The Coronado Island Film Festival presents The Philadelphia Story, the second of
two 2024 Student Classic Film Series Romantic Comedy Spotlight features in April.
More than eighty years after its premiere, The Philadelphia Story remains revered as one of the most finely crafted movies in Hollywood history. Make plans to be in the Coronado Library’s Winn Room on Sunday, April 28th from 1 to 3:30 pm. *
Today, Katherine Hepburn is recognized as one of the most talented and influential actresses in American cinematic history. Hepburn began making movies in the early 1930s. In a career spanning five decades, she was nominated 12 times by the Academy as Best Actress, winning four such Oscars, a record. Yet, early in her career, at the end of the 1930s after a series of commercial flops, Hepburn found her name prominently included on a well-publicized “Box Office Poison” list released by independent theater owners. Suddenly, studios were reluctant to cast her. Realizing her future was at stake, with the help of talented and powerful friends, Hepburn revitalized her career when playwright Philip Barry wrote The Philadelphia Story, a play about a woman much very much like Hepburn, specifically for her to star in on Broadway. When the play proved to be a smash hit, Howard Hughes, then romantically involved with Ms. Hepburn, bought and gifted her the movie rights. Hepburn then made a deal to sell the rights to MGM. As part of the deal, she negotiated directly with L.B. Mayer to star in the role of spoiled heiress, Tracy Lord, she had played so successfully on Broadway AND for control over the selection of producer, director, screenwriter and co-stars for the film version of the story.
On the brink of WWII in 1940, no other Hollywood studio could have brought together the star power, both in front of the camera and behind it, as MGM did for The Philadelphia Story. Today it is hard to imagine more perfect casting than Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn; each seems made for their respective roles. George Cukor, renown as “an actor’s director,” deftly handled the stars and the material, helped in no small measure by the marvelous David Ogden Stewart’s Oscar-winning screenplay adaptation of Barry’s Broadway hit.
The result: a nearly perfectly composed mature romantic comedy, punctuated by profoundly dramatic notes, that stays with audiences long after screening the film. After its release, The Philadelphia Story broke box-office records in New York’s Radio City Music Hall. It earned six Oscar Nominations, winning two. Most notably, perhaps, one of those Oscars was the first and only Best Actor Oscar in the career of a Hollywood legend, actor Jimmy Stewart.
The screening is FREE to the public and will be held in The Winn Room at the Coronado Public Library on Sunday, April 28th from 1 to 3:30 pm. *
* Special Note: Adults over 18 should be accompanied by a young person, 18 years old or younger. The series is recommended for young people of middle school and high school age, their parents, guardians and friends.
