CMBA GUILTY PLEASURES BLOGATHON: Mame (1974)

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The Classic Movie Blog Association, of which Backlots is a member, is hosting a very interesting blogathon–dealing with those films that we know are stinkers, but that we love anyway. Backlots generally concerns itself with positive reviews (when deserved!), but this is a real opportunity for me not only to extol my love for a bad movie, but also to explain WHY I love this failure as much as I do! So without further ado–light the candle, get the ice out, roll the rug up, it’s….MAME!

The story is of Mame Dennis, a madcap bon vivant who takes in her orphaned nephew Patrick and raises him as her own, teaching him that “life is a banquet” and educating him in the ways of her world. Mame is initially awkward with him, but over the course of the film we see a strong maternal love develop within her, and Patrick becomes close with her too. It is a simple plot that really touches on basic human emotions, and that in itself makes it a successful story.

Mame was inspired by a long line of successful stagings of the classic Patrick Dennis story Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade, written in 1955. Though the plot was entirely created, Dennis passed it off as autobiographical by employing his own name as that of the book’s narrator. As he stated in LIFE magazine in 1962: ”I write in the first person, but it is all fictional. The public assumes that what seems fictional is fact; so the way for me to be inventive is to seem factual but be fictional.” The book was an instant success, and shortly thereafter a Broadway show, entitled Auntie Mame, was created by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee with Rosalind Russell in the lead role. The play opened in 1957, and Russell’s portrayal of Auntie Mame landed her a Tony nomination. The following year, Russell reprised her role on film, which in turn earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, and Auntie Mame became the highest grossing film of the year.

Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame.

In 1966, the plot was revisited again for a musical version of the Broadway show, this time entitled simply Mame and headed by Angela Lansbury in the title role and Bea Arthur as Mame’s best friend Vera. This production had enormous success, running a total of 1,508 performances in New York before touring the country. Both Lansbury and Bea Arthur won Tonys for their performances. The 1969 West End production of the show starred Ginger Rogers and ran for 14 months.

Angela Lansbury performing “It’s Today” during the revival run in 1983.

Then came the film.

Deeming Angela Lansbury too unknown in films to reprise her role (which I think makes no sense, because by that point she had been in 36 films and had been nominated for the Academy Award 3 times), Lucille Ball was booked to play Mame Dennis in a planned film version in 1972. Shortly before filming was to begin, Ball broke her leg in a skiing accident and could not start work on the film until she was healed. The proposed director, the legendary George Cukor, was forced to withdraw from the film due to the delay in shooting, and the task of directing the film went to Gene Saks, who had directed the Broadway production (and who happened to be married to Lansbury’s Broadway co-star Bea Arthur, also slated for the film version). The disasters of the production were not over. Madeline Kahn was cast as Agnes Gooch, Mame’s secretary, and when filming started, Ball (who had casting approval) was not satisfied with her performance and had her fired. It also became devastatingly clear that Lucille Ball could not sing, and was far too old to be playing Mame Dennis with any sort of credibility (she was 62 when filming began). This necessitated the use of soft-focus filters to disguise her age.

Note the soft-focus in this trailer.

Ball had to have long rehearsal sessions with Jerry Herman in order to increase her singing ability, but it was in vain–she could not sing. It is very clear in the film that Ball is uncomfortable.

Despite all the problems, Mame WAS a successful film, breaking records during its run at Radio City Music Hall, but Lucille Ball could not be saved. Critics were very harsh, and reviews included:

“Miss Ball has been molded over the years into some sort of national monument, and she performs like one too. Her grace, her timing, her vigor have all vanished. When she is photographed at close range, the image goes soft, indicating that the lens was smeared with Vaseline and shrouded in gauze. The other actors in the movie are clear enough on their own. But when they step into a shot with her, they go out of focus too.”

-TIME magazine

“After forty years in movies and TV, did [Lucille Ball] discover in herself an unfulfilled ambition to be a flaming drag queen?”

