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Stars: Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, John Lund, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, Louis Armstrong | Written by John Patrick, Philip Barry | Directed by Charles Walters

In 1940, a trio of future Hollywood Legends would come together to put to screen a romantic comedy that would be forever regarded as one of the greatest romcoms ever. Of course, I am talking about The Philadelphia Story. Just a short 16 years later, in 1956, MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) decided to remake the classic, but with an interesting twist. They decided to hire two of the most popular crooners and a future princess and rename the films High Society.

Next year (2026), High Society will be celebrating its 70th anniversary. But before we get to that date, Warner Archive Collection have restored and released this classic musical on 4k/Blu-ray combo pack.

Legendary Louis Armstrong as himself, plays his trumpet and narrates in prose and song the peccadillos of his songwriter friend C.

Richard Greenberg, the playwright behind Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain and Eastern Standard, has died. He was 67.

The Tony winner’s death was announced on social media, where several people in the theater world have since reacted to his passing, including Denis O’Hare, who won a Tony for originating the role of gay accountant Mason Marzac in Take Me Out when it debuted in London back in 2002.

“Hard to believe the genius that was Richard Greenberg is no more,” he captioned a photo of the two of them. “I owe him more than I could possibly say. He gave me the greatest gift ever–a beautiful character to inhabit in a beautiful play.”

O’Hare continued, “He also gave me 2 of my best friends–Lisa Peterson and Linda Emond. We all met and worked on Rich’s one act-The Author’s Voice at Remains Theatre in 1987 in a...

Richard Greenberg, the Tony-winning playwright behind Take Me Out, has died. He was 67.

Greenberg died Friday of cancer at a nursing home in Manhattan, his brother, Edward Greenberg, told The Washington Post.

He and Robert Falls, a friend and theater director, had been working for years on an adaptation of Philip Barry’s Holiday that is to premiere in February at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

“For over 30 years, it’s been one of life’s great pleasures to know Rich and his writing,” Falls wrote on Bluesky. “Dazzling, humane, wildly funny. … His kindness was real. His loss is enormous.”

Born on Feb. 22, 1958, in East Meadow, New York, Greenberg graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from Princeton University. He briefly attended Harvard for graduate school but opted to attend Yale University’s drama school, enrolling in its playwriting program.

At Yale, Greenberg won the George Oppenheimer Award in...

Max Clayton will star as C.K. Dexter Haven in Ogunquit Playhouse’s reimagining of High Society. The production will run from July 24 – August 23. High Society features music and lyrics by Cole Porter and book by Arthur Kopit, with additional Lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. High Society takes Philip Barry's beloved comedy The Philadelphia Story and weaves in the sophisticated elegance of Cole Porter’s music. Centered on the taming of the brazen young socialite Tracy Lord, the characters made famous by Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart in George Kukor’s Oscar-winning 1940 film were given new life in 1956 by Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra in the musical adaptation. <br...

Gaining a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes is either an impressive achievement or a sign that your movie hasn't been all that widely reviewed. The same goes for those films that bear the dreaded 0% rating, of which the great John Travolta currently has a full seven.

This is all by virtue of the way Rt works. The website aggregates reviews, deeming each individual appraisal either positive or negative. Even mixed reviews get crammed into this binary, allowing Rotten Tomatoes to produce a percentage score based on how many reviews are "Fresh" and how many are "Rotten." If a film is solid enough to garner a handful of decent reviews, that means it will likely get a 100% rating on the site because A) there aren't many reviews to include in the rating and B) the handful of reviews that do exist are all decent enough to be rated "Fresh" by Rt's moderators.

Margot Robbie's favorite classic Hollywood film is The Philadelphia Story, which she watched frequently during her childhood and continues to hold a special place in her heart. The Philadelphia Story is a beloved classic that features a talented cast, witty dialogue, and a well-written story about forgiveness and acceptance of human flaws. This 1940 film has received critical acclaim, winning awards and landing a spot in the American Film Institute's top 100 movies list, making it an iconic and timeless classic.

