"Madonna who?" So inquires Katharine Hepburn as the end of a rather badly constructed joke to try and modernize this old fashioned Christmas story of the bachelorette Hepburn aiding escaped convict Ryan O'Neal who has been hiding in her attic. The action packed opening has O'Neal forced into an escape and later accused by the other escapee of shooting the guard. Hepburn, living alone with the daily presence of housekeeper Helena Carroll and regular nosy inquiries of longtime friend Brenda Forbes, discovers O'Neal raiding her refrigerator in the middle of the night and manages to get ahold of his gun. She agrees after considering her own loneliness to allow him to stay until the heat's off, but the interference of Carroll and Forbes threatens to blow his cover.
The Christmas theme is advanced by Hepburn's decision to hold the holidays in her own way without decorations or gifts, but that changes when she creates a bond with O'Neal whose inquiries about her makes her feel needed for the first time in years. It's obvious that writer James Prideaux (whom I got to know around the time this came out) utilized much of Hepburn's advice as to who her very independent character should be down to elements of warmth she would hide until inclined to show them for reasons only known to her. She's playing herself, but in her case, that's not such a bad thing.
As for O'Neal, he wisely listens and reacts to her rather than dominates the scene. The role was originally planned for Burt Reynolds (who was one of the producers), and O'Neal is quite different than what Burt would have been. Some of his lines seem a bit awkward to him, but somehow Hepburn's reaction rescues those moments. Forbes is very funny as a suburbanite snob ("Poor? What poor?"), and Carroll is earthy and easy to like even when she's a bit too interfering. Hepburn gets a chance to glow in the presence of a younger leading man, and her final line (written with the belief that it would be her final moment on screen) is a heart wrenching shot as the camera zooms in on her.
The Christmas theme is advanced by Hepburn's decision to hold the holidays in her own way without decorations or gifts, but that changes when she creates a bond with O'Neal whose inquiries about her makes her feel needed for the first time in years. It's obvious that writer James Prideaux (whom I got to know around the time this came out) utilized much of Hepburn's advice as to who her very independent character should be down to elements of warmth she would hide until inclined to show them for reasons only known to her. She's playing herself, but in her case, that's not such a bad thing.
As for O'Neal, he wisely listens and reacts to her rather than dominates the scene. The role was originally planned for Burt Reynolds (who was one of the producers), and O'Neal is quite different than what Burt would have been. Some of his lines seem a bit awkward to him, but somehow Hepburn's reaction rescues those moments. Forbes is very funny as a suburbanite snob ("Poor? What poor?"), and Carroll is earthy and easy to like even when she's a bit too interfering. Hepburn gets a chance to glow in the presence of a younger leading man, and her final line (written with the belief that it would be her final moment on screen) is a heart wrenching shot as the camera zooms in on her.
