STATE OF THE UNION: Blu-ray (MGM/Liberty Films, 1948) Universal Home Video
The winning team to beat – Spencer ‘the consummate actor’s
actor’ Tracy and Kate ‘the great’ Hepburn, in yet another variation
on their sober depictions of marital bliss, herein momentarily turned asunder,
and unequivocally to prove never the twain shall meet between politics and a
basically honest man, in director, Frank Capra’s State of the Union
(1948). The subplot in Capra’s classy classic takes on an uncanny
verisimilitude, with Tracy’s political incumbent, Grant Matthews, aspiring to
greatness, while having an extramarital tryst with steely newspaper maven, Kay
Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury) right under his wife, Mary’s (Hepburn) nose. In
life, it was Tracy’s wife, Louise Treadwell who bore the brunt and disquieting stigma
of remaining legally wed to a man more wholly invested in his relationship with
Hepburn, whom Tracy had met and fallen in love with on the set of Woman of
the Year (1942). Owing to Hollywood’s self-governing strain of screen
censorship, in State of the Union, Lansbury’s enterprising gal/pal on
the side gets her comeuppances. In life, and rather remarkably, Hepburn never
did, her reputation virtually unscathed – even, Teflon-coated.
To Hepburn’s credit, she remained apart from Tracy’s
funeral in 1967, allowing his family to publicly mourn while she wept her tears
in private. Much of Hollywood, and indeed, the world’s acceptance of the
Tracy/Hepburn affair to remember was owed the actors’ ability to convey an
ideal and respectable ‘timeless’ and endearing quality to their ‘fictional’ ardor
on the screen, either as lovers on the cusp of marriage, newlyweds or
established marrieds. The impression here was Tracy and Hepburn - the idyllic
representation of Mr. and Mrs. America, circa their generation – proof positive,
in art you could literally get away with anything. Similarly, lest we forget how
Ingrid Bergman had been decried as a wanton and ousted from the American
picture-biz for nearly a decade following her extra-marital romance with
Italian director, Roberto Rossellini. Two
decades later, the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor flagrante delicto in Rome on
the set of 1960’s Cleopatra managed to generate white hot
scandal, branding Taylor a vicious home-wrecker, denounced on the floor of
Congress. Yet, Tracy and Hepburn emerged from their frayed collars and cuffs, embraced
as the perfect ‘marrieds’, even if, in reality, they were never to tie that
knot.
As written by Myles Connolly and Anthony Veiller, based
on Russel Crouse/Howard Lindsay’s, 1945 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same
name, State of the Union was Capra’s only movie for MGM, and, the last
under his indie production banner, Liberty Films – brokering a distribution
deal with Mayer’s dream factory, but with the lion’s share of profits dovetailing
back into Metro’s coffers. Capra, and his writers remained extremely faithful
to the play, perennially updated by Crouse and Lindsay to reflect the ‘then’
current times. It remains one of those Hollywood ironies, what once played as
seemingly hyperbolic satire in 1948, to illustrate the overweening and
blind-sided ambitions and hypocrisies of a corrupt backdoor political system
and its insidious taint on an honest man, so as to make his personal platform
in party-sanctioned politics virtually unrecognizable…even to him, today is
debuts as a far more revealing, even solemn reminder of how far Washington
graft has slipped down that rabbit hole, crafting stick figures with no soul from
our preprocessed and self-aggrandizing heads of state.
Hollywood's dream merchants of the golden age were
savvy businessmen to be sure. But they were also blessed with intuitive
creativity, an essential in a fledgling industry, though almost entirely, and
regrettably, lacking from our more well-established picture-making subculture today.
One of the most enduring ghost flowers from this mythical age was the creation
of magnificent ‘screen teams’ - perfect pairings that became iconic touchstones
of our shared movie-going experience. Audiences looked forward to seeing these
familiar faces do familiar things, but always in new and interesting stories.
Over the years there have been many such alliances: Greer Garson and Walter
Pigeon, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, Gable and
Lana Turner, and, of course, who can forget Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney? But
if you had to pick just one team to exemplify this legacy, I suspect the vote
would be unanimously cast for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. By the time
they made their debut together, each had already been working steadily - if
unevenly - in the industry for more than 10 years. Their respective bodies of
work apart had made their faces easily identifiable. Both had cache at the box
office, although Tracy's was more secure than Hepburn’s by 1942. If, apart,
they held their own, together they were nothing less than dynamite - the
quintessence of martial perfection, as seen in 9 movies between 1942 and 1967,
the year of Tracy's death. The truth, of course, was far removed from this
idyllic on-screen portrait. Tracy, a devote Catholic, was already married with
two children, while Hepburn had managed a string of highly publicized affairs –
including one with legendary recluse, Howard Hughes - that, like her movie
career, had seen more downs than ups.
