Grace Quigley

Golan-Globus, something like that, and Cannon films: Ancient film producers from the early eighties when videocassettes were starting to change the nature of the American Movie Biz. Films had begun to boom!

Enter two extraordinary actors: Katherine Hepburn and Nick Nolte.

Nolte had been appearing in commercial Hollywood productions for years, but he is a real actor and wanted to appear in quality productions.

The prospect of appearing with Great Katherine must have seduced him into working with these hopelessly exploitive producers and Cannon films. Kate looks great, her Parkinson disease notwithstanding, in the last theater movie she ever made. It appeared in 1984, when she was still in her seventies, her etched cheekbones intact, and her teeth still movie star white.

Here's the plot: Kate Hepburn watches as Hit-man Nick Nolte, just barely in his forties, kills her noxious landlord. Impressed, Kate who has been thinking of checking out herself decides to hire Nick to off her. Before long, complications ensue. The whole gerontological

group that Kate knows, including most of the unemployed aging actors in New York, want to leave the stage, as it were, themselves. They want to join Kate in that great actors home in the sky.

The Plot thread is helped when Kate invites a friend to join her by arranging a package deal to have them both killed by Nick. But Nick turns out to be a sensitive hit-man, not willing to go along with all of Kate's murderous fantasies. The plot eventually spirals out of control. Nick offs few of the older set, but becomes very popular with this group. After all, if this Golan-Globus (they're the producers) hadn't put together these two stars, Walter Abel probably would have died before he worked in another film. The same goes for many of the other actors in this film.

Toward the end, a cabbie keeps Kate's shoe as ransom for a cab fare she can't pay. Kate wants Nick to off the cabbie. But this black comedy has wandered to too many side alleys. Nick's psychiatrist warns him that Kate has unearthed his sensitive side, and he had better change his ways.

In the end, there is no plot-driven denouement to this tale. Nick and Kate spot an enormous throng of old folks looking for a way to end it all near her apartment, and decide to escape these growing responsibilities by lighting out for what passes for the territories in Manhattan.

So who's driving the cab they hail on the street? You guessed it, the cabbie who stole Kate's shoe. The hack looks at her surprised, looks even more apprehensively at Nick, and turns around to drive his fares where they want to go.

Nick and Kate have apparently won some sort of battle by getting the last laugh on the cabbie, and so the film ends with both of them alive and smiling in the back of the cab, all their problems solved. Its not a great ending, but a fair compromise to finish this wildly out-of-hand scenario.

Great "black comedies" have one thing in common, great acting. Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon in "Harold and Maude", Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov in "Eating Raoul", George Segal and Ruth Gordon in "Where's Poppa?", Frances Fuller in "Homebodies", and definitely right up there is Katherine Hepburn and Nick Nolte in "Grace Quigley." The deadpan planning of "helping" the elderly move on" is played perfectly, and Nolte finds Grace's business plan to be quite profitable. In order for "dark comedy" to work it cannot be mean spirited, and "Grace" handles all the arrangements in a very dignified manner. Also, this is the only movie on the Planet that has a car chase with four hearses. Recommended for sure. - MERK

Katharine Hepburn in a Cannon production? Yes, and though the color process on the photography is typically brackish and the technical aspects of "Grace Quigley" seem slapdash, this turns out to be a quirky, exceptionally funny piece about a hit-man's friendship with an elderly woman in New York. Reportedly, Hepburn and Nick Nolte clashed during filming, but you'd never suspect that from the finished returns (they have an easy rapport). The crux of the plot (that aged folks would rather die mercifully at the hands of a hired killer then live in loneliness or pain) was controversial in 1984--and still smacks of bad taste--yet director Anthony Harvey keeps the whole thing bubbling like the most genial of comedies. As for Kate, she's feisty as usual, but also delightfully daffy and loose; she's a team player. **1/2 from ****

This little unpolished gem from Cannon films almost defies definition with its frankly depressing premise and it's superannuated director and actors. It's no surprise it never found mainstream box office or even critical success at least in the mangled form it was largely released in. Talking Pictures TV ran the Ultimate Solution of... version - generally considered a good later screenplay fix. What can I say, it's one for movie nerds perhaps but with the spirited work of the great Nolte and Hepburn one can be assured it gets carried through safely, even over the several rough patches in a production that has the rather cheap and gaudy feel of 80s television, but don't let that disguise the fact this is a deadly serious drama about the futility of old age, with some jokes. There are just enough minor gags and sweet moments to prevent the viewer from sticking one's own head in the proverbial oven before the movie is out. Of course there's tongue in cheek elements and it's ultimately ambiguous morally, and even with Katherine's rather disturbing real-life Parkinson's on display, playing a desperate suicidal granny, one might forget she went on to live for two more golden decades, well after this film sort of had quietly died in its sleep with hardly a trace of collective memory. There's enough humour in the history of this much maligned film alone to give it a patient and respectful look. I admire it's quirkiness and subversive attitude, giving the polite finger to the whole entertainment film establishment in a way, an anti-epitaph for many of the crew, but done in such a humane and quietly charismatic way.

The third time was not the charm for the acting/directing team of Katharine Hepburn and Anthony Harvey. The two had been responsible for Kate's Oscar winning performance in The Lion In Winter and an acclaimed television version of The Glass Menagerie.

But gold went to brass in this black comedy, Grace Quigley about an old woman who sees a professional hit-man off her landlord. Truth be told the landlord was not the nicest guy in the world and there's no shock for the audience see the murder from Kate's point of view.

But Hepburn in the title role sees Nick Nolte as the hit-man as the solution to all her problems. She hasn't much reason to hang around this mortal coil with no family and friends taking the big trip, more it seems all the time. She blackmails Nolte into doing a hit on her, and maybe a few interested friends. And things get complicated there.

Kate also manages to pick a hit-man with issues. Nolte is in analysis and this new complication in his life is of interest to his doctor, Chip Zien. And Nolte who never had a family so to speak and the little old lady form one unusual bond that even Nolte's girl friend Kit Lefever can't break nor does she really want to.

This rather ordinary material is made much better by the sheer presence of Katharine Hepburn. She seems to be taking her Madwoman Of Chaillot character and Americanizing it in Grace Quigley. I doubt if a lesser actress could have made this palatable.

Grace Quigley marked the final performance of Walter Abel whose career stretched all the way back to World War I. Abel is one of the old folks just dying for Nolte's services.

Grace Quigley is primarily for Katharine Hepburn fans, I don't think it has too much appeal beyond that. Then again Kate has one big legion of fans.