“On loan to RKO, Cukor had just directed Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Sylvia Scarlett, a drag picaresque that was the greatest fiasco of his career and, to posterity, became a cult movie. The New York Herald-Tribune called Hepburn’s eroticized Peter Pan ‘the handsomest boy of the season.’
The source material was lesbian author Compton MacKenzie’s 1918 novel of a woman rebelling against the woman’s role. In the screen version, Sylvia crops her hair, dons men’s clothes, and goes by the name Sylvester. The transvestism had allowed for a risky scene. The maid finds Hepburn’s young boy appealing. 'You’re very attractive,’ says the maid, and they kiss. Preview audiences had left the theater at this point, and RKO had Jane Loring reedit the scene to make it less obvious.
-Excerpt from The Sewing Circle: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women