Labeled 'box office poison', Hepburn managed to claw
her way back to stardom after appearing in both the stage and screen versions of
The Philadelphia Story (1940), buying the rights to Philip Barrie’s play
outright and refusing to sell to Mayer unless he cast her in the lead. Owing to
the whirlwind success of it on Broadway, Mayer relented. You see, he figured,
even with Hepburn’s bad rep’, the picture would likely be a hit. What Mayer
could not have fathomed was that with Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story
turned into box office gold. Always a savvy and headstrong businesswoman,
Hepburn leveraged her clout to get Mayer to agree to her choosing her next projects.
And thus, came Woman of the Year
(1942) and with it, Hepburn’s hand-picked choice of Tracy for her leading man -
the beginning of a truly memorable partnership. By the time. By the time State
of the Union was being planned, Tracy and Hepburn had solidified their relationship
as a power-brokering Hollywood couple. As for Capra, after a decade’s worth of
solid work for Columbia’s vulgarian/chief, Harry Cohn, he was ready for a
change. No stranger to the political milieu (Capra had extolled both its
virtues and vices in 1939’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), in State
of the Union, Capra decidedly had some of the finest writing and most
excellent cast at his disposal. Apart from the three principals, Tracy, Hepburn
and Lansbury, the roster included Metro fav, Van Johnson as cynical reporter
come PR man, Spike McManus, Adolph Menjou (as wily political puppet-master, Jim
Conover), Oz’s wicked witch, Margaret Hamilton as Conover’s homely maid, Norah,
smitten with Spike, Maidel Turner as an appropriately inebriated senator’s
wife, Lulabelle Alexander, and, MGM veteran, Lewis Stone in a brilliant cameo
as the curmudgeonly and ailing newspaper magnet, Sam Thorndyke.
Our story begins in Thorndyke’s imposing manor – the dying
fossil awaiting the arrival of his estranged daughter, Kay. Sam is bitter.
Indeed, his whole life has been spent in an attempt to put a Republican in the White
House. To this end, Sam confides in Kay, he long resented her for not being a
son, but now recognizes a passion in her more vital, threatening and determined
than any male heir could have offered in her stead. Making Kay promise she will make her lover, aircraft
magnate, Grant Matthews, the next President of the United States, Kay realizes
too well this will be their farewell meeting. As she agrees to her father’s
terms and closes the door, Kay awaits the sound of a single gunshot as Sam
takes his own life. While the gaggle of reporters waiting downstairs storm in,
eager to get their first pictures of this gruesome scene, Kay sets her sights
on raising Cain in the Thorndyke newspapers. Now, Kay courts Republican strategist,
Jim Conover to promote Grant, a virtual unknown as the incumbent for the White
House. With Conover’s backing, Grant is sure to win. Problem: Conover is
unimpressed by ‘dark horses.’ He would prefer Thomas E. Dewey, Robert A. Taft,
or former Governor of Minnesota, Harold Stassen. Worse, the initial meeting
between Conover and Grant, with Kay and Spike in attendance goes badly as Grant
openly confesses, he wants no part of the game. Kay, however, goads him. She
further offers to remove herself from the equation. For sometime now, Kay has
been Grant’s mistress and Mary, Grant’s wife, knows it. Conover, however, is
convinced Grant will never ‘sell’ to an audience unless he can present himself
as the devoted husband and family man.
To this end, Grant is coaxed to invite Mary to Washington, to help him
stomp the campaign trail.
Despite her deep misgivings, Mary still believes her
husband is a basically honest man – moreover, one who can win on his own dynamite
ideals and passionate speech-making. At first, Grant tests these waters,
unfiltered by Conover. Alas, gradually, Conover begins to get his hooks into
Grant, rewriting his ideals on a scripted tether and using him to secure graft deals
with Bill Nolan Hardy (Charles Dingle) Sen. Lauterback (Pierre Watkin) and
Grace Orval Draper (Florence Auer) – enterprising special interests who want
something more for their show of support than Grant’s assurances he’ll do a
good job once he is ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Aware of Kay’s intimate
involvement in Grant’s campaign, Mary is forced to swallow her pride and invite
her husband’s mistress to their home for a politically staged radio broadcast,
also to include ringing endorsements from her and the couple’s two young
children, Grant Jr. (Georgie Nokes) and Joyce (Patti Brady). But as Mary
observes her husband’s entire modus operandi being sabotaged, or rather, manhandled
by Kay and Conover, she elects to get tight with Southern Justice Alexander’s
(Raymond Walburn) wife, Lulabelle. At
the last possible moment, Mary seemingly withdraws her support from the
broadcast, retiring her children to bed before they have had the opportunity to
testify on their father’s behalf. Hurriedly, Conover and Kay craft a monologue
for Kay to offer in Mary’s stead. But then, Mary attends the microphone,
reading from Conover’s pre-processed script. While Kay is thoroughly impressed
by Mary’s sacrifice, Grant is morally disgusted by it. Having sold out his
ideals, he cannot bear to watch his more altruistic ‘better half’ do the same.
