Quality Street

re-engage his attentions. Quite cunningly, though, she decides to adopt a sort of alias, and is introduced by the maid “Patty” (Cora Witherspoon) as visiting neice “Livvy”. He’s interested, all right, but soon so are a great many other, younger, uniformed would-be lotharios and so a delicate eggshell-treading drama now plays out with jealousness the name of the game! All the while, there are some meddling spinsters across the street who love nothing more than a good old gossip and with her own sisters out of the joke, too, it’s going to be tough for “Phoebe” or “Livvy” to get away with the masquerade. It’s one of Sir J.M. Barrie’s lesser known stories, this one, but it’s quite a potent one ultimately looking at the hypocrisies of style over substance and beauty being skin deep. Hepburn is on great form, as is the always reliable Estelle Winwood as the prim neighbour, but Tone is, really, more mono-tone. He has the looks ok, but is as flat as a pancake on screen and given the chemistry and spark between the two is crucial to the scheming naughtiness of the tale, he just doesn’t deliver. The score skips along jauntily; the production is packed full of lace and gowns and there are double-standards a-plenty amidst the dialogue. Perhaps, in the end “Brown” thought that perhaps he should just have stayed at the war.