Grace Quigley

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.

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

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.

The coming together of such disparate talents as Katherine Hepburn, director Anthony Harvey and the dreaded team of Cannon supremos Golan & Globus yields certainly the most idiosyncratic treatment of assisted suicide since Edward G. Robinson went to meet his maker in 'Soylent Green' in this project long nurtured by Miss Hepburn which heats up the old chestnut about a citizen hiring a professional hitman to provide his services.

Miss Hepburn and Nick Nolte certainly make strange bedfellows as the client and her employee with quirky contributions from Walter Abel, Kip Le Fever, William Duell and Elizabeth Wilson.

Grace Quigley (Katherine Hepburn), an elderly woman, witnesses a hit man, Seymour Flint (Nick Nolte), in action. She finds that he has dropped his wallet and learns his identity. She then blackmails him into killing her, since she is elderly and has no reason to live but lacks the courage to take her own life. However he quickly develops a fondness for her, as a surrogate mother and so can not kill her. Instead they start assisting in the suicides of friends of Grace who no longer wish to live. The film is black comedy at its best and is one of my favourite films. The characters are likable and, wierdly, we end up rooting for them to die. Nolte's role as a sentimental hit man and his relationship with Grace are particularly amusing. This film is not for those who have a strong repugnant feeling against suicide but if you enjoy the bizarre, then you may very well like this film. If you do, then you could also like Harold and Maude.