Classic Film Club: Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

Sylvia Scarlett (1935) is based on a 1918 novel by Compton McKenzie (The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett). It was directed by George Cukor and stars Katharine Hepburn, Edmund Gwenn, Brian Aherne and Cary Grant. An embezzler has to get out of Paris quick, but his daughter insists on going with him so, to avoid detection, Sylvia wears men's clothing and becomes 'Sylvester'. Adventures ensue ... In fact Hepburn spends most of the film in men's clothes, with a love interest who is not Grant (who was not yet a star) but Aherne. The story's a genre mash-up and the gay director goes all out for a gender-bending theme that is ahead of its time - and that audiences were not ready for, but anyway ...