In the early forties, as the country and the comedies edged out of the Depression and toward the war, it seems that, Preston Sturges notwithstanding, "to be rich no longer made one automatically funny" (Bernard Drew). In 1940 The Philadelphia Story already is far gentler toward the American aristocracy than was Holiday, also by Cukor from a Philip Barry play (see March 17). What we have here is one more American family with a problem child, locked into "the drama of possessions," of which our princess-heroine is one. Hepburn's Tracy Lord is Holiday's Julia and Linda rolled into one, the ivory goddess merged with the petulant rebel. Amidst the brittle comedy-of-manners, what continues to engage about The Philadelphia Story is Kate's sexual coming-out; this is not the taming of a shrew but the flowering of one. When she sheds her pedestal with her bathrobe, Cukor, who has kept his proscenium arch firmly in place, finally accords her the intimacy she enjoyed in Holiday.