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Fashion & Film Feature

Very, Very Natural and Herself: Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby

Is Katharine Hepburn playing herself in Bringing Up Baby (1938)? And if so, why not? Katharine Hepburn turned Hollywood on its head. She fearlessly and uncompromisingly set out to become a star in an industry that wanted greatness on its own terms, an industry that often tried to destroy the original few. She wanted greatness […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)

Shakespeare told us love is blind, although there are those who insist he stole it from Chaucer. It is Preston Sturges who reminds us of the truism in The Lady Eve (1941), a screwball constructed like a clever card trick that always comes up aces. That’s “screwball” as in “farcical romantic comedy” – Shakespeare also has […]

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Feature Screengem

Screengem: The Plaid Overnight Case (What’s Up Doc?, 1972)

Once upon a time, there was a plaid overnight case… It may not have the heft of a dinosaur bone or the bite of a trained leopard, but the plaid (that’s tartan, to UK readers) overnight case in What’s Up Doc? is a far more effective spur to action than anything in Howard Hawks’s Bringing […]