{"id":7619,"date":"2008-01-18T08:23:31","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T13:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7619"},"modified":"2022-10-14T14:04:23","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T18:04:23","slug":"archie-leach-day-improvising-with-jimmy-stewart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7619","title":{"rendered":"Cary Grant: Improvising With Jimmy Stewart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nJimmy Stewart says in re: Philadelphia Story:<\/p>\n
I play a writer who falls in love with Katharine Hepburn. The night before her wedding I have a little too much to drink. This gives me the courage to go and talk to Cary, who’s playing her ex-husband. So I go to Cary’s house and knock on the door. It’s obvious I’ve had too much to drink, but he lets me in.<\/p>\n
It was time to do the scene, and Cary said, “George, why don’t we just go ahead? If you don’t like it, we’ll do it again.” So, without a rehearsal or anything, we started the scene. As I was talking, it hit me that I’d had too<\/i> much to drink. So, as I explained things to Cary, I hiccuped. In answer to the hiccup, Cary said — out of the clear blue sky — “Excuse me.” Well, I sort of said, “Ummm?” It was very difficult for me to keep a straight face, because his ad-libbed response had been so beautifully done … Cary had an almost perfect humor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Watch that scene again. It’s the first take. You can almost see Jimmy Stewart lose it at Grant’s improvisation – but he keeps it together. Brilliant acting, from both of them.<\/p>\n