A Woman's Lot

Because the one odd omission in this episode about the female stars of RKO in the 1930s and their films is that of Irene Dunne. She costarred in RKO's only Best Picture Oscar winner and was nominated for Best Actress for her role in it. She was songbird of the RKO lot, and one of the biggest of their early contract stars. And some Astaire and Rogers fans might be puzzled why their third film, "Roberta", has so much of Ms. Dunne and so little of Astaire and Rogers. You won't find the answer here. Perhaps it is because when this documentary was made Irene Dunne was 88 years old - much older than the stars featured - and just not well enough to be interviewed. It is a mystery.

So this episode talks about the big female stars of RKO in the 30s and early 40s - Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and Lucille Ball. All are good natured about their ups and their downs at the studio. Kate Hepburn, in particular, starred in several very bad pictures that lost tons of money at the box office one of which is now considered a great screwball comedy ("Bringing Up Baby") and another a cult classic ("Sylvia Scarlett"). And some of the technical secrets are revealed about how those shots with the leopard were safely filmed in "Bringing Up Baby". Lucille Ball talks about her going through years of playing bit parts and when she finally sees a script that calls for a "Lucille Ball type" she is thrilled yet does not get the part. However, she does get the last laugh in the RKO Story, which you see in the final episode of the documentary.

One interesting snippet of film - a promotional piece by RKO featuring some of their female finds. It is mainly mentioned to show how so many young hopefuls never made it in Hollywood. The odd part about it is that it is narrated and hosted by Johnny Mack Brown, a casualty of sound films, who as far as I know was never under contract to RKO.

This is the third of six episodes in the BBC series about the history of RKO Studios. Some of the episodes are done in chronological order, though several (such as this one) is more topical. It covers the careers of two of RKO's biggest female stars of the 1930s and 40s...Katharine Hepburn (who moved to MG in the 1940s) and Ginger Rogers. There also is a small portion that talks about Lucille Ball, though she was only a contract player during her time at RKO....and no one ever dreamed she'd one day OWN the lot (when she and her husband formed Desilu Studios by buying RKO).

There were a few small surprises in this one, such as Ginger Rogers' mother and her importance to the studio in hew own right. And, the fact that Ginger was awful at choosing projects. And, to me the most important revelations were how they filmed the leopard scenes in "Bringing Up Baby"! Otherwise, the episode is pretty much a by the books examination of the two stars during the 1930s. Well worth seeing and, as always, interesting and informative.