KH Film #2: Christopher Strong (1933)

Director: Dorothy Arzner
Screenplay: Zoe Akins, based on the novel by Gilbert Frankau
Producer: David O. Selznick
Studio: RKO
Cinematographer: Bert Glennon
Costume Designer: Walter Plunkett & Howard Greer (both uncredited)

Cast: Katharine Hepburn (solo billing above title), Colin Clive, Billie Burke, Helen Chandler

US Premiere: March 31, 1933

KH Firsts:

• First film with solo billing above the title
• First film with costumes by Walter Plunkett, who would work with KH on nine more movies, through the late 1940s

Christopher Strong (Lady Cynthia Darrington)

I'll confess that I had to watch Christopher Strong twice. Why? Because the first time I tried to write this entry, I couldn't remember half of the movie. I remembered the cast, a few of the themes and the basic plot elements, but none of the particulars stuck around long enough to take root in the vast wasteland of my mind where I store all the other cultural minutiae. What's so strange is that I like Christopher Strong. I liked it the first time I saw it, several years ago. I liked it last Sunday and I liked it tonight.

We begin at a treasure (scavenger) hunt party, hosted by Irene Browne. In order to win, one must produce a man who has been married more than five years, is still in love with his wife, has never had an affair, and is willing to say so in public; and a woman over 20 who has never had a love affair and isn't afraid to admit it. Helen Chandler and her unhappily married lover Ralph Forbes are determined to come out on top and go prude hunting.

Oh, the 30s. When the spoiled children of the upper class had nothing better to do than drink all night and look down on the unsophisticated.

Oh, the pre-Code era. Where men and women acted like Men and Women, without the need for third act repentance.

Chandler drives home to grab the most loyal husband she know, her father (and title character) Colin Clive. Forbes borrows a motorcycle and goes after Chandler, only to end up in a drag race with Katharine Hepburn, a well-known twenty-something aviatrix who - what luck! - has never had a love affair. Chandler talks Clive into coming to the party (he is Browne's brother) and Hepburn agrees to go back to join Forbes - it's the least she can do after running him off the road when their drag race is interrupted by a cement mixer.

I just love Hollywood.

All of the above takes place in the first ten or so minutes. What happens next is pretty obvious since the man who has never cheated meets the virgin and they're played by the two top-billed actors (third billed Billie Burke plays Clive's wife.) Clive and Hepburn are introduced and take an immediate liking to each other, and Hepburn becomes a big sister of sorts to only child Chandler. Their friendship (Hepburn and Chandler) make it all the more difficult for Hepburn and Clive to fight their feelings for each other. But when they unwittingly end up alone in a motorboat together on moonlit night (don't ask), complications, as they say, ensue.

KH is very good in this picture. We're first introduced to Lady Cynthia through a year-old newspaper trumpeting her latest achievements as a pilot and featuring several photos. She has made a success of herself in a man's world, but has it been at the expense of living?

Perhaps I've played the fool myself in choosing to live such a lonely life.

What makes the line so effective is that she utters it without a trace of self pity; she's simply wondering aloud. When she and Clive first begin their affair, she's troubled by the effect it will have on his family, and at the same time enthralled in the throes of her first love affair. One scene in particular has her waiting for Clive's arrival at her home. She paces around the room, nervously smoking cigarettes, without saying a thing. She doesn't need to tell us about her anguish because we can feel it. It's a marvelous moment, a lesson in screen acting.

As I mentioned above, KH has solo billing above the title. For her second film. Granted, a large part of that is the way the studio system worked. KH's role in A Bill of Divorcement - a lovely young woman supporting the older established Star - is the type that exists in countless scripts designed to get an actress noticed. It worked and the RKO machine went into overdrive to sell their new glamour queen, beginning with Christopher Strong. And what's the best way to sell a new face? Copy someone else's look, of course! Repeatedly, but not throughout, KH is lit with what was called a "north light effect:" one light is placed high above the actress, causing her cheek bones to cast shadows down on her face.

Look familiar? It's the same technique Josef von Sternberg used to show off Dietrich, who had taken Hollywood by storm just three years earlier (though, like everything else, the effect was more dramatic on Dietrich.)

I think it's also significant that KH wasn't cast in another ingenue role or two before achieving star billing. Most of the actresses we now think of as legends (Bette Davis, John Crawford, Norma Shearer, Myrna Loy) started out as extras, but not KH. While she paid her dues in the theatre - she was fired from her first several plays - she was a star in Hollywood virtually from day one.

(Add that to her wealthy New England breeding (not to mention that accent) and it's easy to see why she may not have been the most well-liked person on the RKO lot, earning the nickname "Katharine of Arrogance.")

Christopher Strong also marks the first time KH played a lady of society. Contrary to popular belief, she was an actress of remarkable range - a topic I'll delve into in another post at another time - and her most heartbreaking performance is as the decidedly middle class Alice Adams. But her persona as an actress and as a star was built around roles like Lady Cynthia Darrington: Terry Randall Sims (Stage Door), Susan Vance (Bringing Up Baby), Linda Seton (Holiday), Tracy Samantha Lord (The Philadelphia Story), Tess Harding (Woman of the Year), Amanda Bonner (Adam's Rib), Violet Venable (Suddenly Last Summer), Christina Drayton (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner), and let's not forget Eleanor of Aquitaine (The Lion in Winter) were all, if not born to their respective manors, moved into them soon enough. After being declared box office poison in 1937, she had a major comeback with The Philadelphia Story in 1940, having learned the lesson that audiences liked seeing her taken down a peg - a lesson that became the formula for her most successful pairings with Spencer Tracy.

While the society role doesn't exactly mark a turning point in her career, it does make Christopher Strong a significant part of the KH canon. And as far as film history goes, it is the only time KH worked with Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in Hollywood at the time.

And where else are you going to see KH dressed as a moth in silver lamé?

Availability: VHS is out of print, used copies are somewhat scarce and run pretty high (the cheapest copy available through an amazon seller as I write this $36.94); it is in the TCM library and shows up from time to time.