The Iron Petticoat resurfaces

[Reza]

I'm glad this is finally coming out. It's the only Hepburn film I've never seen.

[Precious Doll]

The history of this film's legal battles sounds way more interesting than the movie itself.

I was able to watch The Iron Petticoat on german TV some twenty years ago and it must've been the butchered, blowtorched version as all I remember is actually a disastrously unfunny cold war tale.

I'll second that. I saw it on television about 10 years ago in the middle of winter whilst attending a very grueling film festival and it was something of a relief to get into bed and just let this film let pass over me. I'm pretty sure it would have been the shorten version. It was also one of the few Katharine Hepburn films that I had not seen.

Were starting to get spoilt in the coming months with Porgy and Bess finally due out and The Devils released last month.

[tootpadu]

The history of this film's legal battles sounds way more interesting than the movie itself.

I was able to watch The Iron Petticoat on german TV some twenty years ago and it must've been the butchered, blowtorched version as all I remember is actually a disastrously unfunny cold war tale.

[Big Magilla]

2:07 PM, April 2, 2012ι Lou Lumenick. N.Y. Post

One of the highest profile classic movies that's never been shown on U.S. television, much less released on video here -- "The Iron Petticoat'' (1956), a Cold War comedy starring the unlikely team of Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn -- will finally be making its premiere on Turner Classic Movies in September, I can report exclusively today.

TCM, which has exclusive U.S. and Canadian TV rights for five years, is also in negotiations with the film's owners, Hope Enterprises, to release this notoriously elusive title (available on DVD in the UK) on DVD and Blu-ray through its TCM Vault Collection says Dennis Millay, TCM's director of programming.

He also shed some light on the mystery behind the film's complete unavailability here since its original theatrical release, and detailed how decades of efforts to clear what he calls a "Holy Grail title'' finally bore fruit -- something that I'm thrilled to say I had a small but crucial role in.

Filmed in England's Pinewood Studios under the direction of Ralph Thomas, "The Iron Petticoat'' is a "Ninotcha''-like comedy centering on a Soviet air force jet pilot (Hepburn) who defects to a U.S. base in Germany after being passed over for a promotion.

Because she remains an ardent communist, a womanizing major in the U.S. air force (Hope) is assigned to take her to London and convert her to capitalism. Of course, they eventually fall in love.

Ben Hecht's script was reportedly written for Cary Grant and Hepburn, who had made four previous films together. After Grant passed for unknown reasons, the role was taken up by Hope, who at the time was appearing in more sophisticated films like "Beau James,'' his biopic of New York City Mayor James Walker.

The independent production was sponsored by a complicated partnership that included Hope, screenwriter Ben Hecht, producer Harry Saltzman (later of the "James Bond'' series); and Romulus Films, the UK outfit that also partnered on "The African Queen'' with Hepburn.

Independent Film Distributors released a 95-minute version of "The Iron Petticoat'' in the UK, but Hope, who had sole possession of the American rights, turned over a shorter 83-minute edition that was that went out via MGM beginning in December 1956.

Hope, who produced many of his own movies beginning in 1947, distributed all of them to this point through his longtime employer Paramount Pictures. Millay speculates that Hope went with MGM instead of Paramount because he was afraid of an infringement suit over MGM's "Ninotchka.'' Indeed, the studio released "Silk Stockings,'' its musical remake of "Ninotchka'' just six months after "The Iron Petticoat.''

But MGM's release was preceded in October by a nasty public exchange between Hope and screenwriter Hecht, who was so unhappy with the U.S. cut that he had his name cut from prints released in this country.

“My dear Partner Bob Hope,” Hecht wrote in a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter. “This is to notify you that I have removed my name as author from our mutilated venture, ‘The Iron Petticoat.’ Unfortunately your other partner, Katharine Hepburn, can’t shy out of the fractured picture with me. Although her magnificent comic performance has been blowtorched out of the film, there is enough left of the Hepburn footage to identify her for her sharpshooters. I am assured by my hopeful predators that ‘The Iron Petticoat’ will go over big with people ‘who can’t get enough of Bob Hope.’ Let us hope this swooning contingent is not confined to yourself and your euphoric agent, Louis Shurr.”

Hope responded with his own full page ad.

“My dear Ex-Partner Ben,” he wrote. “You once wrote ‘The Front Page,’ and now you’ve followed it up with the back page…I am most understanding. The way things are going you simply can’t afford to be associated with a hit. As for Kate Hepburn, I don’t think she was depressed with the preview audience rave about her performance. Let’s do all our correspondence this way in print. It lifts ‘The Iron Petticoat.’ ” The comedian signed his letter as “Bob (BlowTorch) Hope.”

When it arrived in theaters two months later following this unfortunate pre-release publicity, the film was generally torched by American reviewers. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times dismissed it as "something grotesque'' and the film quickly disappeared.

