1937 | Not Rated | 1h 23m | Comedy, Drama, Romance
After recently reviewing the great Katharine Hepburn in “Holiday” (1938), I was looking forward to seeing another movie starring her. “Quality Street,” produced a year earlier in 1937, is a well-paced, entertaining 1 hour and 23-minute affair, even though it was a financial failure at the time.
The film was a box-office disaster, with Hepburn being dubbed “box office poison” during her time with RKO Radio Pictures. Many critics felt that she had turned things around with her performance in “Holiday,” although it wasn’t commercially successful either.
“Quality Street” is set in England in the year 1805. Text on the screen hints that men are in short supply on Quality Street, where “a gentleman passerby is an event.” From the get-go, we see a number of women looking out of their windows to see who is walking down the sunny, quaint street.
In one large home, a group of middle-aged ladies are seated together at a social gathering. A younger woman, Phoebe Throssel (Hepburn) arrives in an excited mood to tell her older sister Susan (Fay Bainter) that she expects dashing young Dr. Valentine Brown (Franchot Tone) to visit her soon. Phoebe assumes that Valentine is going to propose to her.
In a humorous scene, Valentine does indeed arrive a short time later, when he is closely watched from windows up and down the street. When he smiles and acknowledges the female attention, ladies hastily draw their curtains shut because they don’t want to appear too obvious in their nosiness.
Valentine and Phoebe take a stroll in the house’s backyard garden, and during a big lead-up, she expects him to pop the question to her. Instead, she hears that he’s enlisted in the British army to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. He thought she would be proud of his patriotism.
In a dramatic scene designed to draw tears from viewers, Valentine departs to march down Quality Street with other recent enlistees while Phoebe stares dejectedly at him from her window; he’s clueless that she’s fallen in love with him.
The film then jumps ahead 10 years. Phoebe and Susan are now spinsters who have turned their house into “The Misses Throssel School for Boys and Girls.” When Valentine, now a captain, suddenly drops in for a visit, Phoebe feels insecure about her looks since she is weary from working so hard at the school. She tells Valentine she hasn’t “worn well,” and he buys into that because of her common working clothes, bonnet, and overall haggard appearance. However, he invites her and Susan to a grand ball anyway, but she turns down the offer.
Later, Phoebe decides to make herself feel better by spontaneously getting all gussied up—complete with a fancy dress. When Valentine pays them another surprise visit, Phoebe and the Throssels’s maid Patty (Cora Witherspoon) concoct a plan to have Phoebe pose as her fabricated niece, Livvy. Valentine is immediately attracted to Phoebe’s new alter-ego. But still feeling the sting of her rejection, Phoebe plans to use her guise as Livvy to exact revenge upon him. She begins by critiquing his now-graying hair.
Scottish playwright Sir James Matthew Barrie wrote the original “Quality Street” script, which became a successful play in 1901. Oddly, although the play was popular and did well overall, both the 1927 silent film version (directed by Sidney Franklin) and this 1937 remake did poorly financially, although they were appreciated by critics.
The acting is excellent all-around, with Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter, and Franchot Tone turning in convincing performances. The supporting cast also does well in supporting the natural chemistry between the main characters.
The film’s bouncy and dynamic music, supplied by composer Roy Webb, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Score and adds to the many humorous scenes that unfold. The period sets and costumes also lend it credibility, even though the entire production was filmed in Southern California instead of England.
This film is available on AppleTV, Amazon, and YouTube.
‘Quality Street’
Director: George Stevens
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Franchot Tone, Eric Blore
Not Rated
Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes
Release Date: March 26, 1937
Rated: 3.5 stars out of 5
