by the Crackpot Critic
When Howard Hawks decided to turn the popular stage play, The Front Page on its ear and make it a romantic comedy, it was a remarkable stroke of genius. Even more so considering that the complication he added was to make Walter Burns (Cary Grant) and Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), his romantic leads, a divorced couple who were still in love.
Divorce was a hot topic in 1940, when His Girl Friday was released. Women were at a an all-time high in terms of rights and liberation, but they were also experiencing a back-lash toward their freedom. The rise of women in the work force during the Great Depression caused bitterness in those who felt that jobs should be reserved for men who were the sole bread winners for their families. Of course this back-lash ignored the growing number of divorced and unmarried women who had nobody to rely on but themselves. Hildy Johnson is just such a woman. She's an accomplished professional, who's earned respect in the tough male dominated world of journalism. And she had the courage to divorce her husband/boss when things weren't working out, the way she'd planned.
Who could blame her when she quits her stressful job to get engaged to a boring insurance agent, played by Ralph Bellamy, who promises her the idylic home and family she never had with Walter. It takes the outlandish events of this screwball comedy to make Hildy realize that she is selling out the two things she loves, Walter Burns and the newspaper business. In one revealing line Walter tells Hildy "Divorce doesn't mean anything nowadays, Hildy, it's just a lot words mumbled over you by a judge." This ironic comment actually reflects the reality of a decreasing respect for the traditional view of marraige. (It is also particularily appropiate nowadays, with the current paranoia about family values in Hollywood.) But the writers and directors of 1940 were trapped by the Hays Code, a body of laws governing Hollywood, which said that adultry, divorce and any other action that disrespected the sanctity of marraige had to be paid for by the characters. So it was difficult to say outright that institution of marraige was unraveling, just as it was inevitable that Hildy and Walter get back together at the end of the movie.
As in His Girl Friday, any screwball comedy depends on three things: absurd situations, confusion and sexual tension. Divorce often provided the perfect plot background for these elements. In The Awful Truth, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne portray a couple who suspect each other of adultry and decide to get divorced. The events of the comedy take place while they are waiting for the formal dissolution of their marraige. The situation is further complicated when Dunne becomes engaged Daniel Leeson, (once again played by Ralph Bellamy). Jerry (Cary Grant) and Lucy (Irene Dunne) grapple back and forth, launching hilarious schemes to derail each other. A contemporary comedy, The War of the Roses, also dealt with the lengths that people will go to hurt each other during a divorce. Excepting that this film reached a conclusion that could have never been allowed in 1937, i.e. that the couple were just shallow, spiteful, idiots and it is no loss to the world when they accidently kill themselves in the course of their fighting. But under the Hays Code, the Warriners must reconcile since they take their divorce so lightly. Jerry eventually drops his circumstantial proof of Lucy's adultry and she forgives his jealousy and philandering (which is never explained away). To be fair, it is obvious from the beginning that the Warriner's are perfect for each other and their fights are merely foreplay for the romantic ending.
In The Philadelphia Story, divorce again provides the backdrop for comedy. This time, we've got a couple of well-heeled drawing room types, still reeling from a painful marraige and messy divorce. Although The Philadelphia Story doesn't exactly fit into the screwball genre, its positively bursting with sexual tension and moral confusion. C. K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) is a recovering alcoholic who returns to throw a wrench into his ex-wife's (Tracey Lord played by Katerine Hepburn) impending remarraige. He drags a couple of reporters, Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and Liz Imbrie, (Ruth Hussey) into the Lord's house, causing real trouble on her wedding night.
Throughout the movie, Connor is set up as a sympathetic romantic opposite to Tracey Lord. He's the idealistic writer; she's the "patron lady bountiful" and their scenes together are intensely romantic. Without knowledge of the restrictions of the Hays Code, nobody could guess on the first viewing, that we are actually being prepared for her reconcilation with her first husband. The only foreshadowing is that Tracey's parents, who've been torn apart by her father's adultry, get back together and give Tracey a stern lecture about forgiveness.
Without naming it, Tracey is a prime example of a woman trapped in the double bind. Following her hasty marraige to Dexter, she retreats into the traditional Victorian role of woman on a pedestal; a virginal character who waits for children to bring her life meaning. Dexter blames this transformation for his alcoholism and seeks to, at the very least, reform her before she destroys her second husband, or as he says, "Kittredge is no tower of strength, Tracey, he's just a tower." The flip side of the double bind, is that her re-education in matters of the heart involves a blazing one-night fling with Mike, which threatens to destroy her reputation and her relationship with her fiancee. She is, in short, damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.
Of course, The Philadelphia Story goes to ridiculous lengths to verbally portray sexual passion, while rigourously denying that any actual nooky took place during Mike and Tracey's infamous midnight swim. The script brillantly straddles the dreaded Hays Code and like a good lawyer, uses the restrictions to its own advantage. The viewers are first allowed to enjoy the implied sex, then made to feel guilty for thinking so low the characters. All the while Liz Imbrie, who is herself a divorced, working woman, voices a sarcastic and worldly commentary on how Tracey's experiment is messing up her lovelife. Finally the audience is left bewildered and happy when Dexter gallantly rescues Tracey from her double bind and the public humiliation of being deserted at the alter. Out of nowhere, it seems, another marraige has been restored, and divorce is again meaningless.
Instead of divorce, My Favorite Wife, uses a supposed death at sea and a bad wife/evil step mother to provide screwball mayhem and reinforce the sanctity of marraige. When Ellen Arden (Irene Dunne) returns after 7 years on a desert island, she finds that her children don't know her and that her husband, Nick, (Cary Grant) has remarried. Luckily it's not too late, since the second marraige isn't yet consumated and Nick is still in love with Ellen.
