The Philadelphia Story (1940)

USA, 112 minutes

Director: George Cukor

Writers: Donald Ogden Stewart, Philip Barry, Waldo Salt

Photography: Joseph Ruttenberg

Music: Franz Waxman

Editor: Frank Sullivan

Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, John Howard, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Mary Nash, Roland Young, John Halliday, Henry Daniell

I first saw The Philadelphia Story quite a long time ago, on early missions to collect all the various Hollywood classics of the late ‘30s and ‘40s. The first thing that struck me coming back to it again was what a phenomenal amount of star power it has, with not one not two but three major players: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. Plus the great Hollywood director George Cukor (Little Women, Holiday, part of Gone With the Wind, Gaslight, Born Yesterday), a specialist in romantic comedy arguably at the peak of his powers. That’s the view from now anyway—interestingly, Hepburn at the time was considered box office poison for some reason, so when Grant demanded top billing in this one he got it. Hepburn had also flopped on Broadway a few years earlier, making it something of a low ebb for her career, though of course she is remembered now as a steady-glowing superstar.

In fact, The Philadelphia Story started life as a vehicle written for Hepburn by playwright Philip Barry. Talk about star-studded: in the Broadway production, Joseph Cotten had Cary Grant’s role and Van Heflin had Stewart’s. And it was a big hit, so I’m not sure what the Hollywood moguls were worried about. But I’m sure there’s a story. At any rate, the film version is bracingly modern for its times, acknowledging the reality of embittered marriages and divorce. On the other hand, it reverts more to the form of its times by making a joking matter out of routine domestic violence. It’s given as funny that C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) “socked” his then wife Tracy Lord (Hepburn) (no apparent relation to the porn star). This movie loves the word “sock.”

Holiday (1938)

USA, 95 minutes

Director: George Cukor

Writers: Donald Ogden Stewart, Sidney Buchman, Philip Barry

Photography: Franz Planer

Music: Sidney Cutner

Editors: Al Clark, Otto Meyer

Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan, Edward Everett Horton, Lew Ayres, Henry Kolker, Binnie Barnes, Henry Daniell

Annals of screwball comedy: Holiday came out four months after Bringing Up Baby in 1938. They make interesting companion pieces—one obvious stop for double-feature programmers. Both have Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in starring roles with visible chemistry. Sometimes I think Grant brings all the chemistry necessary for anyone he played with because Hepburn is more of a peculiar and specific figure, as the mid-Atlantic accent attests (though it's true Grant sports the accent too). These two movies are distinguished more by the sensibilities of their directors. Bringing Up Baby is a Howard Hawks picture and shot through with his dry cynicism, all romance dialed way down for the sake of clarifying the absurdity, whereas Holiday, directed by George Cukor, is much closer to romantic comedy than screwball comedy perhaps because Cukor, a certain Hollywood titan on Andrew Sarris's "far side of paradise" (Gaslight, My Fair Lady, The Philadelphia Story, etc., etc.), was more of a romantic than a screwball.

To be sure, both the screwball and much of the romantic elements are the weakest parts of Holiday, the better to focus on its quiet confidence in asserting self-fulfillment as our greatest aspiration over making a lot of money. It is completely audacious in its own way, particularly given its home in the Great Depression when making money was a natural concern for most and getting rich easy seemed like an obvious solution, if you could make it happen. In that way Holiday is more of a bohemian movie at its core, about the pursuit of freedom, self-expression, and happiness. It's a little corny for these sophisticates, a little painfully sincere, but it has a lot to do with what makes this strange gem work.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

USA, 238 minutes
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood
Writers: Margaret Mitchell, Sidney Howard, Oliver H.P. Garrett, Ben Hecht, Jo Swerling, John Van Druten
Photography: Ernest Haller, Lee Garmes
Music: Max Steiner
Editors: Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom, Ernie Leadlay, Richard L. Van Enger
Cast: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, Victor Jory, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Rutherford, Laura Hope Crews, Harry Davenport, Jane Darwell, Ona Munson, Ward Bond, George Reeves, Rand Brooks, Carroll Nye, Oscar Polk

