MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 500 titles—from the silent era through the ’90s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
The Philadelphia Story (1940. 112 minutes)
The Philadelphia Story has twice the firepower of your average screwball comedy. Both Cary Grant and James Stewart drop one-liners around the slender, pants-wearing figure of Katharine Hepburn like mashie-niblick shots stuck like darts onto the 18th green of the Philadelphia Country Club by 1939 U.S. Open champ Byron Nelson. Not to mention the repartee Hepburn fires back at anyone who crosses her path with the aplomb of a wicked ground stroke by 1940 U.S. Open tennis title-holder Alice Marble.
George Cukor’s Oscar-nominated gem wastes no time. It opens with C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) angrily stomping out of his showcase home, lugging a pair of modest suitcases, followed by his wife Tracy (Hepburn), carrying his golf clubs. After removing the driver from the bag, she tosses the clubs down at Dexter’s feet. Holding the remaining club aloft in both hands like a flaming-haired priestess, she snaps it in two over her knee as if it were kindling for the fireplace. Dexter raises his left fist over the head of his future ex-wife, then thinking better of it, places his hand over her face instead and shoves her backward onto the plush hall carpet.
Two years later, the family is preparing for Tracy’s second wedding, this time to George Kittredge. “Did Dexter really sock her?” Tracy’s 13-year-old sister Dinah (Virginia Weidler) asks their mother (Mary Walsh). “The papers are full of ‘inundo,'” adds the girl. Tracy inspects the sterling silver wedding presents littering the living room, then eyeballing her sister, says, “These cards have been changed.”
Tossing a yoyo up and down, Dinah says, “There must be a ghost loose in the house, maybe of bridegroom number one.” Their mother protests, “Oh, don’t talk about Dexter as though he were dead.” “He might just as well be, for all Tracy cares,” says Dinah. “We both might just face facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife,” says their mother, taking Tracy by the arm. “We just picked the wrong first husbands. We both deserve some happiness now,” says Tracy. “I like Dexter,” says Dinah. “Really?” says Tracy. “Why don’t you postpone the wedding by getting smallpox?”
Angry at his current assignment to cover Tracy’s wedding, Mike Connor (Stewart) barges into the office of SPY magazine publisher, Sidney Kidd. “I’m gonna tell him it’s degrading, Liz,” Mike tells his photographer, Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey). “I’m a writer, not a society snoop!” Kidd (Henry Daniell) finally looks up from his desk. “Your assignment will be SPY‘s most sensational achievement,” he says, ushering in Dexter, the story’s all-access pass to the grand ceremony. “This Tracy Lords, she knows you?” asks Mike. “You might say we grew up together,” says Dexter. “You might say you were her first husband,” offers Liz. “Yes,” says Dexter, “you might.”
