A Subtler Side of the Hepburn-Grant Magic

The romantic comedy Holiday (1938), the third of four collaborations between Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, is a sparkling testament to what makes the pairing one of Hollywood’s most iconic. With the film, George Cukor, who also directed Grant and Hepburn on Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), concocted a witty, nuanced comedy of manners, with an irresistible Grant as a free-spirited, gymnastically inclined entrepreneur, and a nuanced Hepburn as the aristocratic black sheep he eventually falls for. In the clip above, taken from a supplement on our new release of Holiday, filmmaker and distributor Michael Schlesinger and critic Michael Sragow pay tribute to Cukor, his stars, and the brand of screwball sophistication they concocted with their second collaboration. Sragow talks about first encountering the film on a double bill with the more widely celebrated crowd-pleaser The Philadelphia Story, and becoming particularly appreciative of Holiday’s comparative emotional subtleties, while Schlesinger toasts the movie’s livening up of its source material, a 1928 play by Philip Barry.