Rent Keeper of the Flame (1942)

The Gathering Storm - Keeper of the Flame review by CH

Spencer Tracy. Katherine Hepburn. George Cukor. Donald Ogden Stewart. As one comes to Keeper of the Flame (1942), such a quartet might make one expect the mixture as to come. This film, as it opens with a car crash, a montage of newspaper headlines and gathering crowds might, though, put one more in the mind of Citizen Kane than those sparring comedies. That effect is compounded by the return from Europe of reporter Tracy who is on a quest for the dead man, Robert Forrest. What’s more, Forrest lived with a now-elusive wife (Hepburn) in a gothic house on the edge of a town which adored him and his good works.

Come Tracy’s bold arrival there, many an interior has the sumptuous deep focus of Kane - and hints grow, as the weather worsens, that the dead man had an ulterior life. This impression is heightened by the distractory efforts by the man’s over-sedulous sidekick (a wonderfully creepy Richard Whorf who sports tight suit, Crippen spectacles and all). Such a sight contrasts with Hepburn’s emergence from the shadows, long hair trailing as much as her gown which would not have looked out of place on Garbo by such candlelight.

To add to the gothic creep there is another building with sinister staff, home of Forrest’s mother, played with all the terrifying allure she bought to Cagney’s Ma at the end of the decade in White Heat.

It does not give much away to say that, before long, it is not so much the Hearst behind Citizen Kane who comes to mind as Charles Lindberg. Here was a time, Pearl Harbor recently attacked, when there were still forces at play not only to keep America out of the European war but were admiring of those dictators.

Naturally, even in a situation removed from those usually favoured by Cukor, he does not use a broad brush. This is no tract but is taken by screenwriter Stewart from the 1942 novel by the fascinating, much-travelled Ida Wylie who, a keen Suffragette, has slipped from the sight she deserves (the eponymous man in her memoir My Life with George - 1940 - is in fact her subconscious). She had a Hollywood presence from its early days, and to find her name associated with Keeper of the Flame must lead one to a tale filmed a decade later as Phone Call from a Stranger with as storied a cast as this one.