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16 reviews in total

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13 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
No, it's not a flop, 19 December 2007

Author: Writer-65 from United States

The original play was set in the early 1800s during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. This is a very cute, funny comedy if you understand that it describes a time when a woman's future was defined by her looks, youth, fertility, and chastity. With the destruction of monastic life in England, the only future for a woman at the time of the play was marriage.

The witty cast and script made the film a lot of fun. Seem to recall reading that the Hollywood actresses of that era wanted to be in this movie, and I can see why - it was a hoot. Especially Eric Blore, who always turned in a good performance.

Western culture at the time of the play valued fertility in marriage highly, and men tended to want wives who were rounder than Miss Hepburn. Other than that, her performance was wonderful as always.

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12 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Fascinating period piece, 12 August 2006

Author: Steve from United States

Quality Street is a contrived romance, with a small cast, on a set that looks like a play stage, with few visual impacts and in B&W. So, why did we enjoy it so much? The cast, down to the overplayed smaller parts, all does a great job. The ensemble cast brings spirit to even the small parts, the dialogue is clever, and the asides and glances make it fun. We particularly enjoyed the set and period behaviors as great insights on life in the early 19th century. Hollywood did a great job in establishing this period essence through effective use of hints and props. If you like Hepburn, you will enjoy this moral story, with feminine strength in an unforgiving society. Worth a relook!

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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Charming, Light Romantic Comedy, 13 December 2005

Author: ajrabbits from Kentwood, Michigan

I was about to go to bed one night and was watching a movie on TCM. The movie I was watching had just ended and Quality Street started to play. I was so charmed by this movie that I had to stay up quite late and finish watching it. I just couldn't make myself push the off button on my remote:) Katharine is quite charming as Phoebe and plays her niece quite well too. I honestly don't think Katharine looks too old, as other reviews have stated. Franchot Tone is very handsome as the gullible soldier. A good supporting cast as well. It is a light, entertaining romantic comedy. Just as long as you think this while the movie plays, it won't disappoint.

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9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
delightful comedy of errors, 28 August 2000
Author: dm032 from Tokyo

Delightful comedy of errors. Pheobe (Hepburn) is in love with the dashing Dr. Brown, but alas her love is unrequited. They meet again 10 years later on his return from the Napoleonic Wars. She has wilted under the strain of teaching little children and is self-conscious about her age. On a whim she decides to dress in her former radiant style, and ends up being mistaken by Dr. Brown for Pheobe's niece. They start to court, and from there it's all silly and predictable, but... sparkling dialogue, great acting and wonderful supporting parts (especially the nosy old spinsters at the windows)

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5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
A gem for fans of Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, 13 December 2008

Author: sixgal from United States

This is a gem!--IF you like stories set in this time period to begin with. IF you like the more sentimental acting style prevalent in the 1930's. And probably IF you're female.

This has some resonance with Jane Austen's Persuasion. For me, it felt as if I'd found a new Georgette Heyer story, and on film! This is set in the Regency period in England. It is both romantic and comedic.

Katherine Hepburn gives another great performance, similar to her Jo March in Little Women. I don't find her acting over the top at all. Franchot Tone is a good foil for her--not a great actor, but pretty hunky. Additionally, it has a lovely cast full of the kind of character actors you see in films like the Greer Garson Pride and Prejudice. In this case, it's Fay Bainter, Estelle Winwood, and other notables giving the film a fey charm.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Sometimes an old fashioned meringue is just what you want, 12 May 2006

Author: sophia2206 from Indianapolis, IN

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Someone said they liked this more than the overrated Philadelphia Story, now that might be a tiny bit over the top but I do adore this movie. I first saw it as child. The print was grainy and I could not get over the fact that one of the Miss Willoughby's looked like Marty Feldman in a dress. But it was pretty, pretty language, pretty clothes, pretty harmless people. As I learned more about the Napoleonic wars (and WWII that was just beginning a full boil as this movie was made) I gained a respect for the need for a palate cleanser such as this. It's acted in high style, a lite version of a French farce or Shakespeare at his most lighthearted.

Regardless of the fluff there are sinews in this piece that make the fluff more satisfying. Dr. Brown leaves his love, not a potential starving widow but a pretty thing more likely to marry if he's killed. The Throssels, rather than starve, take students and do fairly well although the smell of old maid schoolteacher is beginning to tire them. Dr. Brown is gently teased that he has aged himself as he has to compete for "Livvy's" attentions and he is lightly chastised for his inability to realize that 10 years must age his sweetheart. The herd of widows and old maids are not the cruel destructive soured bitter things they might have been but rather just a little catty and too nosy. They are the gatekeepers of morality in fantasy land. The way Dr. Brown rips down the school sign and gentle accepts responsibility for Susan displays a knowledge of the peril in which unmarried poor women stood in the early part of the 19th Century. And finally, love makes even an old maid lovely.

This is a perfect movie when you're feeling bruised by life and the extremes of overly produced films.

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11 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
not bad, 21 January 2004

Author: kyle_furr

I wasn't expecting much but i'm glad i watched it on turner classic movies. Katharine hepburn is great as usual and george stevens is a good director. I think this is better than the overrated philadelphia story. I also think that is better than most of the films she made with spencer tracy.

