It’s the story of a high-society family that values wealth and financial success above all else. So when the family’s favored daughter brings her new and “proper” fiancé home to meet everyone, he seems to be the perfect fit. That is until he announces he doesn’t care about making it in the business world and would rather drop out of society and travel the world to “find himself.” Everyone is shocked and outraged except the family’s other daughter—the black sheep who has rejected the materialistic trappings around her and longs for something more fulfilling.
If I told you the plot I just described is from a film about an Asian American family, there’s a good chance you’d believe me. But it’s actually from Holiday, a 1938 screwball comedy classic starring Cary Grant as the newcomer who wants to find himself and Katharine Hepburn as the black sheep daughter who falls in love with Grant a.k.a. her own sister’s fiancé. Adapted from the hit Broadway play by Philip Barry, director George Cukor’s film ranks as one of the best pairings of its two stars who had also starred together earlier that same year in another screwball comedy classic, Bringing Up Baby.
What I remember most from that very first meeting ten years ago was a young actor (and now fellow Offender) named Roger Fan challenging us in the way that only Roger Fan can.
