Christopher Strong

This early Katherine Hepburn picture about a daring woman pilot united the most liberated, confident and assertive female in film history, Hepburn herself, with the early sound era's most tragic female victim, Helen Chandler. Chandler was a gifted actress who gained film immortality as the exquisite blonde Mina in Dracula, only to fall victim to bad parts, bad choices, and a casual drinking habit that cost her roles and swiftly became compulsive and fatal alcoholism.

Haunting and heart-wrenching in the extreme, the film almost unintentionally sets up the brave Lady Cynthia (Hepburn) in direct contrast to the embittered, tormented and weak-willed Monica (Chandler.) Hepburn is the daring lady pilot enjoying a wicked affair with strong, solid Sir Christopher Strong, while Chandler is Strong's weak daughter, the jealous and resentful Monica.

"Of course I do whatever I choose," Hepburn announces, striding into the drawing room in her daring and very masculine attire. "What woman doesn't?" The only woman wearing pants in this movie, Hepburn hardly seems to notice that other women lack her strength. Only a few feet away we see a lovely blonde on the sofa, her eyes blazing and her hands shaking as she gulps down a drink in helpless defiance. Helen Chandler hardly needed to act as she portrays a woman whose guts have been torn out already, but her smallest gestures are still remarkable. Taking the first drink, waiting for the effect, shuddering with relief. The constant fidgeting, the inability to look anyone in the eye. The twitching of her hand when trying to wave off questions about her drinking.

As the film unfolds, Monica is supposed to be spoiled and disdainful, but Helen Chandler willingly or not somehow puts across an almost pitiable quality of spineless dependency. Monica lives in terror that her father will discover her drinking, yet hates the laughing, confident and healthy woman who has engaged his interest. Trapped in her own life of appearances and lies, her weak, sweet-faced mother can do nothing but look on worriedly as angry Monica stews on the sofa, either puffing greedily on a cigarette or gulping another drink.

In the big "party" scene, Hepburn is is calm and triumphant, while Chandler's Helen is just the opposite -- her laughter too loud, her movements too frantic, her wild gestures almost a savage parody of youthful enjoyment. It's like there's a fiend inside her, a demon who has taken the soul and left only a fragile and hopeless shell.

The demon was alcohol, and by the time this movie was made Helen Chandler was only a shell of her former self.

CHRISTOPHER STRONG (RKO Radio, 1933), directed by Dorothy Arzner, with a haunting score by Max Steiner, began production as "A Great Desire." Starring Katharine Hepburn in her second feature film following her successful debut in A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT (1932), it pairs her opposite Colin Clive for the only time. Set in England, she plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, an enthusiastic aviatrix (possibly inspired on Amelia Earheart), who is over 21 and has never had a lover or an affair because she makes no time for it. All that changes when she meets Sir Christopher Strong (Colin Clive), whose life is not only absorbed in his political career, but with his wife (Billie Burke) and his single adult daughter (Helen Chandler) who has a married lover (Ralph Forbes), but becomes her husband after he is finally granted his divorce.

CHRISTOPHER STRONG is particularly interesting mainly because of some pre-production code stuff, and seeing Kate playing "the other woman" on screen for the only time who meets her dismal climax, something not common in a Hepburn movie. There is even a "bedroom scene" which camera focuses mainly on Kate's hand by the lamp while the viewer only hears some mono dialog exchange between her and Chris before she turns off the lights, leaving something to the viewer's imagination. By today's standards, this is nothing compared to what Hollywood would make of this particular scene today. I won't reveal any more about the plot, but this is early Kate Hepburn as the liberated woman with carefree ideas that come back to punish her. Maybe casting Hepburn in this type of role was RKO 's way of trying to develop her into a tragic heroine like MGM's own Greta Garbo. Worth a look, however, especially seeing Colin Clive in something other than that as Dr. Henry Frankenstein, his most famous performance(s) in Universal's FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935). CHRISTOPHER STRONG, which formerly played on the American Movie Classics cable channel prior to 2001, can be seen occasionally on Turner Classic Movies. It was once available on video cassette through the Nostalgia Merchant and RKO Home Video, but presently, it's out of print. Look quickly for future Warner Brothers actress Margaret Lindsay appearing in a small role as a girl who wants to get Cynthia's autograph. Not a box office success when released, but better roles for Kate in 1933 would soon follow with MORNING GLORY and LITTLE WOMEN. (**1/2)

Sir CHRISTOPHER STRONG, staunch family man and Conservative MP, finds himself falling in love with a free-spirited aviatrix.

