newcritics - Latest Comments in “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

tomwatson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:17:48 -0000

Testing the comments - post-crash. Fingers crossed....

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:18:42 -0000

12:11 AM and all's well. But I have to hit the hay. The thread stays open all on its own though, so it and you don't need me. So if you're just arriving don't feel like you've wandered into the bar at closing time. Hang around, leave your comments, wait for some other night owls. Keep it going. And thanks for stopping by.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:18:37 -0000

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

jmhm — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:05:12 -0000

I see what you mean. It is offputting, particularly since it's Isabel Sanford, who's stuck in my mind as one of the vanishingly few adult characters on TV when I was a kid.

I think she's meant to inject class issues into the situation, but I admit it was clumsy.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:59:36 -0000

Matt keeps saying he's worried about the problems Joey and John will have to face. It never occurs to him that they might be up to the challenge. He still thinks of himself and his generation as the problem-solvers.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:54:32 -0000

I think there's some foreshadowing with the ice cream, but when I watched it today I was more struck by how Matt expects the carhop to care about his opinions and he completely misses how bored and uninterested she is in what he thinks about the sherbert. So the scene cuts both ways. Yes, he can learn to accept new things, but first he has to realize that his opinions don't carry the weight they once carried. The world belongs to the kids now.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:47:05 -0000

But it's amazing to realize that a lot of what we're seeing on screen is the result of just one or two takes.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

lylee65 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:45:33 -0000

Ah, thanks. The Siren led me here, and I love that you're having these discussions (although the Mark Harris book is still sitting on my desk). Much pleasanter than the work I have to do that I'm currently procrastinating...

I'll have to sign off soon, too, though. I'm getting the weird security warnings as well.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:45:12 -0000

butch,

Have you read Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution? He does a scary job of depicting Tracy's deterioration during the shooting of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. It shocked me to find out that Tracy lasted several months after the movie wrapped. He was that sick.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

lylee65 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:42:46 -0000

It grates, though. It really grates. She is possibly the most dated element of the movie.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

jmhm — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:41:24 -0000

She was pretty up front later in life about how she was far from a feminist heroine, because she'd lived a lot of her life to accommodate others.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:40:02 -0000

Not my fantasies. I hate romance. :) And I think all love affairs are dysfunctional. What matters more here is how well they played married in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. They played courting couples well, but I never bought them as a married couple when they were cast that way, not even in Adam's Rib.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

jmhm — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:36:24 -0000

Well, you have to remember, Tilly (as much as her reasons were much more honorable) had taken on herself to gatekeep their relationship just as much as Mrs. Olson did.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:34:55 -0000

Tilly's a strange character and she occupies a strange place in the script.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:33:24 -0000

I'm still here, lylee. Glad you could make it. Some one of these days I'm going to schedule one of these shindigs for the convenience of the West Coasters instead of for us here in the East.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

jmhm — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:31:18 -0000

Keeper of the Flame is downright weird, I thought, but that whole Watch on the Rhine period of evocative not-quite-being-explicitly-rude-to-Nazis genre of movies kind of creeps me out.

Angela Lansbury was great in that, at age nineteen. The scene at the beginning where her evil publisher father (Judge Hardy!) passes on the torch of subverting the country to her before he blows his brains out (despite the fact that he never wanted her because she's a female) is chilling.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:31:03 -0000

Like I said, The Last Hurrah is my sentimental favorite of all Tracy's films. And, oh, how it chokes me up watching Ditto with his new hat there at the end.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

lylee65 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:30:15 -0000

Did everyone go to bed? (West Coaster here.) Well, I'll post a couple of thoughts anyway.

Someone want to offer thoughts on the "ice cream" scene? Is it supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing? - i.e., that daddy dearest can get used to something new that he initially finds unpalatable?

I'll admit I was actually rather pleasantly surprised by GWCTD overall. I came into it expecting to hate it, and I didn't, though it definitely has problems. I even teared up at the end, esp when Tracy looks over at Hepburn. But I'm sure I wasn't the only one who winced when he follows up that lovely speech with that line to Tilly ordering her to get dinner ready, or something to that effect. Was it intended that that be the last line of the movie?

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

jmhm — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:22:23 -0000

He and O'Brien did a beautiful job together in Last Hurrah. One of my favorite things about that movie was the way it assembled the John Ford stock company together one last time.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

Mannion — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:22:16 -0000

Been a long time since I've seen either Pat and Mike or State of the Union. What I remember most about State of the Union is what a dish the young Angela Lansbury was.

The other Tracy-Hepburn I need to see again is Keeper of the Flame. I remember that one as being very neurotic.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

nycweboy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:20:37 -0000

Well, there's a couple of ways to go on this; one is that, well, yes, she is pretty much everyone's example of the sturdy, impressive person who succeeds against all odds, changes the world in so many ways, and is a remarkable actress... that's pretty impressive, and pretty close to sainthood before we get to the caretaking part, isn't it? :) More seriously, I think my point is - and others are much harder on her about this - that one has to remember that Hepburn was very, very conscious of her own image and how things looked. And I tend to think she needed that story of the "great love" as much as anyone to explain a certain amount of codependency that, given her history, isn't necessarily surprising (or masochistic, or even saintly). And really, isn't it enough that she liked him, respected him, and felt - as she so often said - that his talent, more than who he was, needed to be taken care of? So if she has strength to spare and she lends some to him... is it saintly, is it self-injuring... or is it just, as she'd say, getting on with it? I admire her for all she did for Spencer Tracy... I'm just not sure calling it a "romance" is healthy... or entirely truthful. But it sure plays into our fantasies... doesn't it?

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

1butch1 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:17:09 -0000

I thought the opening comments about Tracy is some of the most perceptive, best writing about this particular actor that I have ever seen.
I have been a lifelong Tracy fan. Yet I had mixed feelings about this discussion. I knew there would be some blockheads who just don't get it, don't get Tracy. Maybe you have to be Irish but I'm sure he had a lot of nonIrish fans.
The scene in which he baits Robert Ryan with questions in "Bad Day at Black Rock" is some of the best acting I have ever seen.
It is forgotten now but during their careers Tracy was much more popular than Hepburn. MGM even got complaints asking why they were always paired. Tracy from the late 1930s until the early 1950s usually made the list of top ten box office stars as picked by exhibitors.
I think the average man knew he wasn't as good looking as Gary Cooper or as charming as Cary Grant but he knew he was down to earth, focused and humorous like Spence.
So the speech at the end was shot over several days. I didn't know that. Tracy films often had long speeches by the star. Stanley and Livingstone, Judgment at Nuremburg, Boom Town, Inherit the Wind, etc.
Did he lose it? Was he not as good in his later films? I don't see it.
Which of his contemporaries could have replaced him in his big roles and made as good of an impression?
Tracy's boyhood buddy was Pat O'Brien, who, of course was excellent when teamed with Cagney. And O'Brien, like Tracy, played priests. But imagine how inept O'Brien would have been in "Guess Who Is Coming to Dinner?" Or any of the other great ones.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

lylee65 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:15:26 -0000

Glad someone brought this scene up. What the heck is it there for? To show the times, they are a-changin'?

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

jmhm — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:14:33 -0000

Julia Roberts, maybe, but they made an entire movie together where it never seemed to occur to either of their characters that the person they were facing death with was a member of the opposite sex.

Re: “It’s a movie, not a lifeboat”: Tracy and Hepburn together again for the last time

tomwatson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:11:58 -0000

Great comment weboy...