The previous post focused on International Women's Day, so, to continue the thread of women in a men's world, let's look today at a film that features a female actress convincingly playing the role of a young man.
The film in question is romantic comedy Sylvia Scarlett by George Cukor (1935). Based on The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, a novel by Compton MacKenzie, the film features Katharine Hepburn in the main role.
Sylvia Scarlett (Hepburn) and her father Henry (Edmund Gwenn), the bookkeeper at a lace factory and an embezzler, escape to France to avoid Henry's arrest. Sylvia disguises herself as "Sylvester" to protect their identities. On the ferry across the channel, they meet con artist Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant) and, after a brief career, they join cockney housemaid Maudie Tilt and embark on a tour as an entertaining travelling act at seaside resorts. Things change when artist Michael Fane (Brian Aherne) arrives on the scene and Sylvester decides to become once again Sylvia.
The brainchild of Katharine Hepburn and Cukor, the film was a complete flop since it revolved on gender ambiguity and featured too many contradictions while being at the same time pretty safe.
That said, critics were completely won by Hepburn's performance as a young man: she was indeed more convincing as Sylvester, bold, brave and dynamic, than as Sylvia, awkward, shy and trapped in female stereotypes.
Hepburn's transformation – helped by RKO make-up artist Mel Berns (Hepburn's costumes were created by Muriel King) – was indeed extremely convincing as these portrait photographs by Ernest A. Bachrach also prove.
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