-Pauline Kael, New Yorker Magazine

“Hopelessly out-of-date musical … will embarrass even those who love Lucy. Calling Fred and Ethel Mertz!”

-Leonard Maltin, Movie Guide

I often wonder what would have happened if just a few changes were made to the film–if they had realized that Angela Lansbury DID have clout on film, and if George Cukor had stayed. I have a feeling that it would have been a much better film.

It does have some saving graces, for example the magnificent Bea Arthur, who I’m convinced can do no wrong. She won a Tony for the role of Vera on Broadway, and her performance here is really the highlight of the film.

Arthur and Lucille Ball singing “Bosom Buddies.”

Needless to say, the music is also extremely quality. Jerry Herman’s successful Broadway score translated into some brownie points for the film, but one can hardly say that this is a credit to the film, as Herman simply uprooted the Broadway score and placed it onscreen–a simple cut-and-paste job.

Now let me tell you why I love this movie.

It is SO INCREDIBLY CAMPY.

You know how sometimes a movie is so bad, it’s good? This is one of those. It may not be in the category of Plan 9 From Outer Space bad, but the campiness of this one blows Plan 9 out of the water. The colors, the lighting, the ridiculously expensive production (estimated at $12 million), and the sheer low quality of the script and acting make it a recipe for a cult smash.

I first saw this movie when I was about 12 years old at a friend’s house, and I was immensely taken with it. My friend and I developed a whole new set of inside jokes from it (see above re: the script), and it became an instant favorite. That’s really what this movie is good for, and despite its bad quality, it’s still a great and fun movie-watching experience.

You can watch the entire movie on YouTube, and I am including Part 1 below. Thank you to the CMBA for hosting this fun blogathon!!

Happy birthday Maureen O’Hara!

Me with Maureen O’Hara in Ireland, June 2011.

LOVING LUCY BLOGATHON–Lucy’s Lasting Legacy

Lucille Ball is one of entertainment’s most enduring icons. She has been visible for nearly 80 years, and I would venture to say that there are very few people alive today who have not known and loved Lucy for the better part of their entire lives.

I myself discovered Lucille Ball when I was in early elementary school. My best friend and I became obsessed with “I Love Lucy” around the 2nd grade, and we subsequently watched every episode of the series, then moved on to the “Lucy/Desi Comedy Hour” and “The Lucy Show.” We just couldn’t get enough of her. And I think we weren’t alone in this–my dad also seemed to know a good deal about Lucille Ball as a person (he was the one who taught me, at the age of 7, that she had been a starlet and a model, and that at one point had gone by the name Dianne Belmont), so it was evident that he was in love with Lucy, too. She just had a certain something that resonated with people. And I don’t think it was just her comedic genius–there was something about HER that attracted people to her.

Since its series finale in 1957, “I Love Lucy” has proven to be a mainstay in syndication, and has essentially never gone off the air. 54 years after the show ended, it is shown in dozens of languages across the world and continues to get stellar ratings (in fact, the Hallmark Channel is so confident in the ratings of “I Love Lucy” that they are hosting an entire weekend-long marathon of the show in honor of Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday today). Can you imagine a show today still playing in 50 + years, broadcast in different languages all over the world? I can’t think of ANY modern show that will stand the test of time like “I Love Lucy” has.

Since this is a classic film blog, I would like to talk a little bit about Lucille Ball’s early film roles. Alas, they have been somewhat obscured by her absolutely blinding success with “I Love Lucy,” enough that whenever I see a film with Lucille Ball on the big screen, I hear mutterings from the audience “Is that Lucille Ball???” People are surprised that she had any career at all before “I Love Lucy,” and I think it’s a shame, because some of those early roles are very noteworthy and she could have had a monumental success in films had “I Love Lucy” not come along–in my opinion, she would probably have remained a character actress, because of that Eve Arden-esque wit and backtalk at which she was so clever. She did, however, have some good starring success in her early years with Dance, Girl, Dance, the film she made in 1940 with Maureen O’Hara, Du Barry Was a Lady in 1943, and in a number of other quality films at MGM.

