The Philadelphia (and Newport, Rhode Island) Story

High Society (1956) promises fun at the movies. And it delivers. This spritely screwball musical stars Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, both of whose characters are at least somewhat in love with an elegant heiress, Tracy Lord, played by the blonde and beautiful Grace Kelly. This was to be Kelly’s very last movie role before she married a real-life Prince Charming and became Princess Grace of Monaco. Rounding out the cast are the acerbic Celeste Holm and the delightfully ebullient Louis Armstrong. The setting is ritzy Newport, Rhode Island, where the central characters live in posh mansions, surrounded by fawning retainers.  

 Armstrong’s presence is explained by the fact that there’s a jazz festival in the vicinity. He acts as a kind of narrator to open and close the film; he also memorably duets with Crosby on the up-tempo "Now You Has Jazz.” In this story, Crosby plays  C. K. Dexter Haven, a well-heeled singer/composer who is Tracy Lord’s neighbor, as well as her former husband. Though they were once deeply attached, and shared a romantic honeymoon aboard a yacht called the “True Love,” affection has turned to loathing (on Tracy’s part, at least), followed by an acrimonious divorce. Now Tracy is on the brink of marrying a staid businessman, and Dex wanders over to observe the hubbub. You see, C. K. Dexter Haven has (in his relaxed way) never quite gotten over Tracy, and he’s hanging around to check on what his former wife is up to.

 Also in residence on the wedding weekend are a magazine journalist (Sinatra) and his photographer sidekick (Holm), determined to get a scoop on this big society event. Everything goes haywire on the night before the nuptials, when Tracy gets drunk and Sinatra’s character gallantly comes to her rescue.

 The Cole Porter ditties (including the romantic hit, “True Love” and a nifty Crosby/Sinatra duet) are appealing, and there are no false notes among the performers. Still, seeing High Society again after many years, I became convinced that there was a better version of this tale to be found. And so, of course, there is. Back in 1940, the great George Cukor directed The Philadelphia Story, based on a Philip Barry stage hit that starred Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn’s Hollywood career had recently been foundering, and so she bought the play’s film rights in order to reintroduce herself to the moviegoing public. It worked magnificently well, especially since Cukor invited two of the era’s brightest male stars, Cary Grant and James Stewart, to play the main men in her life., If Hoboken’s rough-and-tumble Frank Sinatra is amusing when he romances the soignée Grace Kelly in and around her estate’s swimming pool, imagine how much funnier it is when aw-shucks Jimmy Stewart pitches woo to the imperious Hepburn. And of course Cary Grant is Cary Grant, effortlessly suave and just the fellow to tame this particular shrew. What we love about Katharine Hepburn is how wonderfully she plays a woman who is absolutely wrong about pretty much everything. Seeing her get her comeuppance is a delight for those of us who admire strong women but also place great stock in happily-ever-after.

 F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, insisted that the very rich “are different from you and me.” To which his pal Ernest Hemingway wryly reposted, “Yes, they have more money.” Movie fans, particularly in the years coming out of the Great Depression, preferred to think that—despite all their riches—the wealthy could be as foolish as those of us with emptier pockets. The Philadelphia Story certainly proves this is so.   

 

Barbershop Blues: “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”

Who knew that a haircut could cause such a commotion? In 1920, the young F. Scott Fitzgerald published in the Saturday Evening Post a short story he drew from his younger sister’s social anxieties. It was called “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” and the title had always made me curious. I finally caught up with Bernice and her social set via a 1976  episode of The American Short Story, an ambitious TV anthology series hosted by PBS between 1974 and 1980. The 17 episodes all featured major Hollywood stars and first-class directors presenting works by some of America’s most revered authors, including Mark Twain, Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor.  

 At the close of PBS’s 46-minute Bernice Bobs Her Hair, one of the major production credits goes to a wig-maker. This is hardly surprising, because all the women in the story start out with great masses of long hair, which (true to the style rules of 1920) they pile onto their heads during the day and arrange into long, thick braids before going to sleep. One of these proper young ladies is Bernice (Shelley Duvall), visiting her big-city cousin Marjorie from her home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Marjorie is a social butterfly, who knows how to flirt with the young men, back for the summer from Ivy League colleges, who are at her beck and call. Bernice, by contrast, is shy and awkward; her only social gambit is to complain about how much hotter St. Paul is than Eau Claire.

 Finally, pushed by her mother to treat her cousin more kindly, Marjorie tutors Bernice on how to flirt, and how to become a witty conversationalist, going right up to the edge of social propriety. Learning her lessons perhaps too well, Bernice begins to enthrall the young men with daring remarks. At a swanky dinner party, she announces her determination to bob her hair, in emulation of the sexy “picture-show vampires” of the day. (Today we would call them “femmes fatales“ or “vamps.”) Her listeners, accustomed to far more conservative styles, are both fascinated and scandalized by her daring. She acknowledges that for a woman hair-shearing would be immoral, but (with her cousin across the table quietly signaling assent) she declares that to get on in this world you’ve got to amuse people, or shock them.

 It's unclear if Bernice will go ahead with her boast, until Cousin Marjorie eggs her into putting her bold words into practice. At which point several things happen, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the story’s highly ironic ending. Let’s just call it bittersweet.

 I discovered this filmed version of the Fitzgerald story while exploring the career of the late Shelley Duvall, best known for being absolutely terrified as Jack Nicholson goes crazy in The Shining. Duvall, who by all accounts fell into the film world accidentally, never had the look of a conventional Hollywood glamour-girl. With her huge eyes, buck teeth, soft voice, and beanpole frame, she easily projects a wallflower’s discomfort. But when she begins to show her saucy side, it’s remarkable how she sparkles, only to retreat once the deed is done back to a version of her former self. Kudos to her, to Veronica Cartwright as Cousin Marjorie and to Bud Cort (of Harold and Maude fame) as a promising suitor. Big congratulations to the talented Joan Micklin Silver, who in the previous year had written and directed Hester Street, an adaptation of Abraham Cahan’s 1896 novella about love among Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side. Silver is adept at establishing precise social milieus through a canny use of visuals and music. Brava!