After three years touring on stage (Shakespeare & Shaw), Katharine Hepburn returned to the screen in four overwrought spinster roles, banking on continuing the success of THE AFRICAN QUEEN/’52. David Lean kept her on form in SUMMERTIME, but desperation seeped into her playing under journeyman Ralph Thomas’s coarse direction here, and under novice helmer Joseph Anthony in THE RAINMAKER before long time co-star Spencer Tracy clamped down, saving the ultra-conventional DESK SET/’57. A lumpy, none too funny Cold War farce, PETTICOAT was a Bob Hope indie production (his Paramount days all but over), a late original screenplay from the great Ben Hecht, hoping to improve on his NINOTCHKA rip-off, COMRADE X/’40. And it does . . . a little bit, in spite of its dreadful reputation modestly coming to life about halfway thru, largely on its solid farce structure. (Though incessantly broad playing & lame jokes may keep you from getting that far; Hepburn in particular playing to the back of the house as if still on tour.) The plot has disappointed Soviet pilot Hepburn defecting (or not) to ‘our side,’ with U.S. flyer Hope ordered to win her over. A Red, White & Blue convert and a propaganda victory . . . or vice versa if Hepburn gets her way. But the main laughs come in seeing how much Hecht’s script plays like JET PILOT meets ONE, TWO, THREE, a pair of Cold War items not yet released, placing Janet Leigh & John Wayne from JET and Horst Buchholz & James Cagney in Billy Wilder’s 1,2,3, in the Hepburn/Hope spots, respectively. Things don’t get much weirder than that.
DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, Josef von Sternberg’s vaguely ridiculous JET PILOT/’57, held back till it was an anachronism by over-controlling producer Howard Hughes, and ONE, TWO, THREE/’61 which, like PETTICOAT, finds comedy behind stale gags largely in pace & structure.
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