Dancing “The Jitterbug Bite” in Dance, Girl, Dance.

She also had a good deal of success in radio, which is not surprising given that unique voice we all know so well. The character of Lucy Ricardo was, in fact, inspired by Lucy’s character on a radio program called “My Favorite Husband,” done in 1948 with Richard Denning.

It’s interesting to note that her voice essentially never changed, from her first moment on the screen straight through the 1960′s. It was then that the smoking caught up to her and gave her the distinctive smoker’s voice that became a trademark of Lucy’s later career. The uniqueness of her voice is something that people don’t often comment on, yet I would imagine that if people closed their eyes and watched an early Lucille Ball film, even if they didn’t know she was in it, they would be able to identify her instantly.

This interview, done in 1973, shows her not only as a lovely human being, but also her immense intelligence. She responds to each question carefully and thoroughly, and knows exactly what she is saying and why she is saying it. The thoroughness, perfectionism and business-savvy qualities in Lucille Ball are legendary. It is said that on the set of “I Love Lucy,” if she found a scene to not be funny, she she would often tell the director so, and proceed to argue with him until she got her way. She knew what was funny and what was not, and she was not about to sacrifice the show to an unfunny scene. Obviously, Lucy’s way always got huge laughs.

The famous scene from the episode “Lucy Does the Tango.” This scene contains the longest studio laugh in the history of the show, and one of the longest in the history of television.

Lucille Ball’s legacy has been strong for many decades, and it shows no sign of stopping now. With the huge amounts of “I Love Lucy” memorabilia being sold at high prices, with the show frequently on in syndication, the plethora of Lucy impersonators and the millions of fans devoted to her, I think we’re going to have Lucy for a long, long time to come.

Thank you to the people over at True Classics for hosting this wonderful blogathon.

GINGER ROGERS CENTENARY BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE

Ginger Rogers would have been 100 years old today. In honor of this immensely multi-talented star of stage and screen, I am putting together a humble birthday tribute to say a posthumous thank you to a woman who quite literally gave her heart and soul to the film industry.

I will start by saying that I consider Ginger Rogers to be massively underestimated as a screen star. Ask anyone on the street who Ginger Rogers was, and you’ll get a response like “Fred’s dancing partner!” In a sense, I think it was a curse that Ginger became known as just one of “Fred and Ginger,” because it isolated her in the eyes of the public. If Ginger had a flaw, it was that she was TOO talented. She was a master at everything. People who have too many talents tend to get either smothered completely by their own talent, or become known for one thing and the rest of their potential goes down the drain. The relative anonymity of Kay Thompson today is an example of someone being smothered by their own talent, I think–and Ginger is an example of the latter. The public can’t handle that much talent from a single person, and don’t know where to focus their energy, so either one thing takes center stage, or nothing at all.

She was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri, and was raised by her mother and stepfather (John Logan Rogers) in Fort Worth, Texas. She took the last name of her stepfather as a child, and as one of her young cousins couldn’t pronounce “Virginia,” she became “Ginger.” Her mother, Lela, had worked as a scriptwriter and had a real passion for Hollywood, one that she passed on to her daughter–Ginger grew up with the theatre, and soon fell in love with it.

Ginger with her mother, Lela Rogers.

After winning a Charleston dance contest at the age of 15, she was given the opportunity to join a vaudeville traveling act, and traveled with them for 6 months. At the age of 18 she made her Broadway debut in a play called Top Speed, which was followed by a starring role in the musical Girl Crazy, which garnered her rave reviews and a seven year contract with Paramount Pictures.

