Autumnsong: 25 Days of Christmas

Holiday | 1938

“Before you can be loyal to another, you must be loyal to yourself,” said Julian Bashir somewhere in season 2 of Deep Space 9, and his words are put to the test on this romantic comedy of 1938. Holiday tells the story of Jhonny Case, a hardworking free spirit who’s flabbergasted at discovering that his bride to be is from an incredibly wealthy family, only to discover that he (the two of them actually) would have to chose between their wealth and traditional values and his free-thinking lyfestyle. The movie begins at Christmas, with a mass, carols and decorations, and that’s about as much of it as there is, as the most part of the action happens at New year’s eve.

Jhonny and Julia met on Holiday in Lake Placid, New York. The fell in love for each other and their passion burned strong enough that he proposed to her after a mere ten days, not knowing anything about the girl’s family (and very little about the girl, to be honest). But Jhonny was no ordinary man and Julia said yes, planning a wedding in just two weeks…

Jhonny had no idea Julia was the daughter of Edward Seton, a banker, one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the city. In fact, when he calls on her house he knocks the back door assuming that his bride to be must work in the kitchens of that grand house. When he discovers that she is actually the daughter of Seton he is astounded but not put off. In his mind, he loves the girl, and that’s enough, it makes every other difference between them too minimal to be important. When he is introduced to her brother and sister things go great and he feels incredibly at home with the two of them.

Ned, the brother is a young man whose spirit has been broken by their father’s authoritative personality. His love of music, all of his passions have been slowly pushed aside to make room for the qualities he would need to succeed his father at the bank. But Ned’s got his heart in the right place, and he even fixes Jhonny with a new tie for the dreaded first meeting with his father. He’s the only one that sees Linda’s qualities and the only one who tells them to her:

“You're twice as attractive as Julia ever thought of being. You've got twice the looks, twice the mind and 10 times the quality. You could charm a bird off a tree if you would.”

Linda, Julia’s sister is an altogether different girl from her sister. Julia is beautiful, blond, stuffy and dutiful, very much like her father in her thoughts and ideals. Linda is the black sheep in the family.. She hates that her family seems to be drowned in her father’s wealth and dreams of discovering her place in the world, which she hasn’t, but not for the lack of try. The girl can do acrobatics, she paints, knows some music, and many other things, but none with too much depth… She has a room in the house which she keeps in her own taste, a “playing room” that seems to be the only place in the mansion with a heart. It has Ned’s abandoned musical instruments (a piano, a drum set, a banjo…), her paintings, a fireplace and even a puppet theatre.

Linda and Jhonny get along splendidly well. In fact, it is with Linda, not her sister that Jhonny first discusses his unusual plans for the near future, not because he meant to keep things from Julia, but simply because the opportunity hadn’t presented itself for them to talk about it…

It’s when Jhonny talks about his ideas (with the dreamy intonation that Cary Grant gives him) that this screwball comedy becomes something more than an ordinary script… Jhonny is a dreamer of impossible dreams, a young man who knows his own mind and who wants to live by his own ideals in spite of what the rest of the world may think about it. Jhonny doesn’t want too much money. He doesn’t care about that. He wants to go on Holiday for an unlimited period of time, for as long as he needs it:

“I've been working since I was 10. I want to find out why I'm working. The answer can't be just to pay bills or pile up more money. Even if you do, the government takes most of it. (...)That's what I intend to find out. The world is changing out there. There's new exciting ideas running around. Some right, some cock-eyed, but they are affecting our lives. I want to know how I stand, where I fit in, what all this will mean to me. I can't find that out sitting behind a desk in an office. I'm going to get money together, and then knock off. (…) I want to save part of my life for myself. There's a catch to it though, it's got to be part of the young part. You know, retire young and work old. Come back and work when I know what I'm working for.”

And to Linda, all of these ideas make perfect sense. She is amazed that the young man hasn’t caught the “reverence for riches” that she’s been surrounded by all her life. “Money is our God here,” she says at some point, and she’s quite right. She encourages her sister to hold on to this guy.

“Dear girl, do you realize that life walked into this house this morning? Darling, don’t let him get away.”

But her sister is much more sceptical than that. To Julia it is the same old story and she’s being ‘married for her money’. Which goes to show how little she knows Jhonny after all. Only a few minutes before that conversation with her sister, Linda heard Jhonny talking about how he didn’t want her dough, he had to earn his own.