Given splendid production values by RKO Radio Pictures, this high-class soap opera proved to be an excellent showcase for the talents of young Katharine Hepburn. Tall, angular, tomboyish, in a role patterned after Amelia Earhart, Hepburn is utterly fascinating as the woman who's never loved. Whether striding about in men's clothing or swathed in an outrageous moth costume, she makes the heartache & jubilation of her character play across her expressive features. It is almost painful to try imagining anyone else in the role. Her final scene, as she gives the ultimate sacrifice, is especially poignant.

Colin Clive seems an unlikely choice as the object of Hepburn's passion, but he acts his part with great earnestness, deftly underplaying what could have easily been a stiff & cardboard characterization. In a serious role, the wonderful Billie Burke skillfully delineates the agony of the unloved wife. Like Hepburn, she remains in the memory long after the film ends.

Helen Chandler & Irene Browne, as Clive's daughter & sister respectively, do well with their portrayals of socially irresponsible females. Ralph Forbes, as an upper class philanderer, also resonates in an important supporting role; here was an actor with the talent & charm to have become a major Hollywood star, but it was not to be.

Pioneering director Dorothy Arzner includes subtle suggestions of the sapphist in Hepburn's character, to be rejected or respected by individual viewers. As it is, certain situations in the plot show its pre-Production Code status.

Christopher Strong is a rather short and underbaked movie. The film starts out with a young woman and her boyfriend participating in a treasure hunt where they have to find a woman over twenty who has never had a love affair and a man who has been married over 5 years who has never had an affair. The woman brings her father, the titular Christopher Strong, along and her boyfriend finds a career driven aviator Cynthia Darrington, who will cop to being over twenty and having had no boyfriends. There is an immediate attraction between Christopher and Cynthia and the bulk of the movie is devoted to the eventual consummation of their love affair and the consequences that follow.

This was only Hepburn's second movie, but Darrington is a classic Hepburn role, independent, honest, and tomboyish. Colin Clive is really too young for the role he was meant to play and has ridiculously little chemistry with Hepburn. They barely register as a couple at all.

Unless you're a fan of one of the stars or an Arzner completist, this pre-code film isn't really worth your time.

I'm not quite sure why the title of this film is not Lady Cynthia Darrington since the film rises and falls on the action of Hepburn's character and not on Colin Clive's title role of Christopher Strong.

Clive is a most proper member of Parliament, probably a Tory, who through a treasure hunt, a la My Man Godfrey, he meets Hepburn who is a young titled woman who has an interest in aviation. In fact she's the British version of Amelia Earhart.

Clive and wife Billie Burke have a daughter, Helen Chandler, who is something of a wild child. She's having an affair with the unhappily married Ralph Forbes. But before long it's Clive and Hepburn who get involved.

Colin Clive gives us a perfect portrayal of a man going through midlife crisis when everything just seems to settle in a dull routine. He's so taken by Hepburn's vitality and independence that their affair has an inevitability about it.

Dorothy Arzner one of the few women directors around at that point also gives us one of Kate's very first feminist icon roles. Her first film, A Bill of Divorcement, had Kate as a dutiful daughter who gives up her man to care for an insane father. Kate has some critical choices to make in Christopher Strong as well.

What she does might not make sense to today's audience, but made perfectly good sense in post Victorian Great Britain. She and Clive make a wonderful pair of tragic lovers in a drama that while old fashioned still holds up.