The Paramount contract didn’t really work out, and she garnered a number of other, smaller contracts, including those with Warner Brothers and Pathé. She made a significant impression at the Warner Brothers studio with 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 (a personal favorite of mine), but it was at RKO that Ginger would make her biggest mark. She was paired with Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio in 1933, which was followed by 8 other films together at that studio (The Barkleys of Broadway, their 10th and last film together, was made at MGM in 1949). Here are some moments from those films:

“The Carioca,” from Flying Down to Rio, (1933)

“The Continental,” from The Gay Divorcée, (1934)

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” from Roberta (1935)

“Cheek to Cheek,” from Top Hat (1935)

“Let Yourself Go,” from Follow the Fleet (1936)

“Pick Yourself Up,” from Swing Time (1936)

“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” from Shall We Dance (1937)

“The Yam,” from Carefree (1938)

“Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,” from The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)

“Bouncin’ the Blues,” The Barkleys of Broadway ( 1949)

It was also with RKO that Ginger made Kitty Foyle in 1940, the film that would showcase her talent as a dramatic actress as well as a dancer and comedienne. The story of a woman torn between two men, Ginger proved to the world that she was more than just the musical counterpart to Fred Astaire. She garnered an Academy Award nomination, and won for the Best Actress of 1940.

Ginger and James Stewart pose with their Oscars, February 27, 1941.

As the 1950′s approached and McCarthyism began to rise in the United States, Ginger was one of the few people in Hollywood to show strong support toward McCarthy’s policies. A lifelong Republican, she held views that were not in line with those of many of her close friends (Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, and Bette Davis, to name a few), but nonetheless, Rogers was known for being a good and loyal friend, and was well-loved within Hollywood. It has been said that Ginger herself may not have been as conservative as she said she was–but instead put on that face for her mother, to whom she was very close and who was a staunch supporter of McCarthy.

Though her career declined as roles for older women became harder to find, Ginger still managed to find work in smaller films and on Broadway, notably replacing Carol Channing as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! in 1965. She made a number of television appearances, acting right up until her death of congestive heart failure in 1995.

From an appearance on “The Lucy Show,” with her good friend (and distant cousin) Lucille Ball. The young girl is Lucie Arnaz.

Ginger spent her last years in ill health, confined to a wheelchair due to a fall on the stairway of Ronald Reagan’s yacht. A number of strokes did not help. It’s sad to think of the great Ginger Rogers in a wheelchair, but I guess it’s some consolation that her movies are still around and keep her alive and well in our minds.

I leave you with one of my favorite moments of hers, from Gold Diggers of 1933. Happy 100th birthday, Ginger!!

BIRTHDAY SPAM–#2: Olivia de Havilland.

For those of you who may be new here, I am a huge Olivia de Havilland fan. I made her this blog’s first Star of the Week–I adore every movie she ever made–even the bad ones (ahem…Alibi Ike, Lady in a Cage), because I just love watching her on the screen. She has been living in Paris for the past 60 years, and I had the great fortune to meet her when I was there. I learned to my joy that not only is she one of our finest actresses, but an amazingly sweet, kind, warm, gentle, and generous human being. I absolutely adore her.

Meeting Olivia de Havilland--picture taken by my friend Erika. I had to do some cropping for the privacy purposes of my friends, but I'm the one holding the book you can hardly see, on the bottom right hand corner.

She signed my copy of "Every Frenchman Has One."

Olivia is 95 years old today, and still going very strong. She walks unassisted, is sharp as a tack, and apparently still drinks 2 glasses of champagne every day (she cut down from 3 glasses when she turned 94!) When I met her at the American Library in Paris, she came alone, unassisted–they simply called her a cab when the event was over and she hopped in by herself and went home. She is really quite a lady. Apparently she is even traveling out to CA this fall to see her daughter get married. I have a feeling we’re going to have her for a very, very long time.

I am currently working on an Olivia tribute video for her birthday, but it’s taking longer than I expected, so it’s not ready yet. I’ll post it once it’s done.

