MovieChat Forums > The Philadelphia Story (1941) Discussion > First marriage - not consummated??

First marriage - not consummated??

posted 16 years ago by jackboot
9 replies | jump to latest

Okay, I'm trying to decipher what exactly is lying between the lines in a section of the dialogue with the hope of understanding whether there might be veiled or hidden meaning, draped in ambiguity, in order to satisfy the production code.

The scene at the pool where Dexter appears and gives Tracy quite a dressing down over her thinking that she's some kind of a Goddess, he uses a lot of very pointed language, such as "virgin goddess", "cold", "chaste" and "virginal". Not to mention the "'This citadel can and shall be taken, and l'm the boy to do it'" line.

Was there some more specific allusion being hinted at by those passages? Could they possibly have never consummated their marriage? It seems hard to fathom, especially the way she reminisced about their honeymoon. Perhaps she became frigid when he became so "unattractive" after he developed his "deep and gorgeous thirst" for alcohol?

Also, a couple of scenes later, when she is returning to the house, from the pool, she has a confrontation with her father where he admonishes her "But better that than a prig or a perennial spinster... however many marriages". Is he alluding to the possibility that she was never a wife to her husband? or that she could never stay married, no matter how many marriages she had?

I can't find anything to support this or deny it. Those particular passages are rather conspicuous for their use of such strong and marked language but, it seems hard to believe that they'd have enjoyed their honeymoon, aboard what was surely their namesake, the "True Love", and not have consummated their marriage.

Also, if she were still a virgin, that would raise the stakes a few notches when Mike appears carrying Tracy back from the pool and Dexter asks, "is she hurt?" - the use of "hurt" I take it to mean as a code for asking whether she had been violated.

[–] paultbaker 16 years ago

Interesting take, but I don't think it was really meant to be implied Tracy was still a virgin.

Obviously they couldn't/wouldn't spell it out in 1940, but I don't think her prudishness was intended to be that extreme.

In that same scene at the pool Dexter tells the story of Tracy getting drunk on champagne and how she "climbed out on the roof, and stood there, naked, with your arms out to the moon, wailing like a banshee!"

And keep in mind the original play was written specifically to give Katherine Hepburn's image a boost in the public eye; her character had to be painted fairly unpleasant & cold in order for her to warm up & become more compassionate in the end.

"Film is a mosaic of Time."
-A. Tarkovsky

[–] jackboot 16 years ago

I think you're probably right, but that particular language really stuck out for me and made me wonder.

Perhaps Dexter was alluding to the fact that she turned cold toward him and stopped putting out? perhaps once she'd gotten really disgusted with his "deep and gorgeous thirst"? She did say explicitly that it made him so unattractive.

And I still think of her father also saying that she was a "perennial spinster, no matter how many marriages" - maybe word had gotten out among the family that her marriage was on the rocks and, to steal from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, when a marriage is on the rocks the rocks are in the bed? (forgive my, I'm sure, inaccurate paraphrasing.) Maybe her father blamed her for ruining her marriage to Dexter?

Anyway, this is all (more or less interesting to me, anyway) conjecture. You're absolutely right, this was a vehicle for Katharine Hepburn's comeback first, foremost, last and finally so, whatever negative impression she was to give had to have been carefully calculated, to be sure.

[–] jackboot 15 years ago

One other bit I noticed that I took as code for sex was on her wedding day, the night after her indiscretion with Mike, where she believed that she had had sex with Mike and she was tearful with Dexter, Dexter hands her Uncle Willie's pick-me-up and describes it as "the juice of a few flowers. It's a kind of stinger, it removes the sting" and she practically bursts into tears - I instantly thought of the association of her having been stung, as her having been pricked by the male thorn, so to speak. She says, through her tears, that nothing ever will (remove the sting) and she is filled with remorse is wanting to apologize to Dexter for all of this. A few beats later, she tells him to name his new sailboat, in her honor, the "Easy Virtue". Perhaps the writers were simply wanting to allude to this kind of thing without making any definite statements which would invoke the ire of the censors.

Very interesting choices in language used. What a delightful film, and much of that is for the smart dialogue.

[–] TheDuchessofM 16 years ago

Even though "High Society" is nowhere near as good as TPS, the hatchet taken to the dialogue did feel better in that movie in this particular nugget of the plot as I finally caught the subtext to Tracy's sexual experience. The dialogue in HS makes it clear that Tracy is so much a "goddess on a pedestal" that George can't mind her prior marriage because sex with Dexter would never touch her innate "purity."

[–] practicepiano 15 years ago

I think we are to assume that she and Dexter had a perfectly normal sex life. I think the idea behind all of those quotes is that, even having had sex with her husband, Tracy was still emotionally cold (from the point of view of those who were concerned with, or hurt by, her judgemental manner), or pure and above-it-all (from George's point of view).

When she turns herself around and realizes that nobody is perfect, then she is truly warm and alive.

It's actually a rather nice distinction -- it implies that compassion, really paying attention to one another as people, is the true intimacy, not just physical passion.

[–] treedcub 15 years ago

Yes, I assumed that even if they consummated the marriage, Tracy was a cold lover. A girl who is used to being worshipped from afar might have some intimacy issues.

[–] practicepiano 15 years ago

Actually, I think the implication, especially with their talking about the True Love, is that their initial romance and sex life were quite warm.

It's in her disapproval of Dexter's weaknesses, and unrealistically high standards in other aspects of life, that her coldness came out.

[–] cadeaux 14 years ago

I figured she turned cold toward him just as her mother turned cold toward her own husband...when he was unfaithful to her.

Remember, in the beginning Dinah says things about "annundo"...basically innuendo that the papers all had in it about CK being "cruel and drunk" a lot. Well, I just figured by this statement that this also encompassed having affairs...that's why the mother said what she said to Tracy...and that's why Tracy said that she had to "take a stand". When her mother "took a stand" against her husband's own infidelity, she regretted it -and he hightailed it to be with his mistresses. She figured Tracy probably inwardly regretted her own "stand"...and her own divorce.

Remember, these were the days where women usually turned a blind eye to their husband's infidelity...and tolerated such behaviour...especially if they were well looked after financially.

I think there's a whole other story here...other than the obvious "Philadelphia Story".

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[–] skiddoo 14 years ago

The cards are stacked against Hepburn. She is damaged by her parents' relationship, she marries the same kind of man as her father and is damaged by that, and she is blamed by everyone for her reaction as if that is her fault and we are to assume that after her transformation she will now be just like her mother and turn a blind eye, too. What a nightmare scenario!