“Sylvia/Sylvester: 50 years before Blake Edwards, Cukor, in his last RKO film, has his leading lady masquerade as a man for most of the film. Escaping arrest as a man in a travelling show touring England (all coast and cottages), Sylvester is invited into bed by almost every male in the cast, swooned over by women, and eventually falls in love and reverts to Sylvia to find that femininity has to be relearned.
“Hepburn (described by Parker Tyler as a ‘sort of indigenous prep-school Garbo with an American forward lunge,' but here bearing an uncanny resemblance to Bowie in his Thin White Duke phase) obviously loves every minute, teamed here for the first time with Cary Grant. Recently rediscovered and even described as underground, avant-garde and gay, its mayhem of sexual confusion proved too much for Thirties audiences.
“Hepburn recalls the disastrous premiere: ‘...we took the picture to the preview and it started and not a sound from the audience.... They didn't know what it was about; they were leaving in droves; and I got up and went to the ladies room and a woman was just lying there in a dead faint; and I thought “Well, that picture killed her, obviously.” Well we went back to George's place, George and I. There was nothing to do but laugh. It was a disaster.... Pandro Berman, the producer, met us at George's, and he was in a total panic. We said, “Pandro, we'll do another picture for you--for nothing.” Seriously, we said this. Pandro said, “I don't want either of you ever to work for me again.”' Happily, they both did.” --Richard Kwietniowski