Keeper of the Flame (1943) on Netflix
Reporter Stephen O'Malley returns from Europe to write about Robert V. Forrest, a national hero killed when his car went over a collapsed bridge. Forrest's widow, Christine, will not help him.
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- IMDb6.7/103,868 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
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Plot summary
On a rainy night Robert V. Forrest, a national hero, drives over a bridge that has given way and is killed, and the country mourns him. Stephen O'Malley, a reporter, comes back from Europe to write his life story. Jane Harding and Freddie Ridges, two fellow reporters, stay in the town after the funeral. Christine Forrest, the widow, keeps the press away and gives the biographer nothing. O'Malley befriends Jeb Rickards, the gatekeeper's son, who shows him a way into the mansion, and there he meets Christine. Forrest's private secretary, Clive Kerndon, wants the widow to cooperate so the two of them can steer what the reporter writes.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Keeper of the Flame (1943)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
MGM head Louis B. Mayer stormed out of the film's Radio City Music Hall premiere in New York on March 18, 1943, enraged by having encouraged the making of a film that equated wealth with fascism.- Spencer Tracy drank heavily during the shoot, and Katharine Hepburn, already his lover, was his constant guardian, nurse, maid and gofer, keeping him out of bars and running lines with him.
- Katharine Hepburn joined the film in April 1942 after screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart sent her the unfinished script, but MGM executives did not want her, feeling it was a bad follow-up to Woman of the Year; Hepburn insisted and MGM relented.
- Filming was going so well that, mid-production, director George Cukor asked Katharine Hepburn to talk to Judy Garland and try to convince her of the need to sober up.
- When Katharine Hepburn asked for more romance and a bigger part for Christine, producer Victor Saville threatened to resign if the changes were made; Spencer Tracy backed him and the changes were rejected.
- Republican members of Congress complained about the film's leftist politics and demanded that Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Production Code, set guidelines on propagandizing in films.
