Cheap Sylvia Scarlett (Video) (Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant) (George Cukor) Price

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Customer Reviews of Sylvia Scarlett

An early and quite underappreciated cross-dressing comedy
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).

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A RATHER MEDIOCRE CURIO FROM 1935.
A real curio for devout fans of oddball vintage films. When Henry Scarlett's wife dies, he and his daughter Sylvia leave Marseilles to begin life anew in England. To help her debt-ridden Dad escape from his creditors, Sylvia bobs her hair and dresses as a young man - calling herself Sylvester....Definitely one of vintage Hollywood's most curious films, it will have an appeal to some due to its eccentric storyline. Evelyn Waugh was originally to have written the screenplay, but British novelist John Collier was hired instead. Exterior shots for this film were photographed in Malibu and Laurel Canyon. The film was a disaster at the box-office, but today, SYLVIA SCARLETT is considered a mild cult classic. Critics in 1935 thought that Hepburn made a better looking boy than girl: this would begin her descent into the "box office poison" category. For his interpretation of Jimmy Monkley, Grant is quite good. As the charming Cockney, he was realistic, he being born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England in 19O4.