Otis Ferguson

"A great deal depends, for sense and meaning, on Katharine Hepburn as the central character; and there are things in the range of her personality too delicate and subtle for anything but the close, pliant observation of cameras. Here she is, as I did not find her coming through so clearly before [in the stage version], the high-strung but overpetted thoroughbred who must be broken to be released into the good stride of her nature; and here the breaking is a gradual and visible process at once painful, touching, and funny. You know the story and Philadelphia too, and there is little new to say about the work of Miss Hepburn, whose peculiar dry radiance and intelligence, whose metallic and even mannered voice finding its special beauty, are known if not defined, easily imitated but never reproduced in their final style."

The New Republic, December 23, 1940
The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson, p. 324