Book Review: The Philadelphia Story

Marriage doesn’t change true a case like yours, my dear. It’s an affair of the spirit- not the flesh

Unless you’ve been living under a tree for the past, oh I don’t know, forever! Then you’ll know that this play ‘The Philadelphia Story’ was turned into a smash hit of a film with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was then remade into a musical with Grace Kelly, Bing Cosby, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong- to name a few of its stars. I watched the later in isolation over Christmas on BBC player, which was great. It was just the moral booster, for being by myself for 10 days, that I needed. So it was with great delight that I found out that this film was based on a play, and I could get my hands on the original text!

Okay so here’s the low down: Tracy Lord is about to get married, again. Her family are like ‘meh’ okay she can get married. Her younger sister Dinah is thinking that this wedding is the worst thing to happen. The apocalypse would be better than Tracys wedding to George Kitteridge. Dinah adored Tracys last husband Dexter Haven. And guess who is back in town, just in time for the wedding! So Dexters back and few other flies have flown into the ointment too and they are Elizabeth Imbrie and ‘Mike’ Macaulay Connor. These two have come up for Tracy’s impending nuptials because their editor is blackmailing Seth Lord, Tracy’s philandering father. Let's just say you can see that this wedding is going to be a hot mess. A delightful hot mess, might I add.

So you have Tracy, she is the oldest daughter of this rather wealthy family, she is spoilt, high handed and head strong- a marvellous concoction. She is a girl who has set incredibly high standards for herself and those around her. Some of these standards are unattainable, Dexter couldn’t possibly reach them- so she divorced him. She is the epitome of a girl placed high on pedestal, sitting in her ivory tower. And boy, over the course of this play does she get one hell of a set down. She is brought back down to earth by the men who couldn’t meet the high strung stands Tracy so vicariously demanded: her father and Dexter. Dexter goes so far as to tell her, quite brutally just how tall her ivory tower is, by the end of the play Tracy is back on earth with the rest of us mortals with a rather charming bump.

Now here’s Tracys husband-to-be George Kitteridge. He is someone who has worked his way from the ground up. Literally, he works for Tracy’s father and the business debt with mining. So I guess its from beneath the ground up. Too bad he’s rather an awful snob and has some very grandiose and, may I say, 14th century ideas about women and what women should be. They’re like Tracys expectations, grandiose and utterly unrealistic. There is proof in the pudding however, when he believes that Tracy has been unfaithful on the night before her wedding, he is scandalised, not by the supposed infidelity but by this new carefree side to Tracys character. Dinah puts it best, I think, ‘he’s a snob’.

Now Dinah, she’s mad at Tracy for leaving Dexter, loathes George and can’t wait to tell everyone about it. It is an endless thorn in the side of her mother and, well Tracy can only put up with her snide sarcastic wit for so long. She delights in torturing Tracy with Dexter. After all Dinah is well aware that Dexter is still in love with Tracy. Yet in spite of all the snide comments and witty repartee, Tracy and Dinah are sisters cut from the same cloth. So when Mike and Liz come along, they both delight in making utter fools of them and painting a picture of the ‘idle rich’ that is exaggerated, domineering, cruel but artistically self-deprecating. Despite the fact that Liz and Mike are the ones who are supposed to be interviewing the family. 

Liz and Mike, they’re a sweet pair of working class people, who clearly love each other. But as Liz puts it ‘well, he’s still got a lot to learn’ so she hasn’t fully nabbed him yet. And there’s a decision she grows to regret as Mike become all the more infatuated with Tracy over the course of the wedding weekend. However, the presence of Mike teaches Tracy a lot about what she really wants in life, her expectations of other people and who she really is and what (or who) she really wants.

Now Dexter, what can one really say about Dexter? He’s that suave, good looking ex-husband of Tracy’s- and by the looks of things - he still loves her. It’s awfully convenient of him to always be in the right place at the right time with just the right thing to say…. Funny that.

All these characters come together to create a delightful comedy, all the while being gently prodded and poked (for the sheer hell of it- I might add) by Dinah. ‘I did it! I did it all!’