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Spinsters of Quality Street., 23 June 2011

Author: Michael O'Keefe from Muskogee OK

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This RKO Radio Picture directed by George Stevens isn't mentioned a lot, but is a nice little romantic comedy evocative of the mid '30s. The Throssel sisters Phoebe(Katherine Hepburn)and Susan(Fay Bainter)are both smitten with the dashing Dr. Valentine Brown(Franchot Tone). The sisters are crushed when he enlists in the British Army and claims he is leaving no sweetheart behind. Two nosy neighbor spinsters on Quality Street(Cora Witherspoon and Estelle Winwood)keep reminding Phoebe and Susan that Dr. Brown will return someday from the war, but who will he possibly propose to. After ten years, the still stunning Brown comes marching home and proudly appears at the Throssel house. When it is Miss Phoebe that Brown invites to the Homecoming Ball, he hardly recognizes her. Feeling humiliated Phoebe changes her hair style and buys a new gown and passes herself off as her niece. What effect will this have on the returning soldier, let alone the nosy neighbors? Also in the cast: Helena Grant, Eric Blore and Joan Fontaine.

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won't convert anyone who doesn't like this sort of movie, 20 August 2010

Author: skiddoo from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

If you enjoy stories from the early 1800s you might like this movie. It's a mild example of the type--pleasant, with moments of funny lines and good acting, and nobody is really fooled by the woman posing as her own niece, just confused over the cover up. The friends are not dopes, and neither is her fella. At first he seems as if he has a cruel streak which is probably from a lack of experience with sensitive women after so many years in the military and the difference between his memory and the reality--he was used to the way HE had aged, but he comes across by the end as an exceptionally nice guy, a real catch, with a taste for daffy dames rather than the plump sweet young things he was supposed to favor. He joined in with the ridiculous plan with stylish conviction when he figured out what was going on.

And of course Phoebe's mistake was being so hurt, and who wouldn't feel shocked when confronted by the knowledge that you have wasted your youth loving a man who thinks you are dowdy and unattractive and can't even recognize you when you are dressed up, that she decided to play this deception, likely because she read too much and lived too little to immediately see how foolish it was. It spiraled out of control because of her nosy neighbors who wouldn't allow her to merely send Livvy home and forget the whole thing. I have to think it did Phoebe's ego a world of good to be pursued so ardently by the soldiers! I'm sure when she got married her husband got to see both the restrained and capable school teacher and the goofy social butterfly in her from then on, which was probably a far better outcome than if everything had gone well from the start.

Modern reviewers can't know what original audiences thought of these movies but Depression era viewers would certainly have had an acute understanding of what happened to a woman without a man in an era when a woman had no rights or protections. Many a Depression era woman decided to settle, as Phoebe's sister did, for her situation and become a confirmed spinster school teacher, a type that my father disliked as much as the man in this movie. (In the 30s US, if a woman married she lost her teaching job.) And teachers were paid so little in the Depression that they boarded in people's homes or got rooms with other teachers, in my mother's case with her sister as in this movie, enduring intense financial distress and societal restriction that could make a woman seem old before her time. There were many women in the 30s who became single, childless career women from necessity, just as there were after WWI and other wars around the world. There were so many single, childless women scratching out a living in Britain after WWI that there was a name for them and they had a little social world of their own. So I would say this movie would have been a lot more comprehensible to audiences in the Depression than to us.

Hepburn was 30 when this came out. That was the right age for the story. In the 1930s, and in the early 1800s, 30 was NOT the new 20. 30 was well into maturity.

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1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Misread Signals, 18 December 2009

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

For her second time in a James M. Barrie role, Katharine Hepburn starred in a remake of Quality Street. Hepburn had previously played a little Scot's minx in The Little Minister also for RKO.

Barrie did right by her again, she was well cast as one of the Throssel sisters of Great Britain of the Napoleonic Era. She and sister Fay Bainter look like they're doomed to be spinsters. Bainter has resigned herself to that fate, but Hepburn still has hopes.

But when she thinks Franchot Tone might be popping the question, he's only around to tell her he's doing what Admiral Nelson expects of every man, his duty to England. In 1805 he enlists in the army and Hepburn and Bainter go on teaching school.

Ten years go by and when Tone doesn't at first recognize Hepburn when he returns, she thinks her prime has passed. But she'll teach Tone a lesson by impersonating her own made up niece. And what a niece, a naughty flirt who entrances all the young blades returned from the wars and doing a job on Tone's ego as well.

Quality Street has a quality history, it was first performed on Broadway by the immortal Maude Adams in 1901 and then made a silent film in 1927 starring Marion Davies and Conrad Nagel. I can certainly see why William Randolph Hearst thought this a good role for Davies. She could be both a crinolined heroine and also use her comic talents as well. Hepburn also gets to use her full talents playing one role straight and imitating a fictitious person at the same time.

Quality Street got an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Score. If it sounds familiar the theme was recycled later on for the frontier film Rachel And The Stranger. It was even given words that were sung on record by that film's star Robert Mitchum.

And George Stevens after doing Alice Adams with Hepburn was assigned this one as well. He'd do even better the third and last time he worked with Hepburn in Woman Of The Year.

Quality Street is a good film, but I'm sure that Depression Era audiences found a Victorian Era comedy a bit dated.

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