Back in 2022, Margot Robbie mentioned that her favorite classic Hollywood film is The Philadelphia Story. She said she "used to watch it all the time" during childhood. It's no surprise that Robbie took inspiration from older films during her journey into her acting career, as she's practically an old soul herself. Her family didn't have any connection to cinema or the industry, and she would perform movie scenes in front of them.

Click here to read the full article.

Mark Miller, who portrayed the patriarch of a castle-dwelling family on the 1960s NBC sitcom Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and co-wrote the Keanu Reeves-starring romantic drama A Walk in the Clouds, has died. He was 97.

Miler died Friday in Santa Monica of natural causes, a family spokesperson announced. Survivors include his daughter and Tony-nominated actress Penelope Ann Miller.

Miller also wrote, produced and starred in the classic family film Savannah Smiles (1982), which was inspired by and named for his youngest daughter. It’s the story of a runaway girl (Bridgette Andersen) who forms an improvised family with the two escaped convicts (Miller, Donovan Scott) who find her.

On Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, which aired for two seasons and 58 episodes from 1965-67, the native Texan played college professor Jim Nash opposite Patricia Crowley as newspaper writer Joan Nash. They are the...

This classy late-’30s Park Avenue romp gives us Katharine Heburn and Cary Grant at their best; Grant is especially good in a particularly demanding comedy role. The original play is warmed up a bit with comedy touches, and some pointed political barbs slip in there as well. The marvelous acting ensemble gives terrific material to favorites like Jean Dixon and Edward Everett Horton.

Holiday

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1009

1938 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 7, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan, Lew Ayres, Edward Everett Horton, Henry Kolker, Binnie Barnes, Jean Dixon, Henry Daniell, Ann Doran.

Cinematography: Franz Planer

Film Editor: Al Clark, Otto Meyer

Original Music: Sidney Cutner

Written by Donald Ogden Stewart, Sidney Buchman from the play by Philip Barry

Produced by Everett Riskin

Directed by George Cukor

Holiday was written by Philip Barry, the playwright who tailored The Philadelphia Story for Katharine Hepburn.

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

A recent article (based on a very unscientific poll) argued that millennials don’t really care about old movies. Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t, but the fact remains that many people disregard classic cinema on principle. These people are missing out, but it only takes one film — the right film — to change their minds and forever alter their viewing habits.

This week’s question: What is one classic film you would recommend to someone who doesn’t watch them?

Candice Frederick (@ReelTalker), Hello Beautiful, /Film, Thrillist, etc

“Rebel Without a Cause.” I’ll out myself by saying that I’ve only recently seen this film...

November over at The Criterion Collection may look a smidge slim, offering up just four new titles, but each new addition to the collection is a seminal selection well-deserving of the Criterion treatment. Of most interest, however, is Donna Deitch’s feature debut “Desert Hearts,” a seminal lesbian drama that’s been going through something of a resurgence as of late, thanks to last year’s 30th anniversary and a continued adoration for its forward-thinking subject matter.

As we recently explored, in the early ’80s, Deitch was a film school grad with only docs under her belt, eager to make a different kind of feature about lesbians in love, and “without the help of Kickstarter or industry backing, she launched an unorthodox grassroots campaign that eventually gained the support of Gloria Steinem, Lily Tomlin, and Stockard Channing. The result was a hit at Sundance in 1986 that went on to become...

The 15th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival set sail Wednesday night with the world premiere of The First Monday in May, Andrew Rossi’s sharp documentary about the Met Gala. The Anna Wintour-directed shindig is described in the film by the Vogue editor-in-chief’s aide-de-camp and outsize fashion biz personality Andre Leon Talley, as “the Super Bowl of charity events.”

The subject might not, on first hearing, seem as compelling as Rossi’s last film, 2011’s Page One: Inside The New York Times. But he makes a strong case for the film as both an inside look at what the playwright Philip Barry called “the privileged class enjoying its privileges,” and the intellectual and ultimately poignant struggle of a curator to deliver something of cultural significance, in this case, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s sweeping exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass.” The movie’s title refers to...

