death of Archie's older brother John, for which she blamed herself. Grant always thought she was dead, and didn't discover she was still alive until she contacted him, in 1935, when he was already a success in Hollywood.

Archie's father remarried and his young son left school and joined the Bob Pender Stage Troupe as a stilt walker. With his father's permission he traveled with them to America at the age of 16. When their engagement was over, instead of returning with the troupe to England, he stayed in New York and tried his hand at vaudeville. This soon led to work on the stage, and then Broadway, and ultimately a trip to Hollywood in 1931. After Mae West personally selected him as her leading man in two films, She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel, the newly renamed Cary Grant was set as a leading man.

In 1936 his contract with Paramount was up, and Cary didn't want to renew. He took a great risk, but luckily found himself still in demand as an independent actor. He was the first actor to leave the studio system and go independent.

Peter Bogdonavich: "He became responsible for his material and formed the arc of his career, shaping his own movie persona, in a way that Cagney or Bogart or Cooper or Tracy was not free to do."

There are many anecdotes in Evenings With Cary Grant that cover the most famous films of Grant career, including Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and his four films with Alfred Hitchcock — Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch A Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959). Always the gentleman, Grant steadfastly refused to pick favorites, in any of his films or leading ladies.

Alfred Hitchcock: "Cary's the only actor I ever loved in my whole life."

From the many stories told in the book it seems that at least in his youth, Grant would fall deeply in love very quickly with a woman and want to make things permanent. If there was any hesitation or obstacle to marriage on the woman's part they would find that he would move on just as quickly. He became seriously involved with actress Mary Brian in 1935 and they talked about marriage.

Mary Brian: "But he was torn between devoting all his time to his career and committing to marriage. I thought he should make up his mind. I felt the time was not right for him to marry. So I went to New York, where I did a couple of Shubert shows and stayed eight or nine months. We had been seeing one another for about a year and a half, and I wanted a full commitment. When I came home, he was going with Phyllis Brooks."

Nelson has pieced together quotes from Grant and many, many of his colleagues to tell the (mostly) chronological story of how he rose from his humble beginnings in England to becoming the number one box office male star in Hollywood. So many people who knew him well, and who are well-known to the public offer Nelson and the reader their impressions of Grant: Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Louis Jourdan, Billy Wilder, Loretta Young, Burt Reynolds, Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren, and Quincy Jones, just to name a few. Also included is a foreword (and ostensibly a blessing on the project) from Grant's fifth wife, Barbara, and his only child, his daughter Jennifer Grant.

1966, the year Jennifer was born, was obviously the best year of Grant's life. He absolutely doted on his only child, and even when his marriage to her mother, actress Dyan Cannon, fell apart soon after her birth, he remained cordial. He retired from the movies to devote himself to Jennifer. If Cannon was acting in a touring stage production, he followed along to be near Jennifer. He even helped his ex-wife get the part in Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969), as he knew it would help her career--and help keep Jennifer close to him.

Through the many anecdotes and quotes that Nelson assembles the reader learns not only about Grant, but about his friends and colleagues, like Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hughes, and Katherine Hepburn. Although Evenings With Cary Grant is more of a tribute than a detailed biography, from the Rashomon-like recollections of pivotal moments in his career a real sense of the man comes through. Grant was a complex individual who was grateful for his career and success, but was always striving to discover his true essence.

Cary Grant: "If I can understand how I became who I am, I can use that to shape my life in the future. I want to live in reality. Dreams aren't for me."

A man with an insatiable curiosity, Grant became a devotee of LSD experimentation in his quest for inner peace. Nelson documents how his third wife Betsy Drake introduced Grant to LSD therapy, as well as his friends' positive and negative opinions about his forays with the drug.

Evenings With Cary Grant is a thoroughly enjoyable look into the life of one of the biggest stars to have ever come out of Hollywood. Grant and his movies are still widely enjoyed today, and this selection of quotes from the actor and his contemporaries is a wonderful glimpse into Hollywood's glittering past.

Images from top: Archie Leach in Hollywood, Cary Grant at the peak of his stardom, Grant with newborn daughter Jennifer.

she knew where she was going

Article first published as Book Review: I Know Where I'm Going: Katherine Hepburn, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler on Blogcritics.



I Know Where I'm Going: Katharine Hepburn, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler is an entertaining read. The author seems to have made a career compiling celebrity biographies, including ones about Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman and Mae West. The interviews with Hepburn that fill the book were supposed to have been conducted throughout the space of two years. There are also excerpts from other celebrities who talk about Hepburn, including director George Cukor and actors Ginger Rogers and Christopher Reeve. It's sometimes a bit repetitive, like visiting your aunt who tells you some of the same stories each time you meet. So much of the book is constructed of quotes, with no sense of exactly when the actual conversation took place. But no matter where Chandler got her quotes, the reader can hear Hepburn's voice, especially in phrases such as, "I've had every advantage. Isn't that ducky?" and "I was never a girl who considered herself clever about men, because I wasn't."

The Hepburn family, clockwise, from top: Tom, Dick, Peggy, Marion, Katharine, Bob and mother Kit. Father Tom Sr. must have been behind the camera.

As much as the book jumps around quite a bit and the interviews don't seem to be anchored in a specific time in Hepburn's life, it still centers around Kathrine Hepburn, so it can't help but be interesting. The great actress is a straight-shooter and quite frank about past relationships. She had quite a few affairs, and one marriage before she met and began her most significant relationship with fellow actor Spencer Tracy. Her first marriage and lover was Ludlow "Luddy" Smith, who would have loved her to ditch acting and assume a more traditional, wifely role, but was also understanding when that was clearly never going to be the case. After a quickie Mexican divorce, Hepburn embarked full-time on her career in the theater and in Hollywood.

