The Iron Petticoat ** (1956, Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn, James Robertson Justice, Noelle Middleton, Robert Helpmann, David Kossoff) – Classic Movie Review 8,210

The bizarre and unexpected star teaming of Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn fails to inject many laughs into director Ralph Thomas’s good-natured but slack Ninotchka-like 1956 comedy film The Iron Petticoat.

Alas, the bizarre and unexpected star teaming of Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn fails to inject many laughs into director Ralph Thomas’s good-natured but slack Ninotchka-like 1956 comedy The Iron Petticoat. The film is as strained as its tagline: ‘IT’S SPYHIGH WITH HILARITY’. SPYHIGH? Really?

Hope plays a US pilot, Captain Chuck Lockwood, who is acting as a bodyguard to a cool Russian Air Force captain Vinka Kovalenko (Hepburn), who defects because she feels discriminated against as a woman. They fall in love though he is a capitalist and she is a communist, but the KGB does not like a defected Russian officer being at large in London.

A British production, based on a story by the producer Harry Saltzman, with American screen-writer Ben Hecht (though he took his name off the credits), teams uneasily with the American big stars and the popular British home team.

Unsurprisingly, none of it quite jells. The cast keeps it watchable and it is sometimes jazzy and zippy enough, but it never really gets into the right comic stride and everyone looks happiest in the final scenes. Some amusing moments and lines of dialogue apart, The Iron Petticoat is mostly, pretty tedious and Hepburn seems very uncomfortable – and is really none too good, either.

James Robertson Justice of a Scottish family background plays Colonel Vladimir Denisovich Sklarnoff, Robert Helpmann from Mount Gambier, South Australia, plays Major Ivan Kropotkin, and David Kossoff from London, England, plays Dr Anton Antonovich Dubratz. All three give useful support turns.

Also in the cast are Alan Gifford, Paul Carpenter, Noelle Middleton, Nicholas Phipps, Sidney James, Alexander Gauge, Doris Goddard, Tutte Lemkow, Olaf Pooley, Sandra Dorne, Richard Wattis, Maria Antippas, and Martin Boddey.

It was filmed on location in London and at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, in January 1956.

Hecht wrote the part of Vinka for Hepburn in mind and hoped to team her with Cary Grant but he was unavailable. You could imagine this working with the Hepburn-Grant team from Bringing Up Baby. Hecht was part of the screen-writing team on the similar themed Comrade X (1940).

When Hope arrived in London for filming a month late on 7 December 1955, he threatened to quit, unhappy with the script. Hepburn and Hecht agreed to make changes and then Hope got his own gag writers to tailor it to his style and changed the title from Not for Money, with his debonair leading man role altered to his usual wise-cracking comic and many of Hepburn’s best scenes cut.

Hope, whose company controlled US rights, cut 12 minutes from the version released in the UK, prompting Hecht to remove his name from the credits. The US release credits simply say ‘Based on an original story by Harry Saltzman’, who often joked that his first film was the only Bob Hope film that failed at the box office, though that was not true. It cost $509,000 and earned $1,385,000. The TCM restored print runs 94 minutes and has the screen credit ‘Screenplay by Ben Hecht’.

Hepburn recalled it as an unlikely pairing of lead actors, trapped in the wrong roles. She saw her pairing with a comedy co-star as a challenge and said Hope thought her sense of humour was zilch.

‘It ended up as a Hope comedy,’ recalled Thomas. ‘He had seven writers, she had none. I can’t really say I directed the picture. I refereed it.’

The cast are Bob Hope as Captain Chuck Lockwood, Katharine Hepburn as Captain Vinka Kovalenko, Noelle Middleton as Connie, James Robertson Justice as Colonel Vladimir Denisovich Sklarnoff, Robert Helpmann as Major Ivan Kropotkin, David Kossoff as Dr Anton Antonovich Dubratz, Alan Gifford as Colonel Newt Tarbell, Olaf Pooley as Maj, Osip Feodor Ganovich, Nicholas Phipps as Tony Mallard, Paul Carpenter as Major Lewis, Tutte Lemkow as Sutsiyawa, Sidney James [Sid James] as Paul, Alexander Gauge as Senator Howley, Sandra Dorne as Tityana, Richard Wattis as Lingerie Clerk, Doris Goddard as Maria, Olaf Pooley, Maria Antippas, and Martin Boddey.

It premiered on 30 June 1956 at the Berlin International Film Festival, followed in 1956 by the London premiere.

Running time: 94 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,210

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