Keeper of the Flame **** (1942, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn) – Classic Movie Review 3,857

George Cukor’s engrossing 1942 classic American drama film with a hint of mystery Keeper of the Flame again pairs Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

Director George Cukor’s engrossing 1942 classic American drama film with a hint of mystery Keeper of the Flame again pairs Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

Spencer Tracy stars as investigative journalist Steve O’Malley, who searches out the truth behind the life of a great American citizen by interviewing his widow, Christine Forrest (Katharine Hepburn, smartly dressed by Adrian), whose famous civic leader husband has died in an accident.

Former war correspondent O’Malley intends to write a flattering biography of the dead man, but he discovers that his quarry was a closet fascist. Naturally, O’Malley falls for the widow’s charms and now he has a dilemma as she is the keeper of the flame of her late husband’s reputation as a national hero.

Based on the 1942 novel by I A R Wylie, this is a sprawling but always fascinating and intelligent melodrama, with a lot of edge and a hard centre, not at all the romantic comedy the public hoped for at the time. As you would expect with Tracy and Hepburn, the acting is absolutely first rate and, though the story tends to fall apart towards the end, the players pull it through. And there is a lot of wit and wisdom to be found in Donald Ogden Stewart’s screenplay. Stewart considered it his career peak.

And it is all beautifully handled by Cukor, understandably Hepburn’s favourite director. On the other hand, however, Cukor was dissatisfied with the film and considered it one of his poorest movies. We can be our own worst critic.

It is the film debut of Diana Douglas (uncredited as Forward American Girl), who was the wife of Kirk Douglas and is Michael Douglas’s mother. She died on July 3 2015, aged 92.

It started shooting on an MGM sound stage in the last week of August 1942, only four months after the novel was released. Unusually, there was no location filming.

Hepburn had begun a relationship with Tracy, and she was looking after him carefully during filming because of  his heavy drinking.

It had a poor reception when it premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on 18 March 1943. MGM head Louis B Mayer stormed out, apparently angry that he had encouraged the making of a film that equated wealth with fascism.

Nevertheless, it was held over for a fourth week at Radio City Music Hall, where most films had a week, and earned $3,230,000, making an profit of $1,040,000 against a budget of $1,170,000.

The cast are Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Whorf, Margaret Wycherly, Donald Meek, Stephen McNally, Forrest Tucker, Frank Craven, Audrey Christie, Darryl Hickman, Howard da Silva, Percy Kilbride, William Newell, Clifford Brooke, Cliff Danielson, Dick Elliott, Rex Evans, Donald Gallagher, Sam Harris, Art Howard, Crauford Kent, Manart Kippen, Irving Lee, Charles Frederick Lindsely, Mickey Martin, Louis Mason, Mary Mcleod, Edward McWade, Harold Miller, Robert Pittard, Rita Quigley, Gloria Tucker, Jay Ward and Blanche Yurka.

Keeper of the Flame is directed by George Cukor, runs 100 minutes, is made by MGM, and released by Loew’s Inc, is written by Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a novel by I A R Wylie, is shot in black and white by William H Daniels, is produced by Victor Saville and Leon Gordon, is scored by Bronislau Kaper, and is designed by Cedric Gibbons and Lyle R Wheeler.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3,857

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com