Well, we’ve finally reached the summit: the 10 most definitive romantic comedies of all time. Unlike the other sections of this list, there is not a movie here that approaches “bad.” As always, some are better than others, despite the order. But one thing is for sure: if you plan to have a rom-com binge-a-thon soon, this is where you start, no questions asked. In fact, after reading this, you should go do that and report back.

courtesy of reverseshot.com 10. Some Like It Hot (1959)

What’s funnier than men dressing in drag? Depends on who you ask. It’s Billy Wilder again with a fictional story of two musicians – Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) – who witness the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago and leave town. But, since the mob has ties everywhere, they need to disguise themselves as best they can: as women in an...

The rerelease of this utterly beguiling comedy reminds us how extraordinary Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart really were

• From Tilda Swinton to Tina Fey: who channels their inner Katharine Hepburn?

However stagily preposterous, George Cukor’s 1940 movie The Philadelphia Story, now rereleased, is also utterly beguiling, funny and romantic; it is based on the same stage play, by Philip Barry, as the 1956 musical High Society. This is the most famous example of the intriguing and now defunct prewar genre of “comedy of remarriage”, the subject of an equally interesting study by film theorist Stanley Cavell called Pursuits Of Happiness. It features three stars from the studio era who are the aristocrats, or deities, of the Hollywood golden age: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart. Part of the fascination in watching this movie again is savouring those three extraordinary voices, highly imitable but entirely unique. Hepburn is the statuesque heiress Tracy Lord,...

Howard Hughes movies (photo: Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in 'The Aviator') Turner Classic Movies will be showing the Howard Hughes-produced, John Farrow-directed, Baja California-set gangster drama His Kind of Woman, starring Robert Mitchum, Hughes discovery Jane Russell, and Vincent Price, at 3 a.m. Pt / 6 a.m. Et on Saturday, November 8, 2014. Hughes produced a couple of dozen movies. (More on that below.) But what about "Howard Hughes movies"? Or rather, movies -- whether big-screen or made-for-television efforts -- featuring the visionary, eccentric, hypochondriac, compulsive-obsessive, all-American billionaire as a character? Besides Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a dashing if somewhat unbalanced Hughes in Martin Scorsese's 2004 Best Picture Academy Award-nominated The Aviator, other actors who have played Howard Hughes on film include the following: Tommy Lee Jones in William A. Graham's television movie The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), with Lee Purcell as silent film star Billie Dove, Tovah Feldshuh as Katharine Hepburn,...

Grace Kelly is an actress that I haven’t spent nearly enough time with. Thankfully, that will soon change thanks to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. Here is a portion of the news release …

On July 29, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Wbhe) will remember one of Hollywood’s most glamorous film stars with the debut of the Grace Kelly Collection. The Collection includes six of the iconic screen legend’s most popular films. She stars with some of Hollywood’s finest leading men, including Clark Gable, Cary Grant, William Holden, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

About the Films

Mogambo (1953)

Kelly received her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress in a Supporting Role) in this remake of 1932’s Red Dust, in which Gable originally starred with Jean Harlow. He stars here with Kelly and the sizzling Ava Gardner, who was also nominated for her performance. Directed by John Ford, and shot on location in Africa,...

Episode 16 of 52 as Anne Marie screens all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order.

In which Katharine Hepburn wins it all back and then some.

For Classic Hollywood stars whose images so often transcended or eclipsed the films they appeared in, there often emerges one film that becomes image-defining. This film has the power to stretch forward and back in time, coloring biographical details and even other performances by that actor. It’s the film that will show up in retrospectives and Turner Classic Movies montages, be quoted by fans and impersonators. For Bette Davis, it’s All About Eve. For Gloria Swanson, it’s Sunset Boulevard. For Katharine Hepburn, it’s The Philadelphia Story.

