Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26024 in VHS
• Released on: 1991-04-10
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Customer Reviews

An early and quite underappreciated cross-dressing comedy
For a long time "Sylvia Scarlett" was considered a failure, and the big joke was that Katharine Hepburn looked better disguised as a boy in this 1936 film than she did as herself. But we are talking Hepburn starring oppostie Cary Grant, the same pair that made "Bringing Up Baby," "Holiday," and "The Philadelphia Story." We are also talking director George Cukor who directed the last two films on that list with this pair as well. Today the judgment is that "Sylvia Scarlett" is a film that was ahead of its time, which makes sense when you considered how long it took American to decide that Katharine Hepburn was the quintessential modern independent woman.

Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn) commits a bit of larceny and is forced to flee France with his daughter Sylvia (Hepburn) masquerading as a boy. Along the way they meet up with Jimmy Monkley (Grant), a cockney ne'er-do-well. In London they start doing some creative swindling, hooking up with a Maudie Tilt (Dennie Moore), a daffy servant girl who becomes Henry's wife. Meanwhile, Slyvia becomes enamored with handsome young artist Michael Fane (Brian Aherne), who, of course, thinks she is a boy. But when Michael starts to fall for Lily (Natalie Paley), Sylvia has to become a woman again to get the man she loves (pretend for the sake of argument that she is going to end up with the guy who gets third billing in the movie).

"Sylvia Scarlett" is based on the 1918 Comptom MacKenzie novel "The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett," but this ends up being Cukor's film and a charming story about vagabond thieves. Hepburn's androgyny does not strike contemporary audiences as being all that odd while Grant is playing the character closest to his own younger days of any in his entire career and stealing all the scenes. Gwenn and Moore are delightful as the less than suitable parental figures for the gang. Certainly compared to other cross-dressing comedies that have been made over the years, "Sylvia Scarlett" actually ends up being relatively realistic. Note: Natalie Paley was actually a Russian princess, the daughter of the Russian Grand Duke Paul, who was an uncle of the late Czar Nicholas, which would make her a cousin of the tragic Anastasia).

Lily: "Were you a girl dressed as as a boy? Or are you a boy dressed as a girl?"
In George Cukor's SYLVIA SCARLETT, Sylvia (Hepburn, disguised as a boy named Sylvester) and her good-for-nothing father (Gwenn) escape an embezzlement arrest in France and flee to England, where they throw in with a grifter, Cockney-accented Jimmy Monkley (Grant).

The three meet Maudie Tilt (Moore), a housemaid with stage aspirations, and the new quartet become music hall entertainers who travel by caravan from one resort to another. Sylvia (still in disguise) has to fend off Maudie's amorous advances; a further complication arises when "Sylvester" falls in love with handsomely charming artist Michael Fane (Aherne).


"Sylvia Scarlett" is available on WARNER's DVD set, KATHARINE HEPBURN COLLECTION, along with "Morning Glory" (1933), "Dragon Seed" (1944), "Without Love" (1945), "Undercurrent" (1946) and TV movie "The Corn Is Green" (1979).

Also recommended:
Kate Hepburn next appeared as MARY OF SCOTLAND (1936), opposite Fredric March. Directed by John Ford. (VHS) (DVD)

In 1936, Cary Grant and Jean Harlow lit up the screen in SUZY. (VHS only)


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.

(6.2) Sylvia Scarlett (1935) -Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant/Edmund Gwenn/Brian Aherne (uncredited: Dennie Moore/Natalie Paley/May Beatty)

Really tedious and convoluted plot, but Katherine's a hoot in drag.
The first half-hour or so was pretty good. Then the director/writer/who-knows-who-else introduced a zillion plot angles just to liven things up. Or something. At which point we should have just shut off the tape and done something we like better. We stuck it out, hoping it would all come together, and at the end looked at each other and said "What the hell happened?"

Still, if you love Katherine H, you'll like seeing one of her earlier works.