Though Hecht was credited only on the UK release, Crowther mentioned Hecht in his notice. Mike Wallace brought it up again in a fascinating 1958 interview with Hecht, asking, "Why did you get involved in such trash?'' Hecht blamed Hope for reducing Hepburn's role by what he claimed was 50 percent.

Hope's deal with MGM provided an option for TV sales, but for some reason, Millay says, this never happened. The studio's rights lapsed in 1966, and all its materials for the U.S. version were returned to Hope Enterprises in 1970. Some 16mm prints were struck for MGM's non-theatrical distributor, Films Incorporated, but they didn't circulate after 1966 though they remained in the vaults.

Though "The Iron Petticoat'' wasn't included in the huge MGM library acquired by Turner Entertainment in 1986, Turner was interested in "The Iron Petticoat.'' But Hope, who had renewed the film's U.S. copyright in 1984, rebuffed all inquiries.

"I think the film left a bad taste in everybody's mouth,'' Millay says.

My involvement in this saga began in the summer of 2003, when Hope and Hepburn died within weeks of each other, and I reported that a gray-market DVD dub of the UK version could be ordered from a Canadian website.

I was surprised to get a call from Hope's longtime spokesman, Ward Grant, asking if I had any information about where they could get a copy of the film.

"I thought Hope Enteprises owned U.S. rights to 'The Iron
Petticoat,' '' I said.

Grant's reply: "Well, we've been trying to figure this out for years.''

I had several conversations with Hope's representatives over the next few years and have blogged about it periodically.

Farran Smith Nehme and I suggested including "The Iron Petticoat'' in "Shadows of Russia,'' a series we helped programmed that ran on TCM in January 2010, but we were told by TCM's senior vice president for programming, Charles Tabesh, that the network just couldn't get ahold of the rights.

Last fall, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from a lawyer representng Hope Enterprises, who said he heard about my interest and knowledge about the title. He said his clients wanted to put 'The Iron Petticoat' back into circulation but their papework establishing ownership was incomplete.

As it happened, few months earlier, I had dinner in Hollywood with Lee Tsiantis, a legal analyst for Turner Entertainment and a major film buff who served as my talent escort when I introduced a film at last year's TCM Classic Film Festival.

Among the many films we discussed was "The Iron Petticoat.'' Lee told me that though Turner didn't own any rights to the film, they had all the paperwork for the U.S. version as part of the voluminous MGM legal files that came with MGM's pre-1986 library.

So last fall I e-mailed Lee Tsantis and suggested someone at Turner might want to get in touch with Hope's lawyer.

It turned out that Millay, who had been obsessed with "The Iron Petticoat'' for two decades had been searching for the right contact at Hope Enterprises. And now Lee handed it to him.

"So with Charlie Tabesh's permission, I had that conversation, and thank you, because you made that happen,'' Millay says. "And the timing was finally right. If we had gone to them a year or two earlier, when [Hope's widow] Dolores was still alive, it might not have gone anywhere.''

It took a while to locate a good version of the film. Hope Enterprises has no record of what became of the materials that MGM returned in 1970 and only had a soft-looking 35mm reduction print they acquired from a collector. There's another print at the Library of Congress, but it's the cut 83-minute U.S. release version that so infuriated Ben Hecht.

Eventually arrangements were made for a high-resolution scan of the original negative for the 95-minute UK version (the one with the Hecht writing credit). A hard drive containing the scan recently arrived in the U.S. and will be used for TCM's video master. The video release, if it happens, it may also include the notorious U.S. version.

Millay thinks "The Iron Petticoat'' is better than its checkered reputation and that audiences will especially appreciate Hepburn's lively performance with her most unlikely co-star, even if her Russian accent is all over the place.

The actress herself dismissed the film in an interview with biographer Charlotte Chandler, complaining that Hope's jokes "overwhelmed my character. I didn't care. I wish he would have overwhelmed me right out of the film.''

For the first time in 56 years, American audiences will be able to decide the film's merits for themselves.

Millay says TCM is planning to show the film as part of a night of Cold War comedies -- including the eerily similar "Jet Pilot'' with Janet Leigh as a Russian pilot thawed out by American flyer John Wayne. Josef von Sternberg's film, made for RKO but now owned by Universal, notoriously ended principal photography in 1950 (years before "The Iron Petticoat'') but was not released until October 1957 because of endless reshoots of aerial photography ordered by that studio's owner, Howard Hughes.

After selling the RKO library to General Broadcasting in 1955, Hughes bought back "Jet Pilot'' and another Wayne title, "The Conqueror.'' Following the eccentric billionaire's death, his heirs eventually sold these as part of his personally-owned film library to Universal, which coincidentally had released "Jet Pilot.''

TCM also plans to accompany the belated debut of "The Iron Petticoat'' with "Silk Stockings,'' "Ninotchka'' and the Hecht-written "Comrade X.''