The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 American romantic comedy film directed by George Cukor, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, and Ruth Hussey. Based on the 1939 Broadway play of the same name by Philip Barry, the film is about a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and a tabloid magazine journalist. The socialite character of the play—performed by Hepburn in the film—was inspired by Helen Hope Montgomery Scott (1904–1995), a Philadelphia socialite known for her hijinks, who married a friend of playwright Barry. Written for the screen by Donald Ogden Stewart and an uncredited Waldo Salt, it is considered one of the best examples of a comedy of remarriage, a genre popular in the 1930s and 1940s in which a couple divorce, flirt with outsiders, and then remarry—a useful story-telling device at a time when divorce was scandalous and the depiction of extramarital affairs was blocked by the Production Code. The film was Hepburn's first big hit following several flops, which had placed her on a 1938 list of actors considered to be "box office poison" compiled by Manhattan movie theater owner Harry Brandt. Hepburn acquired the film rights to the play, which she had also starred in, with the help of Howard Hughes in order to control it as a vehicle for her screen comeback. According to a Turner Broadcasting documentary MGM: When the Lion Roars, after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased the film rights, they were skeptical about Hepburn's box office appeal, so MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer took an unusual precaution by engaging two A-list male stars (Grant and Stewart) to support Hepburn. Nominated for six Academy Awards, the film won two: James Stewart for Best Actor, and Donald Ogden Stewart for Best Adapted Screenplay. MGM remade the film in 1956 as a musical, retitled High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra.