Plot intro
In San Francisco, young vibrant Joanna Drayton (Katharine Houghton) returns home with her new boyfriend, Dr John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) to introduce him to her parents Matt and Christina (Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn) and tell them of their plans to marry. But, being the 1960s, Matt and Christina are completely thrown by the fact that John is black. Couple that with the fact that John’s parents are coming to visit for dinner and are equally perturbed by Joanna being white, and you’ve got a cocktail for some soul searching and pontificating on interracial relations during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.
Doug says...
After the gruelling games of George and Martha the year before, this film dealing with racism in the liberal upper classes feels like a light comedy of manners. But that’s partly because it is.
Matt (Tracy) and Chris (Hepburn) have fallen into that old trap of being liberal as young people, feeling smug, sitting in their self-appointed liberal thrones and then not addressing the prejudices that they actually have. It’s essentially what’s going on now with the TERFs attacking trans-people: they are often fully fledged feminists from the ‘70s and ‘80s who refuse to see how their own battlegrounds have changed, and end up attacking vulnerable people.
But - the film seems to say - it doesn’t have to be like this. Chris is won over quite quickly, but Matt hunkers down despite a whole host of people - his daughter, wife and his cheerful priest friend - telling him he shouldn’t, until it seems inevitable that he should say he doesn’t approve, and in doing so, destroy his daughter’s life. (And TERFs: it doesn’t have to be like this, just look at Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda who are in their mid-to-late 80s and still joyfully learning).
There are flaws. Dr Prentice is far too perfect (although I understand why they made him this way). The words used are dated - although this isn’t a flaw, just jarring when you watch it now. Joanna is entirely without agency (apparently a crucial scene where she has a speech about politics got cut to Houghton’s dismay). But none of this stops the core message still working - which is a call to arms to all those ‘liberals’ who don’t stop and self-examine to understand their own prejudices, which is the first step to diminishing and removing them.
Hepburn is magnificent. It’s the second year in a row where the Best Actress Award is entirely deserved, she finds lightness and comedy in the film where appropriate, the bathroom scene where her husband shaves is deeply moving (Paul says more on this), and there’s a feeling that Hepburn (who knew her long-time lover Tracy was dying while making this) is taking in every precious moment of making this film. I particularly like the scene where she tells her horrid co-worker to go stuff it: ‘It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with you - although I don’t’, but her work throughout this picture is impeccable.
I do want to shout out to the actress who I think deserved to win Best Supporting Actress (although she was nominated): Beah Richards, who plays Poitier’s mother. It’s a small role, but Richards dazzles in it. Polite and unassuming, she sits modestly dressed in the taxi and then the house but she - and she alone - is the reason that Matt eventually realises he must accept and approve of the marriage. In a stunning speech, she laments that he and her husband have forgotten what it was to be young and in love - and says she and Chris have never forgotten. ‘What happens to men when they grow old?’ It’s a small speech but every hair stood on end with the feeling, regret and sad anger that Richards pours into it. I can only compare it to the telephone call that Octavia Spencer makes in The Shape of Water that nabbed her a nomination too - and it’s evidence again that a true star doesn’t need heaps of screentime to shine. Richards was a well-respected actor, Oscar and Tony nominated who won two Emmys in 1988 and 2000 (the year she died). She was politically involved and a writer and poet whose work included A Black Woman Speaks: poetry pointing out how white women had oppressed women of colour.
Overall, the film has dated but the core points it makes are still relevant to our society. Critiques of the film pointed out that it’s for white audiences - but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. White audiences are the ones who need to be encouraged to examine their own prejudices, and this film gets that across while still being relatively light, enjoyable and fun.
It’s a tie between Beah Richards stealing every moment she’s on screen and Alexandra Hay as the very funny Gen-Z-like waitress at the ice-cream drive in.
Some scenes feel dated and on the nose - writer William Rose really didn’t feel the need for nuance or subtlety…
Mark
8/10
GWCtD was one of my first exposures to Katharine Hepburn’s body of work and probably one of the primary reasons why she is my favourite actress from Old Hollywood. It is one of her most grounded and dignified performances (she often played much bigger, larger-than-life characters such as in Bringing Up Baby or The African Queen), and came after a long string flops and sporadic successes. This was her second of four Best Actress wins (currently more than any other acting winner) and the first of two consecutive wins, so I would suggest that the mid-1960s was a transitional time for Hepburn as she moved from spirited ingenue in the '30s through to the stalwart, enduring, experienced titan of Hollywood that she later became. The scene in the bathroom in which she tearfully and shakingly tells her husband that she will not support him if he doesn’t bless his daughter impending nuptials is a prime example of how, by this point, she had completely honed her craft.
