Jimmy Stewart Shows Us How It’s Done

Jimmy Stewart Shows Us How It’s Done June 8, 2016

Hepburn_Stewart_Philadelphia_Story There’s been a great deal of unpleasant discussion in the blogosphere this week, and I don’t intend to add to it; but I’ve been repeatedly put in mind of a scene from the movie The Philadelphia Story. Socialite Tracy Lord, played by Katharine Hepburn, has a romantic moonlight swim with report Mike Connor, played by Jimmy Stewart. Tracy had been drinking rather a lot, and the next morning she can’t remember what happened. She’s dreadfully afraid that she went rather farther than she had intended to.

In fact, she hadn’t. Mike had done nothing more than help her to bed, to sleep it off; and when asked about it the next day, he says so. Tracy has mixed feelings about this; she’s relieved, but her vanity is hurt. There follows this vignette:

Tracy: You mean to say that was all there was to it?

Mike: I do.

Tracy: Why? Was I so unattractive, so distant, so forbidding or something?

Mike: You were extremely attractive, and as for distant and forbidding…on the contrary, but you also were a little the worse…or better… for wine, and there are rules about that.

I’d rather my sons be like Mike than like others I could name.

And don’t forget to read Vikings at Dino’s!


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