Programme notes CH 04 — The Matinee
Holiday
A young man engaged to an heiress wants to stop working while he is young enough to enjoy it.
Eight years before Cukor’s remake, Philip Barry’s comedy reached the screen with Ann Harding as Linda Seton, the daughter who recognises in her sister’s fiancé the one person who might get out of the family. Robert Ames wants to retire young and work later — a provocation in the summer of 1930, eight months after the Crash. Watch the old playroom at the top of the Fifth Avenue house, where Linda throws her own small party while the engagement is announced downstairs; it is the only room in the house where anybody laughs. Edward Everett Horton plays Nick Potter here and again in 1938, and nobody thought to improve on him.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Edward H. Griffith
- Photographed by
- Norbert Brodine
- With
- Mary Astor · Ann Harding · Hedda Hopper · Mary Forbes · Edward Everett Horton · Creighton Hale
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
The same summer, the same class: in 1930 the Setons of Fifth Avenue and Mrs. Rittenhouse of Long Island both throw a party to show what money looks like. Barry’s hero wants out of the house; the Marx Brothers want in, and leave with the silverware up their sleeves.