Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Simply A Masterpiece

Expected more

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I'll start with the bottom line: Sylvia Scarlett is the film that dubbed Katharine Hepburn "box office poison". However, when you watch the movie, you wonder how that was possible. She's adorable! After her mother's untimely death, Katharine Hepburn and her father Edmund Gwenn leave France and head to England. Teddy has racked up some pretty heavy gambling debts and needs to leave the country, but when he tells his daughter he has to leave her behind lest he be recognized and arrested, she comes up with an idea. Kate cuts her hair and changes her name from Sylvia to Sylvester; surely her father won't be recognized with a young man as his traveling companion! Along the way, they cross paths with a charming Cockney conman, played by Cary Grant, a flirtatious maid, Dennie Moore, and a respectful artist, Brian Aherne. While they band together and enter the con-game, Kate falls in love and longs to be worthy of Brian—even though he believes she's a boy! It's a pretty cute story, and a lot of fun to see Kate, Teddy, and Cary work off one another. It's no great surprise that Kate makes an excellent boy, since her thin frame, beautifully angular face, and slightly masculine voice help mask her true identity. She looks absolutely adorable—or handsome, if you prefer—in her short haircut, and even though the film didn't do well at the box office, it's a definite must-see for Katharine Hepburn fans!

After writing my 1,500th review, I started looking for what movie to view next. Taking a look at BBC iPlayer, I spotted a star-studded RKO title,which led to me uncovering Scarlett's secret. The plot:Running away to England from France after getting involved in too many dodgy deals, widower Henry Scarlett decides to try and outsmart the police by getting his daughter Sylvia to dress up as a boy. Getting Sylvia's "Sylvester" act to work,the Scarlett's are soon joined by new partner in crime Jimmy Monkley and dizzy Maudie Tilt. Fooling everyone, Sylvia is shocked when Michael Fane fails to fall for her Scarlett fever. View on the film:Bombing in test screenings and at the box office,director George Cukor & cinematographer Joseph H. August is marked by emergency scars, from jarring, blunt edits to terrible overdubbing. Unsteady with the Comedy, Cukor still shows a flair for Melodrama, with needles of rain across the screen and crane shows to the edges of cliffs looking over how deep the Scarlett's have gone to cover their tracks.Offering to do another film for free if the studio had left this on the shelf, Katharine Hepburn actually gives the standout performance as Sylvia Scarlett a.k.a. Sylvester,thanks to Hepburn clearing relishing the chance to mess around with her ladylike image as mischievous Sylvester. Avoiding the "Box office poison" tag Hepburn got from the movie, Cary Grant gives an unsteady performance as partner in crime Jimmy Monkley, with Grant showing his natural charm in the comedic scenes,but (with a poor fake accent) struggles to carry dramatic tension,in the opening of the Scarlett letter.

Meandering curio about an embezzler (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter (Katharine Hepburn) posing as his son as they flee from the police. Along the way they join up with con man Cary Grant. Director George Cukor gives us a real weird one here. Unfortunately its weirdness doesn't overcome its many flaws: hole-ridden script, weak direction, and poor acting. Especially the acting from Hepburn. P.U. she stunk! The more I see of early Katharine Hepburn movies the more surprised I am she ever got anywhere. She was terrible in this. Gwenn wasn't much better. With this director and cast, this really should have been a better film. Obviously, Hepburn and Grant fans should (and will) try it out. Anybody else I would say go watch "The Major and the Minor" instead.

If one can believe it, "Sylvia Scarlett" was director George Cukor's favorite film. His reasoning has to do more with the fun he, and the crew, were having, rather than what comes out in the movie. Watching again, after not seeing it for some time, the film appears not to have aged gracefully, in spite of the remastered DVD of the original 1935 RKO production.The action takes place in more naive times, something that is hard to believe today's audiences would respond to the basic premise of the film. We are asked to believe that Sylvia comes to London impersonating a young man, following a good for nothing father. Jimmy Monkley, the man Henry Scarlett meets on board, turns out to be a rat in disguise trying to cash on illegal smuggling into England.Monk, as Jimmy is called, is instrumental in getting Sylvester and Henry into all kinds of schemes that do not produce the money they live to survive. Monk decides to team with an old flame, Maudie, and tour the countryside in a sort of ill-conceived vaudeville act. The inane attempts of the quartet to amuse the local gentry signals the end of the group, but fate intervenes in the person of Michael Fane, who takes a fancy to Sylvia, when she throws away her Sylvester disguise.As a comedy, "Sylvia Scarlett" was perhaps a naughty idea of the creators that probably did not get the audience it went after. Katherine Hepburn, deemed box-office poison, has some good moments in the comedy. A cockney speaking Cary Grant shows why he was going to go far in his American career. Others in the film include Brian Aherne, Dennie Moore, and Edmund Gwenn. George Cukor direction cannot hide the problems with the screen treatment it got.