Movies from the Heart—Holiday

Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant starred in the film we looked at last week, Bringing Up Baby. And this film, Holiday, by Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman, which came out in the same year, 1938, also starred the same duo.

Another thing this film has in common with Bringing Up Baby is that the couple comes from different classes—she’s from an incredibly wealthy family and he’s just a guy working in a bank. It might be hard to realize how much class played into the lives of people in the 30s and 40s. If you live in the U.S., or any number of other countries, you think that that’s pretty old-fashioned, that if people fall in love, they fall in love, and class isn’t a barrier to that. But class in the 30s was a real divide and the movies portrayed that—often quite accurately.

This is a great example of the power of film. If film takes on an issue like class—even in a light romantic comedy like this one—it can change people’s ideas about what should be right in the world. They look at the film and say, “Hey, these two people were right for each other and the whole class thing didn’t matter.” And that realization translates into their real lives, and thus changes society.

In the film, Johnny comes to visit his fiancée, Julia, in her house in New York. They met on a skiing vacation and he had no idea she was this wealthy. He meets her sister, and brother Linda and Ned, and her father. Linda and Ned approve of him straight away, but Dad is harder to please.

He throws an engagement party for them. Linda had wanted to throw her own party for them, with just very close friends in the playroom that her mother had loved so much. But Dad takes over and the party becomes gigantic—the social event of the season.

This scenes opens with Julia angry at Linda who won’t come down to the big party. And Johnny defies Linda’s request that he go downstairs with her, instead saying he wants to stay a moment with Linda. Take a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7DFhzmVUKA

It's important to realize that when Linda says to Johnny that he no doubt told father all his little hopes and dreams, we’re talking about something quite radical for the 30s. Johnny has made a killing at the bank with a big deal and wants to take a year off to see what he’s been working for—to live life, to see the world. Dad—and Julia—have not reacted well to this idea. In fact, they think it a featherbrained notion—“featherbrained” being the kind of period word that would have been used.

Will he succumb to Dad and Julia’s wishes? Will he open his eyes and see that Linda loves him? How can Linda possibly pursue her sister’s fiancé? Well, she can’t. She doesn’t. And we revere her for that.

But maybe, somehow, this could work out… you’ll have to watch the film to see if it does! And, believe me, it’s worth your time.

And writing your own romantic film, you can learn from Holiday the importance of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats, wondering how it will all turn out.

Next week, another classic romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story.

Copyright © Diane Lake

26Nov23

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