Here are some Olivia gems:

Olivia and Bette Davis on “This is Your Life.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935.

At the home of her sister Joan, 1942.

The chilling final scene in The Heiress, 1949.

To Each His Own, 1946, which garnered Olivia her first Oscar.

As the demure Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind.

Playing twins in "The Dark Mirror," 1946.

Being silly in Thank Your Lucky Stars with George Tobias and Ida Lupino.

One of my favorite magazine covers.

A rare moment of love between Olivia and Joan, after Joan won her Oscar for "Suspicion." These moments have been few and far-between, and I'm glad that some of them ended up on camera.

The Snake Pit, 1948.

And since for some reason I can’t upload my video of her saying this, here is a transcript of Olivia basically securing my vote for the 2012 presidential election:

“For the young, who are in college, I think it’s terribly important for this country that the young have at least one year of university in some foreign country. It’s extremely important to understand another culture, another people. Here we are, isolated, this huge continent, isolated from the rest of the world! By two great oceans! We are not…we don’t understand other peoples. It’s so ironic, because we are made up of people of every race! Whose origins WERE other countries! We are almost COMPLETELY IGNORANT. And we are rather arrogant, and we are going to make terrible blunders…that are injurious to other peoples abroad, and in the end to ourselves. It’s imperative.”

Happy birthday Olivia! May she have many more happy birthdays to come!!

A TRIBUTE TO JUDY GARLAND

June 10 marks the day that Judy Garland would have been 89 years old. If you have been following my blog at all, you already know that I am a huge Judy Garland fan. She has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and the really serious fandom started when I was about 10, when I heard a compilation of her Decca recordings–I fell immediately in love, and it’s all been uphill from there.

It is no secret that Judy Garland is the quintessential queer icon of the century. There have been many theories about just why the gay community is so drawn to her–among them that the early passing of her father (who was indeed gay) led her to seek out similar men, and that her status as a “tragic” character led the gay community to identify with her troubles. I don’t pretend to understand just what exactly it is that makes Judy such a lasting icon in the gay community, but I think that the renowned playwright and drag performer Charles Busch articulates her appeal very accurately:

I think it’s just facile to think that ‘Oh, because she’s so pathetic, that gay people whose lives are so pathetic identify with that,’ I think that can get a little tiresome. I think it’s more that despite her problems, she was able to dredge up this…energy that was very infectious.”

I am going to compile here some of what I consider to be her best work, and that which seems to encompass her as a person. Happy birthday to Judy!

As a child.

Singing “Blue Butterfly,” at age 7.

Publicity photo for MGM, shortly after she signed with them in 1935. This shoot was done within days of her father's death.

“It’s Love I’m After,” from her first feature film, Pigskin Parade. She was 14.

 

With Allan Jones and Fanny Brice, publicity photo for "Everybody Sing."

 

This is a series of home movies shot on the set of The Wizard of Oz, by songwriter Harold Arlen.

 

On the set with "Toto," a female Cairn terrier whose real name was Terry.

Publicity photo for "Presenting Lily Mars," 1943.

 

 

With daughter Liza, in "Photoplay," May 1947.

With Gene Kelly in The Pirate.

Again showing her skills as a dancer with Gene Kelly in Summer Stock. After this film, she was fired from MGM and embarked on a highly successful concert career.

Judy at the Palace, where she played for a sold-out record 19 weeks in 1951, earning her a special Tony Award for her revival of the vaudeville scene.

 

Accepting her Tony Award for the Palace engagement from presenter Helen Hayes.

A Star is Born in 1954 was Judy’s comeback film, and it garnered her an Oscar nomination, sparking outrage in the community when she lost to Grace Kelly.

Giving another Oscar-nominated performance in Judgment at Nuremberg.

The poster for what is considered to be Judy's best concert, and one of the best concerts of all time, done at Carnegie Hall on April 23, 1961.

The overture to the Carnegie Hall concert.