It's arguable that the two most significant American movies of the first half of the 20th century were D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which invented epic cinema, and Gone With the Wind, which fully implemented it in technicolor with sound. It's arguable, but I wouldn't want to make the argument, because they look to me too much like propaganda exercises for the valorization of the South and its slavery culture, busy with misleading historical reclamation projects. Or maybe I would prefer to argue that screwball comedies have more significance than epic cinema. Still, the ticket buyers have voted. That's Gone With the Wind even now sitting atop the list of all-time domestic grosses adjusted for inflation. It's the most commercially successful movie of all time, even taken out of circulation for decades after its initial release. (For the curious, the rest of that all-time top 10 goes Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Titanic, The Ten Commandments [1956], Jaws, Doctor Zhivago, The Exorcist, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.)

I have never warmed much to Gone With the Wind, which I finally had a chance to see in the early '80s on VHS, and I like it less all the time as the country spirals backward in values. Alabama's Roy Moore, for one, specifically pointed to the South's slavery period as the last time America was great, and it seems as likely as anything (because who knows what that "great" is supposed to mean in "Make America Great Again") that's the era they're thinking of and clamoring so hard for. I find myself arguing all the time with the title cards in this ridiculous overwrought show: "Here in this pretty world," an early one burbles, "Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave ... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered." Dream for some, nightmare for many. I'm sure you can guess my complaints. As an exercise, as a remedy, and to maintain the equilibrium I need for this movie, I decided to focus on what I think is good in Gone With the Wind.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

USA, 102 minutes
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy, Norman Taurog, King Vidor
Writers: Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, L. Frank Baum, Arthur Freed, Irving Brecher, William H. Cannon, Herbert Fields, Jack Haley, E.Y. Harburg, Samuel Hoffenstein, Bert Lahr, John Lee Mahin, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Jack Mintz, Ogden Nash, Robert Pirosh, George Seaton, Sid Silvers
Photography: Harold Rosson
Music: Harold Arlen
Editor: Blanche Sewell
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, Charley Grapewin, Clara Blandick, Terry (Toto)

(Early cut for the Facebook countdown here.)

In the 79 years since its release, The Wizard of Oz has come to represent virtually all things to all people. Several years ago, for example, you can see I attempted to drop the overlay of horror on it for the Facebook countdown, comparing it to It's a Wonderful Life and Blue Velvet. I was sincere—The Wizard of Oz has scared me nearly as much as any other movie. Things like the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys are pretty serious business, and not necessarily just for kids. The joke TV description is funny because it's true: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again." More recently I've noticed The Wizard of Oz taken by some as a road movie. It's certainly a cartoon, and obviously a musical, and the Munchkins briefly transport it into Freaks territory. Like Casablanca, it speaks to the power of Hollywood collaboration and against the idea of auteurs, with its five directors and 19 writers. Like A Christmas Story (and It's a Wonderful Life) its reputation was cemented only long after its release, facilitated by television. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon got roped into the circus at some point by stoners. By now, we know The Wizard of Oz so well there's a version of it edited to alphabetize every word. I enjoy it and you might too, a few minutes at a time, but before viewing Of Oz the Wizard take heed of the warning: "This film contains extremely fast editing, flashes of light, abrupt changes in image and sound."

I still forget, or really never knew, the popularity of the original series of children's novels by L. Frank Baum. They arrived at the turn of the century, were wildly loved for decades (though somewhat disreputable among librarians, like Nancy Drew mysteries), and are paid respect in a note at the start of this picture. This iconic 1939 Judy Garland breakout vehicle was actually already the seventh attempt to film Oz—seventh time's the charm, right? It reminds me of the Frankenstein story—once Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published two centuries ago, stage and then film productions never stopped coming. But now I'm drifting back to talking about it in terms of horror, so let me be clear. I think the best way to view The Wizard of Oz is by taking it as what it's intended to be: an expensive MGM musical built on the bones of vaudeville and meant to be seen in color.