The Hepburn-Tracy Project, #3: "Without Love" (Harold S. Bucquet, 1945)

Part One here; Part Two here.

Claire Kenny: I’d seen this one before, ages ago, though I was sur­prised at how much I for­got.  The premise is entirely goofy—Tracy’s gruff absent­minded professor/mad sci­ent­ist Pat Jamieson, burned by love and plagued with somn­am­bu­lism, takes over the base­ment of well-heeled wid­ow Jamie Rowan (Hepburn)’s gra­cious D.C. town­house to carry out a top-secret mil­it­ary pro­ject; they decide to get mar­ried, “without love,” to pro­tect his cover—as is the exe­cu­tion, but really, what’s not to like?  You’ve got a script based on a play Philip Barry wrote for Hepburn, so there’s lots of mad­cap privileged-class fun.  A great cast, obvi­ously (love pre-television Lucille Ball, and espe­cially love that the film’s two female leads were both red­heads. What up, red­heads?). Another fab­ulous fantasy coun­try house, as in Woman of the Year.  And couple-pushed-prematurely-into-a-serious-relationship-who-belatedly-discover-they’re-in-love is one of my per­son­al favor­ite rom-com setups.  It obvi­ously strains credu­lity in more than one way (has any­one in the real world ever recited “The Waste Land” as a seduc­tion tac­tic?), but that mostly just adds to the over­all charm.  The major prob­lem for me was that there weren’t enough real obstacles—since it’s a romantic com­edy, a happy end­ing is a fore­gone con­clu­sion, but the ten­sion here nev­er gets quite high enough for even super­fi­cial sus­pense. Was this worth over­look­ing, you think, or did it kind of spoil the whole thing for you?

Glenn Kenny: I actu­ally enjoyed the lack of hurdles; it gave the movie a relaxed, albeit argu­ably aim­less feel that just allowed you to enjoy the char­ac­ters and the set­tings.  And when I say “the char­ac­ters,” I actu­ally mean “the cast,” which, as you poin­ted out, is full of peri­od interest. Aside from the saucy Lucille, there’s also young (not quite yet 30) Keenan Wynn, play­ing an oft-tipsy goof­ball (this was his eighth film), and also-young Gloria Grahame mak­ing an impres­sion way out of pro­por­tion to her role, and screen time, as a flower girl. (The fel­low between Tracy and Hepburn above, incid­ent­ally, is Felix Bressart, who you may remem­ber from The Shop Around The Corner and To Be Or Not To Be, as Professor Ginza.) As for the straining-credulity part, it begins right off the bat, with Tracy’s sci­ent­ist char­ac­ter engaged in a seemingly-not-particularly-determined hunt to find an anonym­ous base­ment he can con­vert into a lab, and just hap­pens to land in the manse of Hepburn’s socialite…is THAT what her char­ac­ter is? Truth to tell, as amus­ing as the film can often be, I can’t say that its scen­ario struck me as all that focused. Which is odd, because once again we have the redoubt­able Donald Ogden Stewart adapt­ing a play by Phillip Barry. Don’t know the play, but I can’t say from the film that it neces­sar­ily had the same sense of for­ward motion you get in Holiday or The Philadelphia Story. In point of fact, I have to say that it cer­tainly does take its time get­ting around to what’s ostens­ibly its cent­ral premise, rel­at­ive to the title. Tracy’s dis­pas­sion­ate sci­ent­ist char­ac­ter believes that the con­ceit known as “love” is an actu­al imped­i­ment to human improve­ment, but enters into mar­riage with Hepburn’s char­ac­ter any­way because man needs a help­mate. This leads to some of the film’s fun­ni­er scenes as the two exper­i­ment with the breath­ing con­trap­tion Tracy’s work­ing on for the war effort (these scenes make it look like Hepburn’s in some kind of Robot Monster-ish sci-fi film) but of course the whole thing leads to you-know-what, and Tracy’s char­ac­ter gets a rel­at­ively sweet comeup­pance. One prob­lem, such as it is, is that Tracy’s too warm a screen pres­ence to cred­ibly pull off a dis­pas­sion­ate char­ac­ter. A stronger director—this film was helmed by Harold S. Bucquet, best known for the Dr. Kildare pic­tures, and this was actu­ally his last com­pleted fea­ture, he died in 1946—might have been cap­able of put­ting the pro­ceed­ings on more sol­id ground. But in the end it doesn’t seem to mat­ter much. If I under­stand cor­rectly, part of the film’s charm is that you don’t par­tic­u­larly hook into it as a nar­rat­ive, but rather as a couple of pleas­ant and some­times slightly odd hours spent with its stars. No?

Claire Kenny: Yes, abso­lutely. For that reas­on, I think it’s a very good film to watch if, say, you hap­pen to be home in bed with a fever (I real­ize that sounds like damning with faint praise, but Flu Appeal can be a hard cine­mat­ic sweet spot to hit, and every col­lec­tion needs a few of these movies). We seem to be com­ing away from these with very sim­il­ar impres­sions; I think the closest we’re going to get in the way of lively dis­agree­ment is on minor points, and in that spir­it, I have to dis­pute the idea that Tracy is too warm to pull off the Pat Jamieson char­ac­ter. He’s no Mr. Rochester, but he’s prickly enough—his per­sona in this kind of movie is usu­ally on the curmudgeon-to-teddybear spec­trum, and if any­thing, I think he goes light on the teddy­bear notes, here. In fact (brief digres­sion) this reminds me of the only non-Beckinsale-related issue I had with the cast of Scorsese’s The Aviator, which was Kevin O’Rourke as Spencer Tracy. To be clear, I think O’Rourke is a ter­rif­ic and under­u­til­ized char­ac­ter act­or, and in prin­ciple I was really happy to see him get that kind of show­case. But he reads as way too much of a smooth­ie for me to see any of Spencer Tracy’s rough edges and lumpy bits* in him. All of which is to say: Spencer Tracy in Without Love—not too warm, not too dis­pas­sion­ate, but just right as far as I’m con­cerned. But…yeah, besides that, I think we com­pletely agree here. Not much more to say about the afore­men­tioned breath­ing con­trap­tion, though its sil­li­ness really can­not be over­stated. Viewers would do well not to get too mired down in ques­tions of what it’s actu­ally sup­posed to be doing, which I’m not con­vinced made any sense even in the con­text of the time. Otherwise I’ll just say again: what’s not to like?

*Spencer Tracy’s Lumpy Bits is a lim­ited edi­tion fla­vor, made with organ­ic, fair trade ingredi­ents. Not recom­men­ded for chil­dren under the age of 18.

Glenn Kenny: Yours is as good a last word to pro­nounce on the film, so I’ll let you have it, except to note, as you pre­dicted I would, that I was very pleased to see that one of the few extras on the DVD, which was ori­gin­ally a stand-alone Warner release, is Swing Shift Cinderella, which is one of my all-time favor­ite Tex Avery car­toons and which reminds me how bad I’d like a DVD (or Blu-ray) col­lec­tion of Avery stuff to sur­face some time. Here’s a par­tic­u­larly nice image, pre­lude to a clas­sic Avery male discombobulation:

And speak­ing of dis­com­bob­u­la­tions, I see that our next film is Elia Kazan’s The Sea of Grass, a prob­lem pic­ture if there ever was one. And that it’s my turn to lead off the dis­cus­sion. I’ll need to gath­er my thoughts…