- Death by Hanging
In her essay for the winter series “Early Katharine Hepburn,” Doc Films programmer Ursula Wagner writes that “Hepburn’s unconventional looks, intense personality, and ambiguous gender presentation all posed problems for the 30s film industry.” Despite having won an Oscar in 1933, the actress was deemed “box office poison” for most of the decade. Several of her films which are considered classics today—including Holiday and Bringing Up Baby (both of which screen later in the series)—were flops upon first release. Sylvia Scarlett, which screens Monday at 7 PM, was one of Hepburn’s most resounding commercial failures, perhaps because it exemplifies those alienating qualities that Wagner mentions. Hepburn plays a young woman whose con artist father disguises her as a boy after they escape from France to England—yet even as a boy, she ends up arousing the romantic interest of at least a couple of men.