What sets Kate and The Philadelphia Story apart is how deliberately this star-defining was done. Davis was a last-minute replacement for Claudette Colbert, and Swanson was on a list of Pre-Code potentials that included Mae West.

Screenwriter Lorenzo Semple,. Jr. died Friday of natural causes at his Los Angeles home. He had just turned 91 the day before.  Born Lorenzo Semple III in Westchester, New York, the writer's uncle was playwright Philip Barry ("The Philadelphia Story"). Semple studied at Yale before driving an ambulance in the Mideast during World War II, earning the Croix de Guerre, followed by a stint in the Army, emerging with a Bronze Star.  He started out his career writing short stories for the Saturday Evening Post and Time, and after finishing his degree in drama at Columbia, he wrote several plays, several of which were mounted and acquired by Hollywood.  He was mentored by TV producer Aaron Spelling ("Burke's Law"). And he created the original campy "Batman" TV series starring Adam West, which spawned a 1966 movie which he also wrote.  Semple moved to Hollywood during "Batman," where he wrote screenplays (along with...

Well, we’ve finally reached the summit: the 10 most definitive romantic comedies of all time. Unlike the other sections of this list, there is not a movie here that approaches “bad.” As always, some are better than others, despite the order. But one thing is for sure: if you plan to have a rom-com binge-a-thon soon, this is where you start, no questions asked. In fact, after reading this, you should go do that and report back.

courtesy of reverseshot.com

10. Some Like It Hot (1959)

What’s funnier than men dressing in drag? Depends on who you ask. It’s Billy Wilder again with a fictional story of two musicians – Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) – who witness the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago and leave town. But, since the mob has ties everywhere, they need to disguise themselves as best they can: as women in an...

Looks like you can own a piece of the property owned by the family who inspired "The Philadelphia Story."

Maybe.

The famed Ardrossan Estate, located in Villanova, Pennsylvania, was originally owned by financier Colonel Robert L. Montgomery and his wife, needlepoint artist Charlotte Hope Binney Tyler. (Such a match of titles could only happen in the early 1900s...or present-day Brooklyn.) Their daughter, the fabulous socialite Helen Hope Montgomery Scott was famous for her parties, horsewomanship and for once inspiring four proposals on the night of her official debut into Philadelphia society. Her husband's college classmate, playwright Philip Barry, would immortalize her in 1939 as Tracy Lord in"The Philadelphia Story." Katharine Hepburn would make that character timeless in her performance on stage and on screen.

But back to the property, which is now in the midst of a real estate drama.

According to the Daily Mail, Ardrossan was put up...

Members of the Naughton Family two-time Tony Award winner and Weston, Connecticut resident James Naughton, daughter Keira Naughton, son Greg Naughton, and Gregs wife Tony Award nominee Kelli OHara plus Blythe Danner, Jordan Coughtry, Edward Herrmann, Chad Kinsman, Jake Robards, Mark Shanahan, and Dana Steingold are cast in Westport Country Playhouses Script in Hand playreading of The Philadelphia Story, the romantic comedy classic by Philip Barry, set for one-night-only tonight, December 10, 7 p.m. Director is Anne Keefe, Playhouse artistic advisor.

Members of the Naughton Family two-time Tony Award winner and Weston, Connecticut resident James Naughton, daughter Keira Naughton, son Greg Naughton, and Gregs wife Tony Award nominee Kelli OHara plus Blythe Danner, Jordan Coughtry, Edward Herrmann, Chad Kinsman, Jake Robards, Mark Shanahan, and Dana Steingold are cast in Westport Country Playhouses Script in Hand playreading of The Philadelphia Story, the romantic comedy classic by Philip Barry, set for one-night-only on Monday, December 10, 7 p.m. Director is Anne Keefe, Playhouse artistic advisor.

