Review of Sylvia Scarlett (1935) by Erika R — 08 Jan 2012

Think fast! Your dad, Edmund Gwenn has been embezzling money and you have to escape the country and you look like Katharine Hepburn. In order to evade the authorities, do you cut off your long braids and pose as a boy? Of course you do! When you and dad run across a smuggler who looks an awful lot like Cary Grant you decide to keep up the ruse so that you might learn the tricks of being a con man.

Unfortunately, you wind up being too honest to do any decent thieving so you decide to start a touring performance troupe (you, your dad, Cary Grant and some other dame you found). When some loud mouth heckles the dame in your group while you're doing your act onstage, you go home with him, and spend the rest of the movie trying to decide whether you love him or Cary Grant.

Everyone in this movie is confused and the plot is sloppy/messy, but I thought Hepburn was pretty cute in this gender-bending role (there's even a "lesbian" kiss). Granted, this was probably one of the first films of this kind, but that still doesn't make it very good.