By Cori Domschot
Holiday with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn is a quick fun light hearted comedy. Johnny Case (Cary Grant) takes his first vacation at age 30. He’s been working since he was 10 and finds Julia Seton (Doris Nolan) on the slopes of Lake Placid in December. He is immediately taken with her beauty and the make fast arrangements to meet in New York and marry by January 10th. The only problem is she is rich. Her father (Henry Kolker) is a banker, who carefully controls all decisions his family makes.
Johnny has worked since he was 10 years old, helping his mother clear the debt his father left behind. His father wasn’t a lay about, he just couldn’t make a go of his small grocery store. So, his mother worked herself to death, dying just before he turned 16. Johnny continued to work hard and make a name for himself at Harvard and in the business world. He has been working so hard that he wants to take a break. Come up for air and see what exactly it is he’s been working for.
Julia is a bit of a peacemaker. On holiday all of Johnny’s ideas seemed droll. When confronted with her father Julia switches allegiances and quickly turns against Johnny. She now wants Johnny to be a banker, to stop his dreams and just settle down into a nice quiet life with plenty of money.
Julia has two siblings; Ned (Lew Ayres), and Linda (Katharine Hepburn). Linda has searched for her dreams and keeps landing at home, hiding in the playroom from her father’s machinations. Ned, as the only boy, was forced to give up his dreams to follow his father into banking. Julia has played the peacemaker here also, helping her brother into alcoholism to avoid making waves with their father and “playing along” with several of Linda’s schemes but always letting Linda take the fall. Oddly Linda doesn’t see the pattern until later believing her and her sister the best of friends.
Johnny, having grown up hard and fast has a couple looking out for him. Nick Potter (Edward Everett Horton), a professor and his wife Susan (Jean Dixon). When they first hear of Johnny’s engagement, they are skeptical. A woman he found on a short holiday will completely understand everything he’s been working towards and dreaming about? While their concern is touching it doesn’t slow Johnny down at all. On New Year’s Eve at the engagement party they become further concerned finding the kind of glamour Julia is clearly used to. They mistakenly end up in the playroom with Linda and begin their own party.
There is a beauty to this movie. A clear distinction between living the “American Dream” and living a dream. Without people who dream we are left with cubicles and empty souls. We need artists, and musicians, and inventors, and innovators to help us remember that life is so much more than a paycheck. Johnny is right. When are you going to stop fighting for a dream and start living it. You don’t need mountains of money to live your dream; you need enough to get by. You need good friends by your side, and it would be nice to have someone who believed in you along for the ride.
About the writer
Cori Domschot
Cori is a writer, wife, and mother to two adorable kiddos.
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The only thing that works against is the casting. You know the second you see the credits that Cary ends up with Kate, even putting aside the formula that defines this kind of movie.
I saw this quite recently, and was flabbergasted to discover that almost the same exact team that did The Philadelphia Story did this. I think this one holds up better since I have never quite liked how things play out there.
And worth noting that it’s widely accepted that Lew Ayres’s character is queer, and that his alcoholism is not just because of the pressure from dear old dad.
Quite right! Those opening credits do give a bit away.
I will go further and say this mops the floor with Bringing Up Baby! The screwball energy in that one can feel forced, while the casting indeed gives the game away the cast itself works to make the ending happen in a way that feels very real.
And Ayres is incredible here, the barest hint of queerness that still is very easy to see, and it’s even easier to see how he’s even more trapped by his role than Hepburn and Grant could ever be.
I cannot stand Bringing Up Baby. Can’t stand Kate stealing someone else’s, can’t stand her overall behavior, cannot make sense of anyone thinking a predator is a funny pet.
What I like best about HOLIDAY is that, unlike some of the more contemporaneously celebrated screwball comedies of its era, it generates a real pathos for those without the courage (or, by implication, the means) to discover a personal path towards self understanding. Much of that comes from an understanding that the notion of play, instilled through the use of toys as a guidepost to personal tastes and aspirations, succumbs to the demands of systems whose objectives are outer directed. I’ve used HOLIDAY to talk about materialism, individualism, and the reconciliation of those ideas in mass culture. While I find the ideology crass, I find this movie quite moving in how it dramatizes the loss of childhood innocence when systemic power erodes curiosity and personal discovery.
That playroom party sequence is so great, those dipshit Nazi sympathizers come in and get SLIDE WHISTLED.
“You need good friends by your side, and it would be nice to have someone who believed in you along for the ride.” This is really well said and it hits at the core of the movie, about finding a connection with someone rather than just playing a part. I think Grant’s dream is great and it is bad that Nolan (who is excellent and sly about concealing her limitations and manipulations) is trying to take it from him, but having to fight for it instead of just falling into it makes it stronger.