Special From

By Barbara Lovenheim

It seems improbable for a new slant on Katharine Hepburn to emerge, but the upcoming exhibit Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and the five excellent essays in the new Skira/Rizzoli companion book "Katharine Hepburn: Rebel Chic" are provocative and eye-opening. Contrary to Hepburn’s public image as an indifferent fashion rebel who wore slacks in public years before pant suits came into vogue, Hepburn cultivated her counter-culture image deliberately and with great precision when she became aware of its publicity value, eventually ordering custom-made slacks and shoes and, on the sly, ordering handmade French lingerie.

“I think you should pretend you don’t care,” she once remarked to Garbo, who captivated Hollywood with her mannish suits, hats, and Ferragamo flat-heeled shoes. “But it’s the most outrageous pretense.

Model and actress Doe Avedon Siegel, best known for her marriages to photographer Richard Avedon and to Dirty Harry movie director Don Siegel, died Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 86. Born Dorcas Nowell (on April 7, 1928) in Westbury, New York, she was discovered by Avedon, who married her in 1944. (Avedon herself told journalists she began her acting career while working as a waitress.) A highly romanticized version of their courtship was turned into a would-be play by Leonard Gershe, Funny Face, which finally was produced as a Paramount musical in 1957, starring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn under the direction of Stanley Donen. By then, the Avedons had been divorced for six years. Doe Avedon's stage debut took place in 1948, in the Broadway production of N. Richard Nash's The Young and Fair, which also featured Julie Harris, Rita Gam, and future Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge. For her efforts, Avedon was...

Of all the famous Katharine Hepburn movies--and she is the longest-lived (in her career) and most honored star in picture history--the one I’ve had a little trouble really loving is The Philadelphia Story (available on DVD). It’s got an impeccable pedigree: the last and most popular of four comedies she did with Cary Grant, three of them directed by George Cukor, who not only discovered Hepburn for 1932's A Bill of Divorcement, but also directed her in seven other movies (two for TV); and quite faithfully adapted from a successful Philip Barry play that had been a hit vehicle for…...

Saturday night, I was scouting around trying to find something to watch that interested me. Cable was the same old reruns of old television shows and movies. I wanted something I hadn’t seen before. I wanted a new adventure, so I turned to Netflix. I stumbled upon a film from 1932 that intrigued me; The Animal Kingdom. The cast included Lesley Howard (best known as Ashley Wilkes from Gone With The Wind), Myrna Loy (best known from the Thin Man series) and Ann Harding.

The story revolves around the characters of Tom Collier (Lesley Howard), Daisy Sage (Ann Harding) and Cee Henry (Myrna Loy). Tom is a free thinker and has been living that lifestyle; enjoying art and only publishing books that he actually would want to read. Tom thinks that it is time to become respectable so he announces his engagement, but it is not to longtime girlfriend Daisy but to Cee,...

Nov 12, 2010

The Philadelphia Story is one of the most successful and best loved screwball comedies of the classical Hollywood era. It is based on the 1939 Broadway production of Philip Barry's play which starred Katharine Hepburn. The film employs the 1930s screwball plot device of the idle rich whose wealth has blinded them to the simple joys of life and the worthiness of middle-class values. Tracy Lord is the arrogant Philadelphia socialite who is planning her wedding to a stuffy social climber when her ex-husband, C. K. Dexter Haven, arrives at the mansion. Haven is ...Read more at MovieRetriever.com...

James Andreassi, Artistic Director of The Elm Shakespeare Company, now in its second decade of presenting free, professional productions of classic plays, has announced the two plays that will be produced this August outdoors in New Haven/Hamden's Edgerton Park. Moliere's 17th century comedy The Imaginary Invalid and Philip Barry's 1920s comedy of manners Holiday will be presented in repertory from August 13 through September 6.

James Andreassi, Artistic Director of The Elm Shakespeare Company, now in its second decade of presenting free, professional productions of classic plays, has announced the two plays that will be produced this August outdoors in New Haven/Hamden's Edgerton Park. Moliere's 17th century comedy The Imaginary Invalid and Philip Barry's 1920s comedy of manners Holiday will be presented in repertory from August 13 through September 6.