This was also her ninth and final collaboration with long-time friend, colleague and rumoured lover, Spencer Tracy, who was also a titan of Old Hollywood, an immensely versatile performer, a winner of two consecutive Best Actor Oscars in the '30s and a nine-time nominee. This was his final role, as he died just 17 days after filming finished. Hepburn, apparently, could never bring herself to watch the film.
Great acting aside, it was also refreshing to see that, although the film has aged in terms of some of the terminology used to describe people of colour and its slightly patronising, didactic tone, it hasn’t fallen into the same traps as other films on racism written by white people (cross reference one of the worst Best Picture wins, Crash). Dr John Prentice is deliberately a Mary-Sue character- he is immensely perfect. Intelligent, hard-working, wealthy, noble, funny, gorgeous, the list goes on. I’m not surprised that Joanna intends to marry him asap before someone else ensnares him. It would have been so tempting for white writers of lesser quality to give John a criminal past, a dysfunctional family background, a hot temper when confronted by a police officer, all those sorts of things writers just love to give black characters (again, looking at you, Crash!). Joanna, also, is a Mary Sue. Clever, sharp, kind, and pragmatic, she approaches their parents’ racist misgivings towards her marriage to John with almost deluded naivety, repeatedly pointing out that there won’t be a problem because, of course, why would there be?
It feels impossible for both of them to be so perfect, but it’s actually very important to the story because it exposes just how ludicrous and groundless their parents’ objections are. Why shouldn’t such happy, stable people find love? Their parents have both taught them that, just like the teachings of Dr King and Malcolm X, all races are equal and deserving of rights and integration, so why should their parents object? These questions push Joanna’s parents immediately into a corner and it’s delightful watching them squirm. They have been able to lecture on racial equality from their art-filled ivory tower up in the hills of San Francisco with their glorious view of the bridge, but when faced with real integration in their own life, they are uncomfortable. In fact, Matt’s first act is to ring up a contact to check up on John’s past- would he have done this if John was white? But they cannot express their misgivings because it will expose them as racist hypocrites to their adoring daughter- they have absolutely no good reason to object other than John’s race. The younger generation are written as so perfect and inclusive that the film emphasises that the onus is entirely on the older generation, no matter how liberal they think they are, to change their attitudes.
This is further emphasised by the Draytons’ older black maid, Tillie. You’d expect her to be delighted by an interracial marriage, representing the changes brewing at the time. In actual fact, she’s furious that she has to now cook and clean for one of her own race, claiming that John has ideas above his station. But she’s perfectly fine with her young, glamorous black colleague Dorothy flirting with the white delivery boy. The film works hard to expose the underlying hypocrisy of racism amongst the older generation of various races and classes.
A great deal of the film also hangs on the fact that John secretly informs Joanna’s parents that he will not marry her if either of them object. While Christina changes her mind very quickly and embraces John, Matt is the one who takes longer and therefore gets the big speech at the end. This process is mirrored through John’s parents, where his mother Mary (the outstanding Beah Richards) rapidly adjusts and points out to Spencer Tracy, in one of the most moving speeches ever delivered, that he has grown old and forgotten what love feels like. Meanwhile, John’s father is angrier and more hesitant to accept, much like Matt. I had memories of Matt’s final big speech being the most outdated aspect of the film, with Matt having the nerve to lecture everyone, including the black characters, on racial integration. Actually, my memories were pretty false and he does not do this. Instead, he rightfully points out that even if he had objected to the marriage, this would never have stopped John and especially Joanna because love conquers all, and therefore gives his blessing fully realising that it is arbitrary.
There are similarities with our previous film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in that GWCtD has a small selection of characters interacting in a limited space for a small period of time. But GWCtD is sweeter, gentler, and soppier. I mentioned that it has a patronising, didactic tone which can sometimes be off-putting (“Racism is X, Y and Z and this is bad”) but this does help for modern audiences to fully understand the reasons behind characters’ objections to John and Joanna’s relationship which, to our eyes, would seem incredulous. It’s not the most subtle or nuanced work, but it’s wonderfully acted, heart-warming and still has a strong point to make.
Katharine Hepburn getting rid of her sour, gossipy colleague, Hilary (urgh, fuckin Hilary) who has come to their house on some lame excuse to gawp. Hilary quickly shows her true colours by asking Christina how she is going to prevent John and Joanna’s relationship from happening. Christina, unashamedly, sacks her and sends her packing with absolutely magnificent savagery. “Don’t say anything, Hilary, just go”.
The writers make some mention of Dr John’s past, in which his first wife and son died in some kind of accident, the details of which are sketchy. I think this was thrown in to give John even more sympathy but it feels arbitrary and unexplored. Unless they were going to fully dissect John’s character as a result of this horrible tragedy, they probably should have deleted that and let John’s perfect personality speak for itself.
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