In 1935, elegant young star Katharine Hepburn was hot property. She chose challenging roles and on just about every front she conquered Hollywood. And then she made Sylvia Scarlett, a wacky mess of a movie that confused critics and audiences, but has held up over time and is still as confounding and delightful as it ever was. She and George Cukor, who directed it, said in an interview in the 1970s that it was the worst movie they'd ever done.
I beg to differ. I was in my 30s when I saw it--I had a place in my heart for the films of my parents' generation, and still do--and I was captivated. I recently saw it again and it still works. The concept is dubious; Hepburn and her father, (played by Edmund Gwynn) are broke, unprincipled, and down on their luck to the point of desperation. They decide as they are running from law, that their best bet is to have her, a nubile if naive beauty, disguise herself as a boy. Hepburn comes to life in drag, effervescent as usual, but liberated by having to suppress her feminine charm as much as possible. She look smashing in men's wear, but it takes some conscious suspending of disbelief to accept that she is getting away with it.
That, of course, is part of the fun. Another aspect of it is that the pair meet up with a successful confidence man, played by the young, athletic, energetic and acrobatic Cary Grant, who takes a shine to them and shows them the tricks of the trade. He is a cockney low life in this one, a bit of a charming rotter, and he plays it to the hilt. The chemistry between Hepburn and Grant is palpable and foreshadows their years of work together to come in more traditional material.
Sylvia become Sylvester, and although Cary Grant's character is suspicious, he goes along with it and the trio pair up with a lady who the old man is almost literally crazy about. Four con artists in a trailer, wreaking havoc wherever they go, and having a marvelous time until Sylvester realizes that he's really a woman and falls in love with a rascally artist (Brian Aherne) who already has a woman or two or three. The plot gets very twisted as the movie goes on, but it doesn't lose its verve. I would recommend you watch this one--I'd like to see what a contemporary viewer would think, having little or no context for the complexity of the movies of the 1930s, and the inventiveness of young actors on their way to becoming movie stars when the medium itself was free and easy.
