George Cukor

In a section on a jaunt taken by couple Mercedes de Costa and Eva Lagalián to a Harlem nightspot, Madsen writes, "They were introduced to Jean Eagles, high on opium and clinging to Libby Holman." In a later chapter, Madsen writes that Eagles and Holman lived together.

Though Madsen's book does include attribution for certain quotes, as well as notes indicating that he interviewed denizens of gay Hollywood, both trustworthy, such as George Cukor, and not, such as Kenneth Anger, neither claim about Libby and Jean is attributed to anyone or anything.

We can't know for sure what happened in private between two people, but one historian I spoke to told me that there was no way Libby and Jean had a sexual relationship, because by the time they would have known one another, Eagles was too sick with alcoholism to have sex with anyone.

Eagles had become a Broadway star in 1922 in Rain, the play based on Somerset Maugham's short story, Miss Thompson.

That's the one.

directed by George Cukor, who we've talked about quite a number of times on this show.

A

number of returns here.

Yeah, I'm still kind of waiting for my heavy-hitting George Cukor movie.

I

think we're getting there.

Today's review is of Adam's Rib.

Adam's Rib, directed by George Cukor, is a delightful comedy that cleverly explores the battle of the sexes through the lens of a courtroom drama.

Released in 1949, this film stars the iconic duo Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn as Adam and Amanda Bonner, a married couple who find themselves on opposite sides of a legal case.

The film is a testament to the chemistry between Tracy and Hepburn, whose real-life romance translates into a captivating on-screen dynamic.

Cinema then magnified that expectation.

George Cukor's 1936 Romeo and Juliet gives us an enormous and spectacularly ornate version of The Lover's Meeting Place, while Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film gave another generation an intensely physical, romantic vision of Italian Verona.

And this creates a wonderfully circular process.

Shakespeare imagines Verona without necessarily having seen it.

Once on board, the team tried to push Garland into Shirley Temple territory.

Director George Cukor, in his brief tenure on the film, gave her the most important advice on the direction of the character.

Ditch the wig and the Shirley Temple impersonation.

Just be yourself.

The studio told the press he was seriously ill, but the reality was that producer Mervyn LeRoy decided that the footage lacked fantasy and charm.

The film needed something stranger and more imaginative.

George Cukor arrived briefly, didn't want the job but did make a key visual change in Dorothy's look.

Victor Fleming took over next, scrapped most of what had already been shot and started again.

You know, he really wants to get at [sighs] a kind of truth that's inherent in genre filmmaking.

Uh, George Cukor, the, you know, famous in his day and wonderful director and wonderful man, whom I was fortunate enough to know, you know, s- said about movies, which were, in his day, almost all genre movies [laughs] of one sort or another.

He said, "There's a truth in convention." You know, they wouldn't be conventions if they didn't speak to something that was sort of a known human truth, and I think Clint shares that kind of knowledge.

Sure, they're conventionalized, a Western or a crime picture, or whatever they are, but they're conventionalized on the basis of sort of basic home human truths.

While she's getting ready to prepare to go to New York, she actually gets hired on this film called Something's Gotta Give.

It's directed by George Cukor, and it's starring Dean Martin.

So we're keeping it in the Rat Pack fam.

Is

Um, although those are harder to watch late at night, but, uh, and in that time I've gotten into Catherine Hepburn and the way I, I kind of like breaking into older movies is I I'll pick like a director or a star and kind of just go down that rabbit hole.

And so recently I've been into Catherine Hepburn stuff and, um, So I was watching Bill of Divorcement, which was kind of her like breakout role directed by George Cukor.

And then that was 1932.

And then I watched Holiday, which came out in 1938.

Yeah, so it's crazy.

But so as a first watch though, so what did you think about bringing up AV? 1938, Super Bowl comedy, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, what's your first thoughts?

My first thoughts were, first of all, I think that George Cukor doesn't get enough credit as he's never listed in the names of those legendary directors, like even Howard Hawks or obviously Frank.

I mean, Frank Capra is on a different tier, but like or even like William Wyler.