The Philadelphia Story - 4K Restoration

Midtown Matinees : Join Hot Docs for an afternoon at the picture palace! A tribute to Hollywood's Golden Age and their cinema's historic legacy as the Midtown from 1941-1966, this series highlights iconic movies and movie stars the way they were meant to be seen: on Hot Docs' glorious big screen. "Today, Katharine Hepburn is solidly established in the pantheon of Hollywood stars. But there was a time when that seemed far from likely. In the late 1930s, a few of Hepburn’s films had flopped so badly that one New York City theatre owner declared her “box-office poison." He took it back, however, when The Philadelphia Story opened [over] 75 years ago, on Dec. 26, 1940, quickly drawing what TIME then called “the longest line in the eight-year history of the Radio City Music Hall.” People “queued up during a spell of foul weather to pay top prices,” and within four days "had set a new record for the period with 110,168 paid admissions in the nation’s No. 1 movie house." It was a long road to that point. Hepburn had spent a few years prioritizing her stage career over Hollywood jobs, eventually finding herself starring, in early 1939, in the Broadway production of a new play: The Philadel