Holiday
Directed by Edward H. Griffith
Written by Horace Jackson from a play by Philip Barry
1930/USA
Pathé Exchange
First viewing/YouTube
[box] Linda Seton: Do you realize life walked into this house today?[/box]
I liked this original version of Holiday almost as much as its more famous 1938 .
Johnny Case (Robert Ames) and Julia Seton (Mary Astor) meet and fall in love while on vacation. He proposes and she accepts. Then she takes him home to meet her family in the big city. She had kept quiet about the family’s immense wealth. Johnny is of working class origins but has made good as a corporate lawyer.
Father rules the roost in the Seton family and is the soul of propriety. He gives Johnny the once over and when he learns of the lucrative deals he has put together decides he is worthy. Father’s domineering ways, however, have left sister Linda (Ann Harding) lonely and frustrated and son Ned a burgeoning alcoholic.
Johnny has kept a secret, too. He is determined to take a long holiday from working once he has saved twenty thousand dollars. He wants to find out who he is and what he really wants while he is still young enough to do something about it. Things come to head on the night of the engagement party. The sides square off with Linda and her free-thinking friends in the playroom, Julia and Dad in the ballroom and Johnny somewhere between the two … With Edward Everett Horton as one on Linda’s friends. He went on to reprise the same part in the 1938 version.
I wasn’t following along but I imagine most of the dialogue is word-for-word the same between the two versions of the story. Robert Ames is a non-entity in the role very colorfully played by Cary Grant. In contrast, Ann Harding is more than adequate in the Katharine Hepburn part. She is less zany but perhaps more convincing in her thoughtful way. Mary Astor is sublime, as usual. Recommended.
Holiday was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress (Harding) and Best Writing (Adaptation).
I didn’t expect to love this as much as the ’38 version since that is one of my favorite films, along with Lion in Winter my favorite Hepburn film and performance, but I had hoped to like it more than I did.
This was adequate if stagy but most of the casting was inferior to the later film and in something like this that’s a big hindrance. Ann Harding was okay if a touch too restrained for someone bridling against convention but nowhere near a disaster but almost everyone else was a big disappointment. Ames and Monroe Owsley were terrible in roles that Cary Grant and Lew Ayres made profoundly involving. Ayres really found a pathos in the trapped Ned that completely escaped Owsley.
The only improvement in the entire picture was Mary Astor as the seemingly sweet but truly callous Julia. It almost makes you wish she had been cast in the same role in the remake as Edward Everett Horton was though by that time she would have been too old to pass as Hepburn’s younger sister. Doris Nolan in the remake isn’t bad but rather bland, it’s all too clear from the get-go who Grant should prefer. It’s a shame they didn’t cast a more vivid and charismatic actress, Joan Bennett would have been ideal at that point, so there would have been more at stake in his ultimate decision.
The two versions are very close in situation and dialog though the ending is restaged to better effect in the latter version but otherwise the only major reworking I noticed was in the Seton & Laura Cram scenes, again Henry Daniell and Binnie Barnes made more of them in the remake, and some of the situations with the Potters adding in a bit more humor to their relationship.
I’m glad I finally caught up with this one but I’ll never make a point to watch it again.
I have to agree with a lot of your points. I watched a trailer for the ’38 version while I was writing this review. The sheer energy of the remake makes it a much stronger movie. And Grant and Ayers were indeed superb in their parts. But the story is still good either way and I thought Harding and Astor were very good. Obviously Hepburn was a dynamo in the 1938 movie. Thanks so much for commenting!
Love the poster. My beloved Ann (and Mary). Is ANIMAL KINGDOM on your pre-code list?
It’s not on my list but only because I have already seen it. I really liked it, especially how adult it was.
I am working on a list of pre-Code films that I haven’t seen but are available on YouTube or Amazon here. It will probably double in the next couple of days.
Trolling through the cellars when I saw Joanne’s mention of The Animal Kingdom, that led me to a mention of When Ladies Meet (1933)….two more for the dang list. Thanks so much for this blog Bea, it’s wonders never cease!
The thirties might just be my favorite decade. Enjoy!