SYLVIA SCARLETT (1935)
Directed by George Cukor
RKO, 91 minutes
★ (add stars if you like camp)
I watched the 1935 movie Sylvia Scarlett with the intent of writing about actors breaking gender roles. Who could resist seeing a movie with Katharine Hepburn in drag? Pretty much everyone! It was a bomb in 1935 and has aged about as well as an apple rotting in an orchard. When famed director George Cukor saw the rushes he begged RKO not to release it. It was so bad that he (unsuccessfully) promised to direct another film for free if they’d trash Sylvia Scarlett.
Nonetheless, there are reasons to review it. You may have heard that Katharine Hepburn–now considered a Hollywood legend–once had trouble getting roles. She was pegged as “box office poison and this was the picture that earned that baggage. If you’ve ever heard the phrase so bad I couldn’t look away, that sums up Sylvia Scarlett. My wife and I constantly remarked, “This is incredibly bad. Should we turn it off?” I even interjected, “Good heavens! Why are we watching this?” Yet, both of us stayed to the putrid end. Without intending to be so, it’s the very definition of camp.
It was the first time Hepburn and Cary Grant were in the same movie. Neither could blame it on youth; Grant was 31 at the time and Hepburn 28. The putative story is distilled from two 1918 novels from Compton MacKenzie. Sylvia (Hepburn) is the pigtailed daughter of widower Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn), a gambler. His profligacy bankrupted him to the point where he is being pursued by thugs poised to relieve his debt mob-style. Henry throws clothing into a bag with the intention of hightailing it to France with money and 30 yards of lace he stole from his firm. Sylvia intends to go with him. When Henry insists he’d be an easy mark if traveling with his daughter, she offers money her mother left her and impetuously chops off her pigtails and announces she will be “Sylvester.” A little tidying up and she passes as a teenage boy (sort of like a shaved cocoanut could conceivably pass as an ostrich egg).
On the voyage they meet Jimmy Monkley (Grant), a Cockney (ahem!) gentleman. Sylvania/Sylvester smells a rat, but Henry tells Jimmy of his plan for the lace. Henry learns the hard way that Monkley is a grifter in fancy duds. When the boat lands and Monkley fingers Henry so he can get off the boat without being searched for the jewels he stole. Once ashore via unlikely circumstances, the trio decide to work cons as a team. Sylvester blows the first attempt, but Monkley leads them to a mansion whose owners are on a trip. Jimmy, though, knows Maudie (Dennie Moore) the maid. At this point, abandon all logic. After several hours of guzzling the owners’ booze and playing dress-up with their finery and valuables, Sylvester makes Jimmy leave the pearls he stole lest Maudie risk arrest and they vamoose.
Henry is besotted with Maudie, so the trio becomes a quartet. They set off as a traveling troupe of entertainers to bilk country bumpkins. Where did they get the truck and stage? Don’t ask. Likewise forget about Grant’s variable accent. Or whether Hepburn convinces as a snooty teen. “Sylvester” catches the eye of playboy artist, Michael Fane (Brien Aherne) who wants to paint his/her face. Fane invites her to pose at his villa after an odd encounter that implies Fane swings both ways. But she takes the guesswork away by showing up the next day in a dress and bonnet she stole from a beach bather.
Sylvia is smitten but is crushed when Lily (Natalie Paley) shows up. Lily is Fane’s sort of girlfriend, but is basically a mean-spirited sot who tells Henry that his love, Maudie, has run off with another man. A distraught Henry drowns himself, though Maudie is rescued from the ocean and from the film. After we play a game of who’s with whom–Jimmy is attracted to Lily–this mess plops into the sickness bucket and ends. It is so bad that the actors playing Maudie and Lily were uncredited. Lucky them.
Three years later the Hepburn/Grant combo made Bringing Up Baby, one of the greatest comedies of all time. Who says there are no second chances? It’s just possible, though, that you’ll laugh harder at Sylvia Scarlett.
Rob Weir
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