The Iron Petticoat (1956) Huzzah! We found another one........yet another 'who-thought-this-movie-was-a-good-idea' oddity from the fabulous '50's......
If you thought "I Married A Woman", the film we posted about yesterday, was a weird 'n crazy item, you ain't seen nothin' til you take in the elusive, little seen "The Iron Petticoat".......
This one features a one-time-only collision of two iconic talents who probably never should made a movie together.....a true Clash Of The Titans between the prickly powerhouse Katherine Hepburn and America's beloved gag master Bob Hope.
To put it in a more modern context, try to imagine a movie co-starring Rodney Dangerfield and Meryl Streep........or Jimmy Kimmel and Cate Blanchette......
This started out with high intentions and a high pedigree. Stellar screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote a variation of "Ninotchka", a romantic comedy about how love thaws out a frosty Russian woman deep in the throes of communism. (Later remade as the MGM musical "Silk Stockings")
Designed as a witty vehicle for Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, the Grant role ended up in the hands of Bob Hope, who brought along his platoon of gag writers to pepper the script with the usual rapid fire Hope wisecracks.
Hepburn, a born trouper, soldiered on through the now eviscerated project, even though she and Hope were an oil-and-water duo who couldn't stand each other and had zero romantic chemistry together.
To add to the overall oddness, the film itself was a British production, filmed in Pinewood studios and heavily populated with familiar character actors like James Robertson Justice and Sir Robert Helpmann.
There are a few fleeting moments (and if you blinked, you'd miss them) where you can detect a glimmer of what Hecht intended here........a wry, subtle, sharply observed clash of cultures between the gung ho American and the ace Russian MIG pilot who defected to the West because.......(talk about prescient)......she was passed over for promotion for being a mere woman!
Hepburn's strutting, manly devoted communist is a sight to behold, but whatever wit existed in the original script gets wiped out by Hope's perpetual stream of lame one liners.
And when the film lurches into its second half, even the gags take a back seat to the laborious plot complications, such as the constant efforts of the bumbling Russians to kidnap Hepburn and spirit her away back to Moscow......and a firing squad.
We thought it was at least worth a look to see these two Hollywood legends on screen together for their first and last time. And it's certainly easy to understand why they never paired up again.
This one's for cinema completists only (and hardcore fans of Hepburn and Hope).....for everybody else, 1 star (*)
No comments:
Post a Comment