One could anticipate that the first meeting with mr. Seton would be disastrous but it isn’t, not at all. Jhonny doesn’t have much money but he is not intimidated by mr. Seton at all. In fact, as soon as he sits down with the man he owns the conversation from beginning to end and gives his future father in law a full account of his personal history.

“You see, my father had a small grocery store in Baltimore. Yes. He never made a go of it though... ...and when he died he left several debts which Mother worked hard to clear up. I was just a child at the time and I couldn't help her very much. Mother died the May before my 16th birthday. (…) I hadn't any connections except for an uncle who's in the roofing business in Wilmington. He wasn't much good, though. He was inclined to get drunk. Still is. Mother had wanted me to go to a big Eastern college so I worked my way through Harvard. In vacations, I worked in a steel mill and in an automobile factory. One summer I drove a garbage truck. (…) They simply happened to be the only jobs I could get but you can learn a lot in a steel mill, a lot you don't get at Harvard."

Pretty soon it becomes clear that mr. Seton won’t be able to find a single fault in the young man and he agrees to announce their wedding during the party at New Year’s eve.

Linda wanted a small party in the playing room but her father insisted upon inviting all the big names in town to their home and in return Linda refused to go downstairs. But Jhonny’s friends, Nick and Susan serendipitously found their way to the playing room upstairs and Linda started a party of her own with them. They talked about the adventures they had with Jhonny, the two of them, and Susan talked about how there aren’t many man like Nicky or Jhonny out there, after which Linda insisted that she and her brother New should also be invited to that ‘exclusive club’. Nicky and Susan think she’s delightful, and they are worried when she assures them that her sister is ‘nothing like her at all’, which sounds like the biggest of compliments to a girl who’s been told she is inadequate all her life.

It doesn’t take long for Ned to go upstairs with food and drinks and when Jhonny finds the four of them that’s when the party really starts. They laughed together, play with the puppets and even do some fancy somersaults until Julia and her father interrupt the party with a severe expression on their faces… It is at this moment that Jhonny discovers her father thinks his dreams make him very “unAmerican”. He expects Jhonny to take a job at the bank before he can be married to his daughter, and it’s most disheartening for him to find out that Julia seems to side with his father in this…

The movie is about this… About Jhonny’s ideas and his internal struggle between keeping true to his love for Julia or being loyal to himself, to what he wants for his life and following his dreams. And it’s also about Linda’s struggle to find it in herself to see her own qualities, to find the strength to escape a life she abhors.

Cary Grant’s acting is fantastic every step of the way. He manages to not be intimidated by his father in law and yet he is never arrogant. He’s had a difficult past but he never emphasizes the most dramatic aspects of it. He has ideas that might be considered far-fetched by some but he believes him and his intensity is so sincere we are taken to believe them as well. He is a man, and even when he’s most disheartened by her actions towards him he stands by her side at the New Year’s party before seeking much needed solitary time. He is not intransigent, nor insecure. A very difficult character played rather masterfully. I am very glad I just got a biography of Cary Grant to learn a bit more about his life…

His love for Julia is undeniable. There are many struggles in the story, and a moment at least in which a line is almost crossed what makes clear that he is confused, but that makes the character even more believable. That he is young, that at 30 years of age he doesn’t have it all figured out yet. He is impulsive both in his decision to propose after a mere 10 days and in what he considers doing/giving up on later.

Katharine Hepburn is equally remarkable as Linda. Her vulnerability as the girl who’s never been good enough is obvious beneath her rebellious actions and her love and admiration for her perfect sister are present every step of the way. Ultimately she’s a very selfless character, and again, a very relatable character indeed. Her relationship with Julia is never petty, does escaping what would have been obvious (and cheap) for a story like this.

This is a light-hearted movie that successfully explore many important issues, like the notions of compatibility and equality in a relationship between a man and a woman, loyalty, class difference and realism versus idealism. It’s not the first screwball comedy I see which successfully accomplishes that and it’s surprising to me that most modern romantic comedies feel so shallow – with shallow scripts and no underlying discussions whatsoever, when there’s such good material in the past to be explored and be inspired by.

Audiences didn’t look too favourably upon this film when it was first launched. America was not yet out of the Depression and a film about a young man who turns down a good job in favour of his unlikely dreams was not very well received. Be that as it may, this story about struggling between standing by ideas that only seem to make sense in your mind and an unpleasant and unwanted reality resonated with me in a very personal level. There isn’t a single thing I would change about this script and I shall look forward to the time when I see this film one more time.