Judy provided the voice for "Mewsette" in the 1962 animated film "Gay Purr-ee."

One of my favorite scenes from Judy’s last film, I Could Go On Singing in 1963.

Here are some scenes of Judy with celebrities from Judy’s TV show in the 1963-64 season:

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ONE OF MY FAVORITES.

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Album cover for Judy and Liza at the London Palladium

With daughter Lorna onstage at the Palace, 1967.

Judy’s last interview in Copenhagen, 1969.

Part 2.
A special thank you to Caroline at Garbo Laughs for hosting the Queer Film Blogathon, of which this post is a member!

BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE–Marilyn Monroe

I am going to try not to focus on Marilyn or Audrey on this blog, but today is Marilyn’s birthday, so I think she deserves a small tribute.

The reason I’m not going to focus on either of those two is that I feel they have become pop icons, available everywhere, and all their charm (of which they both had a good deal) has been devalued due to their accessibility. I have nothing against either of them, in fact on the contrary–I think they’re both absolutely fascinating people. But for the purposes of this blog, their accessibility here will be limited in favor of those actors and actresses who don’t get as much outside attention as they do. However, here is a bit of an acknowledgment to Marilyn.

Marilyn Monroe’s persona was an exercise in opposites. Alternately sexy and modest, outgoing and shy, bombshell and waif, she possessed a true split personality that I think gave her a severe identity crisis that ultimately contributed to her demise. Her status as a pop icon now completely ignores a good portion of her charm, instead focusing on the classic images from her career that make her seem like a shameless sex symbol with no depth. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a child on the beach in Santa Monica.

Born Norma Jeane Mortensen (though she used the last name “Baker” throughout her childhood), Marilyn was born on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, to a severely mentally ill mother who had gotten pregnant by a man whose identity was not clear to her. Due to her mother’s mental illness (later determined to be paranoid schizophrenia), Norma Jeane spent her childhood in a long series of foster homes, by her own account numbering 10 in total, in addition to a 2-year stint in the Los Angeles Orphans Home. This childhood (or, really, lack thereof) seemed to be a catalyst for her problems later in life. Constantly searching for stability and a father figure, she married 3 times, the first when she was 16, then to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller. As she became a star (first signing with a modeling agency, then landing small parts in films), this dichotomy between fame and poverty grew. She admitted to feeling like two different people–Marilyn Monroe, the star, and Norma Jeane Baker, the girl with no home. She grew to legend in the 1950s and soon became tired of being known as simply a sex symbol. She wanted desperately to be taken seriously, and in 1955 went to Lee Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio in New York to study the craft. She came back to make what I consider to be her best film, Bus Stop, in 1956.

Studying at the Actor's Studio.

However, she never gained the public appreciation she so craved for her efforts, and this contributed to her becoming very depressed. She developed a dependency on pills and alcohol, became increasingly difficult and late to the set, and died in 1962 at the age of 36, which was, in my opinion, a likely suicide. Some of her very last words in her last interview were “Please don’t make me a joke.”

It pains me to think what she would think of what she would think of her star persona today. It’s really quite sad, because I think that even after death, she is being done a great injustice with the memorabilia industry, capitalizing on her persona as a sex symbol that she was so trying to rid herself of. I am going to add some videos of her as she would have wished to be remembered. Happy birthday, Marilyn!

One of her earliest and best films, Don’t Bother to Knock. She plays a mentally unstable babysitter, a part she said she modeled after her remembrances of her mother. It is also worth noting that the famous breathy voice began as a method to control her stutter, a childhood affliction that never completely went away.

Outtakes from her last, uncompleted film, Something’s Got to Give.

Talking about Bus Stop, 1956.

Talking about her teenage years.

An interview about her marriage to Arthur Miller. She looks very uncomfortable in this interview–she said that she didn’t like crowds, which she thought was due to her years in the crowded orphanage.

BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: Katharine Hepburn

Since it was Katharine Hepburn’s birthday on Thursday, May 12, Backlots is acknowledging the occasion with a short biography of the legend, and a celebration of some of her great films and roles.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut on May 12, 1907, Katharine Houghton Hepburn was the second of 6 children born to Thomas Norval Hepburn and Katharine Houghton (yes, she was indeed named after her mother), a progressive couple well-regarded in the Hartford community. A generally happy childhood (marred, however, by the suicide of her older brother Tom, which had a tremendous effect on her throughout her life–she consistently listed her birthday as November 7, which was Tom’s) was followed by attendance at Bryn Mawr college, where she began her theatrical career in university productions. At the age of 25, she made her first onscreen appearance opposite John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement (1932),  which was followed the next year by Morning Glory (1933) which garnered her the first of her 4 Academy Awards (the other three for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) The Lion in Winter (1968, for which she tied with Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl”) and On Golden Pond (1982). Her career spanned 6 decades, she influenced women’s fashion by popularizing pants, and was a true independent spirit. Her final film was made in 1994, and she remained active well into her final days. Reports say that she continued to ride a bicycle until a hip problem in her late 80′s precluded it, and she was sharp and witty right up until her death in 2003 at the age of 96.

Hepburn was an immensely versatile actress, capable of playing comedy and tragedy with equal skill, as evidenced in part by the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938) and the royal tragedy Mary of Scotland (1936), along with the hilarious The Philadelphia Story (1940) and the dramatic The Lion in Winter. She is widely considered to be the best actress of all time, and given her track record, Backlots does not dispute it.

Here are some of her best roles. I will start with her Oscar-winning performances:

Morning Glory (1933)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). The young girl at 0:38 is Hepburn’s niece, Katharine Houghton. She plays the main character in this film (although truthfully the movie is centered more on the older generation than the younger, in a commentary about changing times), and though she’s not a great actress, it’s interesting to watch her.

The Lion In Winter (1968). Hepburn plays Eleanor of Aquitaine, opposite Peter O’Toole. Katharine Hepburn was known for not attending the Oscars, and this fact was made clear when she shared the Oscar with Barbra Streisand in 1968, who was all too happy to give her speech while Hepburn did not attend.

On Golden Pond, 1982, opposite Henry Fonda. A lovely performance, also featuring Fonda’s daughter, Jane.

Some other greats:

Bringing Up Baby, 1938. One of my personal favorites. It’s the perfect screwball comedy, and Cary Grant is hilarious as well. Interestingly, shortly after this movie was made, Katharine Hepburn was voted “box office poison,” due to her string of flops, but “Bringing Up Baby”was loved by the critics.

The Philadelphia Story, 1940. Considered to be one of the best Hepburn films, I think she deserved the Oscar that year, though she was up against some tough competition (Joan Fontaine in “Rebecca,” and Ginger Rogers in “Kitty Foyle,” who won). It’s a very dignified comedy, and boasts great performances all around.

Holiday, 1938. Another one of my personal favorites. The story of a young spirited girl stifled by her society family, Hepburn is completely at ease in the role and it’s great fun to watch. Highly recommended.

In addition to the films I’ve profiled here, I would also recommend:

• Little Women (1933)
• Alice Adams (1935)
• Woman of the Year (1942)
• Adam’s Rib (1949)
• The African Queen (1951)
• Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Truthfully, I think you can’t go very wrong with Katharine Hepburn. With the exception of Spitfire (1934) and Dragon Seed (1942, where she plays a Chinese person. No, really), I don’t think she really made a completely bad film, even the “string of flops” that earned her the “box office poison” label in the late 1930′s are not so bad. 

To close, I leave you with an interview clip that truly shows how much respect she had in the industry. She was known for being assertive and for being a powerful woman, and it shows here. Watch the tech guys as they cave to her every demand. They are just putty in her hands. Katharine Hepburn was more than a legend, she is immortal. Happy birthday, Kate!