A fascinating analysis of Katherine Hepburn's big-screen debut.
A Bill of Divorcement 1932
The dialogue has the creaky sound of classy, overcivilized theatre; the film is just barely adapted from Clemence Dane's play about a father and daughter doomed by hereditary insanity -- the kind of play in which the daughter is named Sydney Fairchild, her father Hilary Fairchild, and the daughter's boyfriend Kit. But as Sydney, Katherine Hepburn, in her film debut, was like nothing that had ever been seen on the screen. It wasn't that she was good, exactly (in fact, her acting was mostly awful), but she was so angular and mannered, with her mouth a scar of suffering, that she was riveting. And John Barrymore, who plays the father, was a fairly riveting performer himself -- though his role here is drearily subservient. Young George Cukor directed, in the insulated style all too appropriate to the material.
Interesting. It was, indeed, a new kind of woman - a woman never before seen on screen (and actually, never seen since).
Posted by sheila