Interrupting Mary at the mic, Grant makes a public apology to his wife and to
the constituents who believed in him. He spills the beans on Conover and Kay
and begs the listening audience for his forgiveness. He doesn’t deserve to be President.
Dismantled in their backdoor ambitions to run the White House from the inside,
Kay fires Spike, who is almost immediately rehired by Conover, presumably, as
he plots to market another incumbent for the job.
State of the Union is a potent
piece of Capra-corn, one of the director’s finest in a canon of few misfires,
and a potpourri of sweet-smelling successes dating all the way back to the
early sound era. Capra’s post-war offerings would not as consistently strike
such a high-water mark of class, integrity, and story-telling brilliance. But
herein, Capra is at his absolute best, and why not? The Tracy/Hepburn chemistry
is working overtime. Our empathy here is with Grant and Mary, two old marrieds
who have allowed personal vanity, complacency and even jealousy to corrupt
their otherwise indestructible marriage. At only age, 23, Angela Lansbury
exudes the austere glamor of an accomplished and scheming paramour. Precisely where
Lansbury learned to be so utterly ruthless is open for discussion. I suppose it’s
why they call it acting. But in this, her 10th movie, after a
stunning Oscar-nominated debut in 1944’s Gaslight, and with a myriad of performances
in between to attest to her diversity and skills, she oozes an absolute
ruthlessness and conniving venom. It’s a great and uncompromising portrait of ‘the
other woman’ and it proves supremely successful as the antithesis to Mary –
Hepburn, cast, and playing against type, as the devote, oft tear-stained ‘little
women’ with big ideas about the strength of character in her man. Van Johnson yuks
it up, strictly for laughs, with a thin veneer of hard-bitten sarcasm, while
Adolph Menjou provides a restrained, yet potent turn as the brutally invested
puppet master, determined to remake Grant Matthews in his own image of the ideal
candidate. State of the Union is a movie every red-blooded American man,
woman and child should see today. It speaks truth to power, and, in an age
where such messages are decidedly unfashionable to highly censorable, boy do we
need movies like this now!
State of the Union arrives on
Blu-ray via Universal Home Video. Precisely how Uni became the rights holder on
a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer distributed movie remains open for discussion. One
possible explanation is Capra retrained the rights to the only two movies made
under his indie production house, Liberty Films. As, the other movie under than
banner, 1946’s It’s A Wonderful Life eventually came to be owned by
Paramount Pictures, and much of the pre-50’s Paramount library was later
acquired by MCA/Universal under a shrewd TV broadcasting deal in 1958, it’s
possible State of the Union was part of this sell-off too. However, it
happened, the state of this Blu-ray is, frankly, disappointing. Universal, not
known for their progressive approach to deep catalog preservation and
restoration, has made the least of a golden opportunity here. When they
released the picture to DVD back in 2002, they retained the MGM ‘Leo the lion’
logo as it originally appeared for the theatrical release. Curiously, that logo
is absent on this Blu-ray. Although we hear Leo’s roar, the screen remains
artificially blacked out until Capra’s Liberty Pictures logo appears.
The first two reels are plagued by a curious instability
– gate weave, and a sudden ‘left to right’ jerking of the center portion of the
screen, further marred by intermittent edge enhancement. The gray scale on this B&W 1080p transfer
sports some fairly anemic contrast. At times, the image is much too bright,
though oddly, with contrast that does not suggest boosting. Fine details are
excellently realized throughout. Although age-related artifacts appear, they
are never to egregious levels. Not sure what’s going on here, but several
scenes during the montage, charting Grant’s rising political career, are window-boxed
on all four sides, as are the main titles. These inserts have come from a dupe,
or second-generation print master, and suffer from further reduced contrast to
muddy and soften the overall integrity of the image, plus, an amplification of grain
to artificial levels, with the added hindrance of more noticeable age-related
artifacts. The audio is 1.0 DTS mono and amply represented with crisp, clean
dialogue. As with all Uni product, this one comes with NO extras – not even a
theatrical trailer. For shame! Bottom line: Uni goes the cheap and quick route
yet again. Honestly, I don’t understand their attitude toward vintage catalog.
Just to have a movie in hi-def in not enough these days. Not that it ever was.
But since other studios, most notably, the Warner Archive have proven one can
do stellar work on home video and still make a buck, it really is about time
Uni did some soul-searching regarding their own formidable assets. Too many are
languishing in purgatory. The powers that be need to do a lot more than simply ‘manage’
their assets! Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the
best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
2.5
EXTRAS
0
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