Keeper of the Flame **** (1942, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn) – Classic Movie Review 3857

Director George Cukor’s engrossing 1942 classic drama with a hint of mystery again pairs Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

Tracy stars as investigative journalist Steve O’Malley, who searches out the truth behind the life of a great American citizen by interviewing his widow, Christine Forrest (Hepburn, smartly dressed by Adrian). Naturally, he falls for her charms and discovers that his quarry was a closet fascist and now has a dilemma as she is the keeper of the flame of his reputation as a national hero.

Based on a novel by I A R Wylie, this is a sprawling but always fascinating and intelligent melodrama, with a lot of edge and a hard centre, not at all the romantic comedy the public hoped for at the time. As you would expect with Tracy and Hepburn, the acting is absolutely first rate and, though the story tends to fall apart towards the end, the players pull it through. And there is a lot of wit and wisdom to be found in Donald Ogden Stewart’s screenplay.

And it is all beautifully handled by Cukor, understandably Hepburn’s favourite director.

It is the film debut of Diana Douglas (uncredited as Forward American Girl), who was the wife of Kirk Douglas and is Michael Douglas’s mother. She died on July 3 2015, aged 92.

Also in the cast are Richard Whorf, Margaret Wycherly, Donald Meek, Stephen McNally, Forrest Tucker, Frank Craven, Audrey Christie, Darryl Hickman, Howard da Silva, Percy Kilbride, William Newell, Clifford Brooke, Cliff Danielson, Dick Elliott, Rex Evans, Donald Gallagher, Sam Harris, Art Howard, Crauford Kent, Manart Kippen, Irving Lee, Charles Frederick Lindsely, Mickey Martin, Louis Mason, Mary Mcleod, Edward McWade, Harold Miller, Robert Pittard, Rita Quigley, Gloria Tucker, Jay Ward and Blanche Yurka.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3857

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