Not very long after Spencer Tracy (1900-1967) had died, director George Cukor, one of Katharine Hepburn's closest friends in Hollywood, gave her a copy of Graham Greene's novel Travels With My Aunt. Hepburn read the book several times before she had thought of a way it could be turned into a screenplay. She worked for months on the project, but Metro producer James Aubrey was not impressed. He thought the charm from the original story had been lost and he feared that Hepburn was too old to portray the younger Aunt Augusta in flashbacks. Hepburn was ungraciously fired from the project, supposedly for refusing to work.
"I would never refuse to work ten days before a picture was scheduled to start. I would consider that an outrage."
"I thought of suing them because I don't feel things like that should be allowed to happen. The script was practically all mine. Cut to hash, but practically all mine... but, then I thought it is a bore, trying to prove that you've been misused. I was never paid a sou for eight months work, sixteen hours a day. I would be curious to know why I was fired. I don't know whether it was Aubrey.... The only thing that he did that really offended me was to write me a letter to KathErine. I thought the least he could do when he fired me was to spell my name right." (Edwards, 360)At any rate, Hepburn was not given any screen credit for the work she put into TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, possibly because she was not a member of the Screen Writers Guild. Jay Presson Allen and Hugh Wheeler were brought in to adapt Graham Greene's novel into a script more acceptable to James Aubrey. The final product varies a great deal from the original story, which is really just a collection of anecdotal stories about a stuffy banker who's life changes when he meets his eccentric aunt for the first time at his mother's funeral.
"You must learn to surrender yourself to extravagance, Henry. Poverty is apt to strike suddenly, like influenza."
"My father was a great traveller?"
"He travelled from one woman to another all through his life, which comes to much the same thing."
"Steward! More champagne."
"Pardon me, miss. We’re just coming in to land."
"Then you’ll have to hurry, won’t you?"
"Oh, the Louvre! All those naked women with parts missing – it’s morbid!"
"I’ve always preferred an occasional orgy to a nightly routine."
Whether penned by Katharine Hepburn or not, TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT is a fun movie. Hepburn would have been very good a Aunt August, but they would have had to cast another actress to play the flashback scenes. Maggie Smith was only nine years younger than Alen McCowen, who played her nephew (in fact, the two actors had been at the Old Vic together back in the 1950s). Many young people who know Maggie Smith only as Professor McGonagall or as the Dowager Countess from "Downton Abbey" might not be aware that she started out in comedy. My favorite Maggie Smith comedies include HOT MILLIONS (1968), starring Peter Ustinov, and MURDER BY DEATH (1976), which will be on TCM next Sunday.
In fact, Alec McCowen is nine years...OLDER than Maggie, which is even funnier !
ReplyDeleteOops! Thank you for the correction!
DeleteI agree - Hepburn would have made a terrific Aunt Augusta.
ReplyDeleteI am a Graham Greene fan and Travels with My Aunt is my favourite novel by Greene. I first saw the film aged 11, result I was blown away by Maggie 's performance and the film in general
ReplyDeleteKatherine is a wonderful actress, however she would have made a dreadful Augusta, Maggie was Augusta.
I then read the novel a year later,Katherine has not only messed up the novel missing the entire second section, I cannot think what she was thinking of at the time as the novel was butchered in the movie.
To reiterate, I know the novel extremely well, as I have reread it many times it was a beautifully crafted novel written when Graham was recovering from his recurrent episodes of bipolar behaviour
The novel is exceptional in that the reader is able to establish empathy with most of the characters in it, a very rare occurrence in today's literature
Maggie would always surpass any performance Katherine would have done as Augusta, why because Maggie I my opinion and in total contradiction to the critical reviews was Augusta had climbed inside August's skin and truly inhabited the role because she understood the raison d'etre of Augusta, Augusta was the true definition of a bonne vivante, from her love affairs to the freedom she found in travel and the excitement of being arrested at any time for her cons, Maggie not only inhabited Augusta's soul, she also understood her mind, Maggie identified with the constant devious cogs for ever ticking in Augusta's mind, as she used anyone in her path in addition and most importantly she was dying inside by the remorse she truly felt for giving Henry up to his father Richard Pulling and his wife, her sister Angelica, there to me is no tender a scene in the movie, than when Henry looks back at Augusta, his true mother on the stairs of her apartment and runs up to her to thank her for her kindness in that moment he reverts to being small child in his mindset feeling lost and unsure of himself and she, Augusta, Maggie, shows a sudden break in her composure as she feels the pang of love and remorse of a mother who adopted her son out, truly beautiful and sublimely and touchingly enacted by both Maggie and Alec.
So no Katherine, although a wonderful actor could not have played a convincing Augusta, that honour belongs only to Maggie now and in the future, nobody will ever surpass her performance.
The finest roles Katherine did was Eleanor of Aquitaine in the Lion in Winter, Rosie in The African Queen, Amanda Wingfield in Williams's Glass Menagerie and in Love among the ruins
My favourite role by Maggie apart from Augusta is Judith Hearne in the lonely passion of Miss Judith Hearne,Miss Medlock Sarah in The Honeypot, Epiphania in Shaw's Millionairess
In addition in my opinion the best actresses to ever perform are Maggie, Vivien leigh, Margaret Leighton, Katherine Hepburn,Helen Mirren, Sian Philips, Michelle Pfeiffer and Meryl Streep, not Sophie 's choice, Ironweed , an extremely beautiful film