Hepburn star of DVD collection

'Philadelphia Story' and 'Bringing Up Baby' are two of Hepburn's masterpieces in the collection.
By BRUCE DANCIS
SCRIPPS HOWARD
It's startling to realize that just about the time Katharine Hepburn was finishing filming one of the all-time great Hollywood comedies, 1938's "Bringing Up Baby," the Independent Theatre Owners Association published a list of performers it labeled "box office poison." Hepburn led the list, which also included Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford.
But "Bringing Up Baby," co-starring Cary Grant and directed by Howard Hawks, failed to do well at the box office, and Hepburn's next movie, "Holiday," another memorable comedy with Grant, also did disappointing business. So the actress, only 31 but a six-year veteran of Hollywood, decided she needed to do something different to revive her flagging career.
She commissioned playwright Philip Barry to write "The Philadelphia Story," in which Hepburn would play a character of great wealth and social status who has to confront her own imperfections while trying to choose from among three men: her industrialist fiance, who is all wrong for her; a writer covering her impending wedding for a magazine, who falls for her; and her ex-husband, whom she never should have divorced in the first place. Wisely, she retained the movie rights to Barry's play.
Rekindling a legend
As film historian Jeannine Basinger puts it, the film "rekindled" Hepburn's career. Following a hugely successful run on Broadway (financed by the Theater Guild, Barry, Hepburn herself and Hepburn's former lover Howard Hughes) and an equally successful nationwide tour, Hepburn returned to Hollywood and sold the movie rights to MGM. She put together a package in which she would star opposite Grant (as her ex-husband) and James Stewart (as the writer) and be directed by George Cukor.
The movie version of "The Philadelphia Story," released in 1940, was a major critical and commercial success, and Hepburn was able to resume a movie career that lasted until the 1990s.
"Bringing Up Baby" and "The Philadelphia Story" are the two-disc centerpieces of Warner Home Video's "Classic Comedies Collection," a boxed set of six movies out this week on DVD ($68.92 for the set; $26.99 each for the digitally remastered "Baby" and "Philadelphia"; $19.97 apiece for the other titles).
Although "Bringing Up Baby" was one of the last of the 1930s "screwball" comedies -- comedies that combined fast-paced dialogue with pratfalls and other physical humor -- it's also one of the best. Directed by Hawks in a remarkably modern, rapid-fire manner, it stars Hepburn as a free-spirited socialite who becomes infatuated with Grant's bespectacled paleontologist.
Peter Bogdanovich, who modeled his "What's Up, Doc?" (1972), starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal, after "Bringing Up Baby," provides a lively and engaging audio commentary on the DVD. The DVD also includes documentaries about Grant and Hawks as well as a vintage comedy short and a cartoon.
As for "Philadelphia Story," film historian Andrew Sarris has made the compelling argument (in "'You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet': The American Talking Film") that the movie was not just about a spoiled socialite "played" by Hepburn -- but that it was really about Hepburn herself.
More films
The other movies featured in the Warner Home Video collection are:
"Dinner At Eight" (1933): Following the model of the previous year's "Grand Hotel," an all-star melodrama filled with MGM stars, this film, set just before a posh New York dinner party, adds some humor to the format. Most of the laughs are provided by the mismatched couple of Wallace Beery (as a crude, nouveau-riche businessman) and Jean Harlow (as his equally crude trophy wife), as well as a retired actress played by Marie Dressler.
"Libeled Lady" (1936): Trading on the popularity of their "Thin Man" movie series, William Powell and Myrna Loy were cast along with Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow in a screwball comedy about newspapers, libel suits, bogus marriages, fake courtships and trout fishing. Powell and Loy, as expected, are wonderful together, though the Tracy/Harlow combination doesn't click.
"Stage Door" (1937): Based on a Broadway hit by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, Gregory La Cava's comedy/drama is set in a boardinghouse for actresses and features a talented ensemble cast including Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller and Eve Arden.
"To Be or Not To Be" (1942): Ernst Lubitsch's controversial comedy remains very funny, even daring, in its satirical approach to Nazism. Carole Lombard is beautiful and hilarious in what turned out to be her final movie -- she died in a plane crash before the film was released.