Customer Reviews

Sylvia Scarlett [VHS]

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For a long time "Sylvia Scarlett" was considered a failure, and the big joke was that Katharine Hepburn looked better disguised as a boy in this 1936 film than she did as herself. But we are talking Hepburn starring oppostie Cary Grant, the same pair that made "Bringing Up Baby," "Holiday," and "The Philadelphia Story." We are also talking director George Cukor who directed the last two films on that list with this pair as well. Today the judgment is that "Sylvia Scarlett" is a film that was ahead of its time, which makes sense when you considered how long it took American to decide that Katharine Hepburn was the quintessential modern independent woman.

Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn) commits a bit of larceny and is forced to flee France with his daughter Sylvia (Hepburn) masquerading as a boy. Along the way they meet up with Jimmy Monkley (Grant), a cockney ne'er-do-well. In London they start doing some creative swindling, hooking up with a Maudie Tilt (Dennie Moore), a daffy servant girl who becomes Henry's wife. Meanwhile, Slyvia becomes enamored with handsome young artist Michael Fane (Brian Aherne), who, of course, thinks she is a boy. But when Michael starts to fall for Lily (Natalie Paley), Sylvia has to become a woman again to get the man she loves (pretend for the sake of argument that she is going to end up with the guy who gets third billing in the movie).

"Sylvia Scarlett" is based on the 1918 Comptom MacKenzie novel "The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett," but this ends up being Cukor's film and a charming story about vagabond thieves. Hepburn's androgyny does not strike contemporary audiences as being all that odd while Grant is playing the character closest to his own younger days of any in his entire career and stealing all the scenes. Gwenn and Moore are delightful as the less than suitable parental figures for the gang. Certainly compared to other cross-dressing comedies that have been made over the years, "Sylvia Scarlett" actually ends up being relatively realistic. Note: Natalie Paley was actually a Russian princess, the daughter of the Russian Grand Duke Paul, who was an uncle of the late Czar Nicholas, which would make her a cousin of the tragic Anastasia).

The first half-hour or so was pretty good. Then the director/writer/who-knows-who-else introduced a zillion plot angles just to liven things up. Or something. At which point we should have just shut off the tape and done something we like better. We stuck it out, hoping it would all come together, and at the end looked at each other and said "What the hell happened?"

Still, if you love Katherine H, you'll like seeing one of her earlier works.

In George Cukor's SYLVIA SCARLETT, Sylvia (Hepburn, disguised as a boy named Sylvester) and her good-for-nothing father (Gwenn) escape an embezzlement arrest in France and flee to England, where they throw in with a grifter, Cockney-accented Jimmy Monkley (Grant).

The three meet Maudie Tilt (Moore), a housemaid with stage aspirations, and the new quartet become music hall entertainers who travel by caravan from one resort to another. Sylvia (still in disguise) has to fend off Maudie's amorous advances; a further complication arises when "Sylvester" falls in love with handsomely charming artist Michael Fane (Aherne).


"Sylvia Scarlett" is available on WARNER's DVD set, KATHARINE HEPBURN COLLECTION, along with "Morning Glory" (1933), "Dragon Seed" (1944), "Without Love" (1945), "Undercurrent" (1946) and TV movie "The Corn Is Green" (1979).

Also recommended:
Kate Hepburn next appeared as MARY OF SCOTLAND (1936), opposite Fredric March. Directed by John Ford. (VHS) (DVD)

In 1936, Cary Grant and Jean Harlow lit up the screen in SUZY. (VHS only)


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.

(6.2) Sylvia Scarlett (1935) -Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant/Edmund Gwenn/Brian Aherne (uncredited: Dennie Moore/Natalie Paley/May Beatty)

"Sylvia Scarlett" is a 1935 romantic comedy starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant and directed by George Cukor.

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) is generally accepted to be the finest female actor of the 20th century. She won 4 Oscars ("Morning Glory", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", "The Lion in Winter" and "On Golden Pond") and was nominated for 8 more (e.g., "The African Queen", "Philadelphia Story"). She won an Emmy ("Love Among the Ruins") and was nominated 4 more times. This was her ninth film following successes with "Morning Glory" (1933), "Little Women" (1933), and "Alice Adams" (1935).

In 1935 Cary Grant (1904-86) was an up and coming star. He became well known for films like "She Done Him Wrong" (1933) and "I'm no Angel" (1933). This was his first of four films with Hepburn. Though generally well regarded (AFI rates him 2nd greatest male star ever), Grant never won a major acting award and received only 2 Oscar nominations in more than 70 film outings. I liked him best in "Gunga Din" (1939), "His Girl Friday" (1940) and "The Philadelphia Story" (1940). Grant plays a grifter.

Edmund Gwenn (1877-1959) will forever be everyone's Santa Claus from his Oscar winning performance in "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), but this was only one of nearly 100 films he made, including "Mister 880" (1950), "Les Miserables" (1952), "Them" (1954), Sylvia Scarlett" (1935), and "A Yank at Oxford" (1938). Gwenn belongs to that small group of fat unattractive men who became stars. Gwenn plays Hepburn's father.

George Cukor (1899-1983) directs. Cukor was nominated 5 times for an Oscar and won once ("My Fair Lady") in 1964. He's best known for his comedies ( "The Philadelphia Story", "Adams Rib", "Born Yesterday", "Pat and Mike") but was equally capable with drama ("Romeo and Juliet", "A Star is Born", "Gaslight"). He's famous for saying - "Don't just do something, stand there!"

Pandro Berman produced for RKO. Berman was to RKO what Irving Thalberg was to MGM. Under his careful eye RKO produced such classics as "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), "Of Human Bondage" (1934), "Alice Adams" (1935), "Top Hat" (1935), "Stage Door" (1937), "Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939), and "Gunga Din" (1939). Six of his films earned Oscars for Best Picture. He was originally a champion of Hepburn, but when her films started to lose money in the mid 30s, they became estranged (in fact, he vetoed her for the role of Scarlett O'Hara).

1935 was a good year for films."Mutiny on the Bounty" and "The Informer" were box office and Oscar winners. Other top 10 grossing films included Gable and Harlow in "China Seas" Flynn and de Havilland in "Captain Blood", Shirley Temple in "The Littlest Rebel" and "Curly Top", and Greta Garbo in "Anna Karenina". Other notable films released that year included "Alice Adams" with Hepburn, "The 39 Steps", "The Bride of Frankenstein", "David Copperfield", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Les Miserables", "Top Hat", and "A Night at the Opera". In Germany, Leni Riefenstahl released "Triumph of the Will".

The NY Times said the film had "a sprawling, confused, and unaccented way of telling its story" and "the story and its people seem purposeless." But Andre Sennwald praised Gwenn ("completely satisfying") and Grant ("surprisingly good"). Legend has it that Cukor and Hepburn were so embarrassed after a preview that they went to Berman and offered to do another film for free, and Berman said "Don't bother."

Part of the problem with the film is Hepburn's transformation from a young girl to a young boy - something rarely done or even hinted at in 1935 (notable exception - "Queen Christina"). Of course, Hepburn was always androgynous and very masculine for a female, so the transformation is even more questionable, as if it is some kind of "in joke". Then there's Cary Grant who rarely went over to the dark side. Add to this all the plot inconsistencies and you really don't have much of a film.

"Sylvia Scarlett" is not for every taste. Finally getting to see it, after having herd about it for years, I can see why it is considered a cult item and also why it failed on its initial release in the midst of the Great Depression. Its source, a novel by Compton Mackenzie (known today primarily as the source for the BBC series "Monarch of the Glen") also goes a long way toward explaining the film's archness. This is a comedy of manners in the great line from Congreve and Wycherly down through Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton. Its playing on sexual ambiguity will probably always limit its audience. Historically, it is the film in which Cary Grant hit his stride as an actor. I personally find Katherine Hepburn's performance uneven: when she's good he's very good, but there are a few scene as bad as her self-consciously "bad" "The cala lilies are in bloom" speech in "Stage Door". Also, director Cukor's usually pitch perfect sense of tone does not always serve him consistently. But these are minor cavils. This film belongs in the library of every serious admirer of the work of Hepburn, Grant, and Cukor.

"Sylvia Scarlett" is also available on dvd as part of the 100th anniversary Katharine Hepburn set, which also includes her Oscar winning "Morning Glory," "Undertow," and other lesser known films. An excellent buy for all us Katharinites!

I love katharine Hepburn & Cary Grant but I did not like this movie. their con artist & Sylvia pretents to be a boy. She and her father flee from France because the police are after them & they meet Cary Grant who is also avoiding the police. I'm not saying it no good, I just didn't like the story line.

Sylvia Scarlett starts with the death of a mother and a father (Edmund Gwenn) whose debt will leave him in jail. He plans to leave his daugther Syliva (Katharine Hepburn) behind, but she insists on keeping the family together and cuts her hair so she can disguise herself as a boy named Sylvester. It is this way that the duo leaves and stumbles upon a con artist (Cary Grant) who joins with them to make money. Sylvia's conscience gets the best of her and she refuses to go along with the con any longer, so along with her new stepmother (Bunny Beatty), her father, and the con artist, they form a traveling acting troupe. In one town, she meets a man she falls in love with (Brian Aherne) even though he thinks she's a boy and even though he's involved with a glamourous blonde.

As interesting as the story seems, it really drags for the most part. Sometimes the characters are fun, but for the most part, we don't get to know any of them well enough to care. Also, it is strange to see Hepburn dressed a woman, and she's oddly perfect as a boy. Perhaps the film makers knew this, because toward the end of the film when everyone knows she's a girl, they find a way to get her dressed as a boy again.