An anullment is promised as soon as Nick can work up the courage to face his shrewish bride, but further complications are needed to sustain the necessary level of confusion for a screwball comedy. Among these is Ellen's difficulty in adjusting to life in the civilized world. Her reason for taking the dangerous photography assignment that got her shipwrecked, was as a break from the stress of child rearing. Now the working mother finds herself locked out of her own house and she must slowly win back her children's trust through friendship. Her husband is a bit more difficult, and she must contend with his jealousy over Steven Burkett, the man with whom she was shipwrecked. In one scene, she declares that she doesn't need help from either of them and then promptly falls in the pool. This comic moment is illustrative of the sensibility of My Favorite Wife. When Nick or Ellen stray from their inevitable course of reconciliation, all hell breaks loose. The ending, which is remarkably similar to The Awful Truth's finale, reunites mother with children and wife with husband.
For religious reasons, it was easier to pull off an anullment under the Hays code than divorce. However, In Name Only serves as an exception to the sanctity of marraige rule and shows that in extreme cases, divorce is the only humane solution. Julie Eden (Carole Lombard) is a widow who falls in love with Alec Walker (Cary Grant), a wealthy goofball. Unfortunately, Walker is trapped in a loveless marraige with a cruel and manipulative woman who has her inlaws wrapped around her finger. Grant must face death in order to prove to his parents that his relationship with Eden is legitimate and that its time for a divorce.
It is interesting to note that while bad wives could be divorced, bad husbands, had to either be reformed as in comedies likeThe Awful Truth , or killed off as in Suzy. Jean Harlow plays Suzy, a woman who marries a war hero (Cary Grant), without telling him of her first husband who she believes to be dead. In the end, the charming hero is revealed to be an adulturous snake. He is conveinently killed and the original husband (Franchot Tone) returns just in time to console Harlow.
No Cary Grant picture is more clear about the fate of bad wives, than Blonde Venus. Cary plays a homewrecker, a man who falls in love with a married woman, Marlene Dietrich. Although she's only after money to pay for her husband's operation, their affair leads to the break-up of her marraige and her decline into poverty. Later, Grant's character helps her out of her dismal life as a prostitute, by setting himself up as her sugar daddy. By the end of the film, he reunites Dietrich with her husband and child. Both Grant and Dietrich sacrifice their feelings for one another, thereby paying for their sins and the original marraige is restored. Grant gracefully disappears into the shadows and Dietrich is allowed to live happily ever after.
After the second world war, Hollywood, like most of America, decided to settle down. Cary Grant played a series of happy-go-lucky single men in the final moments of bachelorhood, in films like The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, People Will Talk and Every Girl Should Be Married. The later film, starring Grant's real-life wife, Betsey Drake, told the story of a young woman's bizarre schemes to trap the man of her dreams. Today the script would read more like a made-for-TV movie about stalkers, but back then it was all just madcap fun. Cary Grant went from sophisticated and strong female leads like Hildy Johnson and Tracey Lord to a bland, traditional, albeit somewhat pyschotic, view of women that was right out of a "Better Homes and Gardens". The exception would be Myrna Loy in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse. After building a career out of the sophisticated comedy in the Thin Man, Loy was perfect as the cool, dignified opposite to manic Jim Blandings. Mrs. Blandings, a thoroughly classy character, keeps her household and marraige together, by simply remaining calm in a crisis.
In 1955 the Hays Code was cracked by The Man With Golden Arm, which graphically depicted heroin addiction. But the bottomline is perhaps the best tool for censorship, and family-oriented films were still doing well at the box office. Cary continued making situation comedies like Monkey Business and Houseboat throughout the Fifties.
During this period, Cary Grant was also exploring the dark side of his persona. He played ambiguous characters in the four films he made with Alfred Hitchcock. In North By Northwest, (1959) Grant played Roger Thornhill, ad executive living single after two unsuccessful marraiges. Thornhill's dishonesty with women, as shown in the opening scene in which he has his secretary send his girlfriend a box of candy, comes back to haunt him when he meets Eve Kendall (Eve Marie Saint). Kendall's lies are layered one on top of the other and cemented together by treachery. Still, she is as honest as a professional spy and double agent can be, and alot more sympathetic that the cold warriors from whom she takes orders.
In keeping with earlier femme fatales such as Harlowe and Dietrich, Kendall must suffer greatly before she can live happily ever after with Thornhill.
In 1962, That Touch of Mink sought to embrace the swinging times with a superficial cocktail lounge morality. Phillip Shayne asks Cathy Timberlake, (Doris Day) to live with him and to everyone's surprise she agrees. Of course, she really wants to get married, and her attempts to overcome her fear and provincial ideals are hilarious. Still, a couple "living in sin" wasn't exactly appropriate fodder for light comedy. Besides, it's equally funny to watch Shayne's transformation from lady killer to plucked chicken, and the inevitable wedding bells ring.
It is deeply ironic that Cary Grant, a man who in reality was married five times, played so often in films whose central message reinforced the sanctity of marraige. Since his career spanned four decades, his films also reflected the changing roles of women and evolving attitudes toward marraige. Hollywood has come full circle during the 1996 presidential campaign and is again taking the blame for our nation's social ills. And another anti-feminist backlash is scapegoating working mothers for a decline family values, while ignoring economic realities. Rather than a V-Chip, the techno equivalent of the Hays Code, a better remedy would be revive Cary Grant's movies. The classics could teach Hollywood a thing or two about keeping sex and violence to a minimum while Hildy Johnson, Liz Imbrie and Ellen Arden might have a few choice words for the Christian Coalition.
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