A Year with Kate: Without Love (1945)

Episode 21 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

When a star’s career is as long-lasting and iconic as Katharine Hepburn’s was, there are going to be dramatic highs and lows in terms of quality. Mapped out on a timeline, it would resemble a mountain range. The glittering Mount Holiday would stand tall on the horizon, dwarfed on either side by Bringing Up Baby Peak and The Philadelphia Story Summit. Behind it would be the dark valleys and caves of RKO. However, the most treacherous topographical feature on our Atlas Hepburnica would be the Seven Year Desert, stretching seemingly endlessly from Woman of the Year Peak to Adam’s Rib Ridge. The Seven Year Desert is a vast sea of grass that barrages a traveler with its unending, monotonous mediocrity. Woe to the weary wanderer who gives up, rather than trudge through another undistinguished Hepburn vehicle.

Faithful readers, you and I are currently in the middle of the Seven Year Desert, so forgive my heavy-handed metaphors as I attempt to mine our next few movies for something, anything to talk about. Currently, we’re stuck in Without Love, a serviceable comedy reteaming Kate with Spencer Tracy. Tracy plays an engineer designing a new helmet for the US Air Force. Kate is a widowed heiress who volunteers to be his assistant. They marry out of convenience with the agreement that they absolutely will not fall in love. Three guesses how that turns out. Your first two don’t count.

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A Year with Kate: Dragon Seed (1944)

Episode 20 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

In which Katharine Hepburn dons yellow face for the war effort.

Did you celebrate Kate’s birthday on Monday? Early in my Hepburn idolatry, I used to bemoan the fact that I missed sharing her birthday by just two days. This year, however, I was excited. “My birthday is on a Wednesday this year,” I thought gleefully to myself. “I can celebrate both our birthdays with A Year With Kate!” Turns out the joke was on us. Happy Birthday, Kate and Anne Marie. Let’s talk about racism.

When you are a fan of the Studio System Era, you learn to live with certain uncomfortable truths about Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age. Films were overtly racist, sexist, and homophobic in ways that thankfully would never be tolerated now. As a modern viewer, how do you make peace with it? The answer, at least for me, has been to acknowledge (though not forgive) the various forms of bigotry that run rampant through these films. However, my attempt at benevolent righteousness stalls when confronted with Katharine Hepburn in all her yellowface shame and glory in Dragon Seed. This is a movie that is not only overtly racist with its cast of white actors in “Oriental” makeup, but--more dangerously--subtly racist in its attitudes towards both the evil Japanese soldiers and the good Chinese farmers. Dragon Seed is proof that good intentions do not make up for terrible bigotry. 

[More after the jump if you dare...]

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A Year with Kate: Stage Door Canteen (1943)

Episode 19 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

In which Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, and a stripper walk into a bar…

Ain't you heard? There's a war on! Two years into the Second World War, Americans were fulfilling their patriotic duty, finding ways to serve and protect. The message at the front: fight back the enemy. The message at home: support our troops! But how does a movie star fulfill her patriotic duty? The answer came in the form of the Stage Door Canteen (and its West Coast cousin the Hollywood Canteen, which would get movie treatment in 1944). Any serviceman in uniform could come to the Stage Door Canteen, eat and dance for free, and maybe catch a glimpse at the stars, who volunteered to bus tables, play host, and entertain the servicemen free of charge. Stage Door Canteen was produced by the American Theatre Guild (distribution by RKO), and boasted 48 huge stars and 6 boisterous big bands to entertain the troops and boost morale at home.

Unfortunately, time marches forward, and of the 48 stars formerly so easily recognizable, most have been forgotten to time and old Looney Toons caricatures. Even I, expert though I am, as knowledgeable as I am humble, only can name about half without first scouring IMDb. However, I know that all of you are just as geeky as I am--if not moreso. So, instead of just listing my top 10 favorite cameos from this film, I've created a brief quiz. How many of these 11 stars can you name? (The first one is a gimme.)

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A Year with Kate: Keeper of the Flame (1942)

Episode 18 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

In which I'm not entirely sure what's going on but it seems to involve boy scouts and fascism.

So, you’re a major studio with a bona fide hit on your hands. You’ve thrown two Academy Award winners, neither a matinee idol in their own right, into a romantic comedy, and the sparks between them burst with unexpected chemistry. The result is a commercial and critical smash that will garner two Oscar nominations and one win (for Best Screenplay). Clearly, another movie between Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn is desired. The next question is: how do you follow an immediate classic?

If your answer is “with a heavy-handed, jingoistic melodrama about fascism,” then you’re crazy, but you’re also right. The tonal about-face from the lighthearted Woman of the Year to Tracy and Hepburn’s next film, Keeper of the Flame, is severe enough to cause whiplash. [more...]

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A Year with Kate: Woman of the Year (1942)

Episode 17 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

In which Tracy and Hepburn explode on screen in a dynamic maelstrom of celluloid chemistry.

What sparks great star chemistry? Katharine Hepburn, an actress who was all angles and independence, bottled that lightning not once, but twice, with two men who were polar opposites: Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy. Near the end of Bringing Up Baby, Grant’s character tells Katharine Hepburn “...in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but, well, there haven't been any quiet moments.” This stuttering sentence sums up the banter-based rapport between Hepburn and Grant that played through their four films together. Watching Grant and Hepburn is watching two master comedians play a scene - glamorous, theatrical, loud, and wonderful. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are the complete opposite: authentic, intimate, sexy, and sweet.

Woman of the Year, the first Tracy/Hepburn film, is full of those “moments of quiet” abolished from Bringing Up Baby. But, oh! how loud a quiet moment can be! The electricity crackling through those moments between Kate and Spencer isn’t born of perfect comedic timing or a well-written script. It is one of those undefinable energies, like the always elusive “star quality,” that you know as soon as it hits you like a bolt of lightning.

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