George Cukor’s Theatrical Feminism

This chapter reads Cukor's women as spectacle/spectator in a contractual form, with female bodies and talents as self-traded commercial tools. Esther/Vicki (A Star is Born, 1954), Angela (Heller in Pink Tights, 1960), and Lily (A Life of Her Own, 1950) are economic participants in the spectacle industries within which their narratives are set, as well as reflections of Cukor's own preoccupation with the revealing processes of theatrical cinema. Gaslight (1944), though something of an outlier compared to the other three films, is also discussed here. These films reflect his sustained and touching sympathy for working women and women caught in transformation narratives.

Cukor Maudit

This chapter analyzes Cukor's films maudit. Two themes interweave in this chapter: that Cukor's strategy vis-à-vis the Production Code was already in place in the first film to be discussed, Tarnished Lady (1931); and that the economic laws implicit in the Code, the laws of Class, had already been put in their place as cinematic simulacra invented for the occasion. It's a given that all this is always happening inside a film because of Cukor's inscription, in his first features, of a form of filmed theater that stages these codes and their subversion just as it does in the films of Jean Renoir and Orson Welles.

Doubling in the Cinema of George Cukor

This chapter provides an examination of doubling in the spatial, temporal, and perspectival attributes of four Cukor films that at first glance might seem to have little in common—The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), A Double Life (1947), and Bhowani Junction (1956). As this chapter shows, the doubling that occurs in these films evidences a concern with the implications of relationships between here and there, then and now, and seeing and being seen. Moreover, this chapter's critical investigation of such a little-studied dynamic promises to illuminate an aspect of doubling that is no less fundamental to the director's concerns than any other aspects of his cinema.

George Cukor’s Late Style

This chapter explores the tensions in Cukor's late style through three of his later films. Justine (1969) is Cukor's most sustained encounter with modernism and his most vigorous effort to engage with stylistic and narrative “advances” of the New Hollywood. Travels With My Aunt (1972) is something of a retrenchment, unapologetically “old-fashioned” in many ways, yet selectively incorporating new techniques and post-Production Code material in a manner that illustrates Cukor's attitude toward the new dispensation. Rich and Famous (1981) synthesizes these approaches, harking back to Classical Hollywood after the New Hollywood itself had waned, yet it evinces a certain surface chic more effortlessly than any of Cukor's other late films.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides a background into the life and work of film director George Cukor, contextualizing his career within a time of radical transition as Hollywood turned to sound cinema and many of Broadway's brightest talents likewise turned to filmmaking. It also describes Cukor's working methods, influenced by his stage career, during which time he had demonstrated considerable stylistic flair, managerial competence, and bankability or, perhaps better, a knack for turning a profit from diverse projects. These traits and more would serve him well upon his transition into filmmaking, as would his penchant for being an actor's director, deftly working with both his actors and with the minutiae of filmmaking and production.

Libel, Scandal, and Bad Big Names

This chapter discusses four of Cukor's films which focus on socially condoned and legitimated identities, especially on their tendency to articulate a particular performance of self as the truthful and necessary expression of one's identity while concealing broader social forces that work to disempower the individual. These four films also illustrate selves that transcend societal prescriptions and, consequently, cannot ever find stable realization within the filmic world that contains them. The films under scrutiny are: Camille (1936) and Romeo and Juliet (1936), which both feature socially forbidden love; and It Should Happen to You (1954) and Les Girls (1957), both of which explore the problematic female self-image.

The Furthest Side of Paradise

This chapter considers the blunders, failures, and controversies of Cukor's less successful films: Two-Faced Woman (1941), A Woman's Face (1941), Wild is the Wind (1957), Hot Spell (1958), and Winged Victory (1944). Two-Faced Woman, a story of female attractiveness and male desire, suffered from a controversy during its initial release and was furthermore potentially responsible for ending the career of noted actress Greta Garbo. A Woman's Face dealt with a number of issues, including its lead character, pre-production blunders, and other factors. Wild is the Wind and Hot Spell both belong to a series of adult, sensational melodramas made by producer Hal Wallis and featuring the seamy and unglamorous side of life. Winged Victory is a film adaptation of a successful Broadway production, made as a contribution to the American war effort even as it suffered backlash for this same reason.

Cukor’s Tragicomedies of Marriage

This chapter discusses four of Cukor's comedies: Dinner at Eight (1933), No More Ladies (1935), The Women (1939), and The Marrying Kind (1952). They are films largely derived from Broadway successes, rewritten and reimagined for the screen by some of the best writers working in Hollywood alongside a director known not only for his sensitive work with actors but also for infusing drama into all his comedies, to shape both modes with great irony. Through these films, the chapter explores Cukor's structural dynamic of building narrative threads toward a climactic ensemble in the first three films, as well as his focus on working-class marriage in The Marrying Kind.

George Cukor and the Case of an Actor’s Director: Hepburn and/or Tracy in

This chapter studies five films that Cukor made with Katharine Hepburn and / or Spencer Tracy as stars. It aims to give more precise form to his suggestion that a director's role entails understanding what actors can do and facilitating their performances. This examination of the studio director-as-collaborator engages with recent scholarship that has reopened the question of film authorship, moving beyond approaches indebted to either a reconstructed Romanticism or poststructuralism, and tackling directly the thorny issues of intentionality and multiple authorial contributions. At the same time, in its close study of performance this chapter contributes to the growing body of work that explores the manner in which screen acting functions and intersects with those facets of film style that facilitate its operations.

Modulations of the Shot: The Quiet Film Style of George Cukor in

This chapter concentrates on the cinematographic style of Cukor's work, at the same time acknowledging the films' resistance to scholarly analysis as well as their formal restraint. It outlines some of the challenges to analysis that Cukor's films present, and the limitations of the received criticism, before examining a range of diverse titles to see what can be discovered about their formal character. Specifically, the chapter points to particular modulations of the shot that prove characteristic for Cukor's cinema, related to their realistic texture and canny framings. This analysis thus finds fresh affinities across Cukor's oeuvre, extending from the early projects What Price Hollywood? (1932) and Sylvia Scarlett (1935) to the commercial successes of Born Yesterday (1950) and My Fair Lady (1964).