Hepburn's genuine love for Spencer Tracy shines through all the quotes, no matter when or where they come from. The Tracy/Hepburn relationship has always been described as having to have been kept secret, as Spencer Tracy was Catholic and devout and didn't want to break up his family and humiliate his wife. Tracy and his wife had been living apart for years before he met Hepburn — and he had already had quite a few affairs with co-stars. Hepburn never wanted to marry. Their situation may have been unique, but it was in many ways ideal for her.

As much as she talks about "Spence" quite frankly, there is still much that seems murky, such a their living arrangements. They were apparently together the night he died and she heard him fall down in the kitchen, but later in the book she states they never lived together. It doesn't add up, but it also doesn't really matter. Hepburn was a very private person and doesn't owe anyone the details.

Tracy was the love of her life and Hepburn loved being one of the boys. She worshipped her urologist father, had affairs and/or lasting friendships with many of her leading men, including Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. She was also involved with super-agent Leland Hayward and had a long-term affair with mogul Howard Hughes, who she describes as the best lover she ever had. She had an uncanny ability to remain friends with all of her previous loves. And also to receive marriage proposals from them, which she always refused. Hepburn knew that she never wanted to remarry. Once had been more than enough.
The most significant relationship in her life seems to have been with her older brother Tom, who inexplicably took his own life when he and Hepburn were visiting family friends in Greenwich Village, just shy of his 16th birthday. Just two years his junior, she found him. He had strangled himself with a bed sheet.

Hepburn went into a deep depression and had to be pulled from school. Her parents continued her education from home after the incident. But more significantly, her father forbade anyone to mention Tom in the family circle (there were four younger siblings, all two years younger or more than Katharine.) He effectively wanted to erase Tom, erase the event from their lives: "… we were not just told not to talk about Tom, but not to think about him. It was to be as if he'd never been part of our family. …My father had said it, and no one, not even my mother, ever questioned my father's absolute authority."

But you can't erase something like that. Hepburn idolized her older brother and secretly defied her father, refusing to forget him. She took his birthday as her own. The family tried to make sense of what might have led to Tom's tragic death, but no one seemed to have any answers. Hepburn theorized that he had been experimenting, doing a sort of "prank," trying to perform a Houdini-like trick that made someone appear as if they were hanging when they weren't. This is highly unlikely, but it helped her to get on with her life and her family was more than willing to accept the theory that his death was an accident.

Her descriptions of her family throughout I Know Where I'm Going are frequently punctuated with phrases like, "Wasn't I lucky?" as she describes her parents' great relationship or some rule or regulation that her father imposed. He was a tough cookie, who didn't believe in failure and drove his children to excel in all things, especially sports. She mentions casually that Tom wasn't a natural athlete like herself, and that her father wanted his two eldest children to follow in his doctor's footsteps. Young Tom was obviously under a lot of pressure, "[Dr. Hepburn] wanted to register Tom for medical school even before he was born."

Being older than Katharine, and more sensitive, it is easy to see how he might have had feelings of inadequacy and not being able to cope. His death occurred the night before the two were supposed to return home to Connecticut from their Manhattan visit. It is very possible that there was something Tom dreaded back at home, some deadline relating to his father that she had no knowledge of. And after his death, her father wasn't talking.

She worshipped her father, but she was able to avoid his pressures to influence her career choices and pursued her own interests in acting. But her father never praised her or supported her in what he deemed a silly profession. Their family life seems like something right out of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, in which she starred, in 1962.

Hepburn mentions that after her mother died, she was shocked when her father turned right around and married his long-time nurse/assistant. She was very hurt by this, as she had always considered her parents' marriage perfect. She may have never actually known her father. Many family stories are included in I Know Where I'm Going, but it is odd that in all the interviews culled by the author there is rarely a discussion of any of her other four siblings, as she was so family-oriented. It seems a strange omission.

After reading these disembodied quotes, one gets the sense that Hepburn had arranged her life so that she never really had to completely grow up. She realized early on that she wasn't suited to marriage and motherhood, and wisely decided to avoid them. She was an independent woman with a strong mind, but Hollywood and her stage career also functioned in a parental capacity for her, by shielding her from the day-to-day slog of what it means to be a grown-up in the world.

Her long-time friend George Cukor not only served as her favorite director on many of her movies throughout her long career (A Bill of Divorcement [1932], Little Women [1933], Sylvia Scarlett [1936], Holiday [1938], The Philadelphia Story [1940], Keeper of the Flame [1942], Adam's Rib [1949], Pat and Mike [1952], Love Among the Ruins [1975]), but also rented her a cottage on his property, where she lived for many years. She even described him as someone she might have liked to have as a father. "If I could have chosen anyone in the world to be my father except my own father, it would have been George. … He was the person in my life I was most comfortable with, besides Spencer."

She was able to indulge in things that interested her — sports, men, going to the theater, ice cream, avoiding fans and signing autographs, and making brownies. She could, for the most part, do exactly as she wanted, like an indulged child. As she says herself, she was going to live life for both her and her brother Tom. "I decided I had to live my life for two. … I decided I would share my life with my brother. The real date of his death would not be until the date I died."

As important as Tom was to Hepburn, and as much as Chandler uses his story to bookend I Know Where I'm Going, Hepburn does seem to have moved beyond the tragedy, possibly the most significant event in her life. She always embraced life full-tilt and her film roles also reflect a woman who is full of conviction, whether the audience would agree with her convictions or not. I Know Where I'm Going may be less a biography and more a Hepburn collage, but its subject still fascinates. And happily, her films are available, to enjoy and enrich our understanding of this unique woman.

Related articles

• Book Review: I Know Where I'm Going: Katherine Hepburn, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler (blogcritics.org)