Running for election is hard enough when you want the job. Grant (Spencer Tracey) has to be convinced in Frank Capra’s State of the Union. Turns out not everyone dreams of becoming President of the United States someday. For Kay (Angela Lansbury), though, who can’t run (or at least knows how much her gender would be a hindrance – in that sense, not much has changed since 1948), getting Grant the Republican nomination is the next best thing to becoming President herself.
All things considered, Grant warms to the idea quickly enough. Just like the protagonists in other Capra political films, like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe, he’s capable of earnestness but he’s also got an ego and Kay knows how to influence him. There’s just one problem: Grant has a wife, and if Grant is to have any chance of winning the election, he’s going to need Mary (Katherine Hepburn) on the campaign trail.
Looking at State of the Union today, it feels like a template for Shonda Rhimes’ TV show, Scandal – the cheating president, the neglected wife, the self-sacrificing advisor. When it comes to Tracey and Lansbury’s scenes together, they aren’t particularly intimate (they don’t even share a kiss). The film does a better job at getting across that Grant takes his wife for granted than it does at showing that Grant and Kay are attracted to each other (if the film were remade today, the affair would be a lot more explicit). Their intimacy is more about power than sex, yet the betrayal scenes are shocking – like regardless of whether or not Grant and Kay are having sex, Grant’s willingness to deceive his wife reaches shocking heights in this movie.
Interestingly, as film historian and critic, Raquel Stecher, explains in her booklet essay, Hepburn wasn’t originally supposed to play Mary but was brought in to replace Claudette Colbert. Besides the fact that she comes into the movie late, her entrance is an interesting one because of how different Mary is from the wife Grant’s been preparing viewers for.
While a majority of the bonus features on Indicator’s Blu-ray are about Angela Lansbury, her role in this movie doesn’t really warrant that focus (but it’s Angela Lansbury, so who’s complaining?). Her strongest scene is actually the opening one, which wasn’t in Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse‘s original play but was written for the film adaptation by Anthony Veiller and Myles Connolly (they’re also responsible for one of the films other great scenes, involving Grant taking over the controls of an airplane, and Mary knitting).
That information about those scenes is from the commentary by writers and critics, Claire Kenny, Glenn Kenny, and Farran Smith Nehme, who, after explaining why Hepburn’s name was misspelled in the opening credits, touch on everything from Irene‘s costumes to Tracey’s “chewy” speeches, and filming during McCarthyism (Hepburn’s politics were very different from her co-star, Adolphe Menjou’s). They also provide some background on Van Johnson (who plays Grant’s campaign manager) and why he was unable to enlist during WWII.
While more could’ve been done with the love triangle between Grant, Kay, and Mary (a screwball comedy would have introduced the Major that Mary’s rumored to be seeing), the film’s patience in holding off on having Mary and Kay cross paths pays off dividends at the end.
Other bonus features on Indicator’s disc include:
- A half hour featurette by academic, Lucy Bolton, on Lansbury, where she considers the roles Lansbury is most associated with and why she was often asked to play older than she was.
- The John Player Lecture is an interview Lansbury did in 1973 with Rex Reed in London that’s audio-only. While Reed and Lansbury are well mic’d , it’s hard-to-impossible to hear the questions asked by the audience members. In the interview, Lansbury brings up wanting to work with Joseph Losey and John Schlesinger (as far as I can tell, they never did), as well as having to audition her feet for Cecil DeMille on Samson and Delilah.
State of the Union is available on Region 2 Blu-ray from Indicator.
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