Thursday, October 10, 2013

Here's another suggestion, Hollywood: THE PHILADELPHIA STORY


It accorded to me, that if "new material" is too scary for the bankers of Tinsel Town and they will not budge from either squeezing the last bit out of a empty franchise or have to regurgate, a.k.a., remake a rather recent movie, thinking that the second time things might be different. How about going back farther then a few years or a few decades to the golden age of Hollywood Studio films?
Yesterday I was watching theWarners Brothers musical film, 42nd Street..
 
 
An over the top story of the plight of getting a broadway musical off the ground during the Great Depression and the rise of a new star...
 
 
and the falling of another...
 
 
I started to do the math and made in 1933, all the actors, the dancers the crew, well, they are probably all dead or in their 90's!
At first that just creeped me out, watching Busby Berkeley's amazing choreography of spinning dancers with proxide blonde pin curls and tiny costumes doing high kicks and creating a tunnel for the camera...
 
But then I watched THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, starring Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. Made in 1940, the stars are all gone as well, but the story is classic. Hepburn is a East Coast socialite...
 
getting ready for her second marriage, her first was to Grant, that has been in South America for the last two years, but comes back, with a plan to usurp the wedding...
 
that involves Stewart, a writer/reporter for a tabloid that wants the dish on the socialite wedding and has some family blackmail to get it...
 
What follows is classic Grant-esque wizardry, played against Stewarts drawl and Hepburn's ice queen...
 
Here is a story line that is still entertaining seventy three years ago and well, could be redone and be more fresh then what Hollywood is offering right now. Please take my suggestion, or I might write it up myself and go pitch it to someone!

2 comments:

  1. I love that movie. Do you know Holiday? It's another gem by Hepburn and Grant that's not nearly as well known as this one or Bringing Up Baby.

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    1. It is a great story and one that could be easily updated- and no I have not seen Holiday- might rent it today!

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