company controlled US rights as one of the film's producers, cut 12 minutes from the version that was released in the UK. Hope's cutting prompted Hecht to take a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter that stated: My dear partner Bob Hope: This is to notify you that I have removed my name as author from our mutilated venture, The Iron Petticoat. Unfortunately, your other partner, Katharine Hepburn, can't shy out of the fractured picture with me. Although her magnificent comic performance has been blowtorched out of the film, there is enough left of the Hepburn footage to identify her for her sharpshooters. I am assured by my hopeful predators that The Iron Petticoat will go over big with people 'who can't get enough of Bob Hope'. Let us hope this swooning contingent is not confined to yourself and your euphoric agent, Louis Shurr. As Hecht told journalist Mike Wallace in a 1958 interview, "The movie was written for a lady, Miss Katharine Hepburn, and ended up instead as a role for the hero, Mr. Bob Hope. Miss Hepburn was removed from it by fifty percent. I got irritated and took my name off it – it had nothing to do with the movie I wrote." Hope replied with an open letter that stated: My dear Ex-Partner Ben: You once wrote The Front Page, and now you've followed it up with the back page … I am most understanding. The way things are going, you simply can’t afford to be associated with a hit. As for Kate Hepburn, I don’t think she was depressed with the preview audience rave about her performance.... Bob 'Blowtorch' Hope. For the US release, the film's credits read "Based on an Original Story by Harry Saltzman." Saltzman often joked that his first motion-picture production was the only Bob Hope film that failed at the box office. However, the latest version released by TCM features a large screen credit: "Screenplay by Ben Hecht." Critical reception The Iron Petticoat was a critical failure when it was released in December 1956 in the United States. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, noting that Hecht had disavowed his work on the film, summed up many of the critical appraisals: "'The Iron Petticoat', which encloses Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope, is about as inflexible and ponderous as the garment its title describes. And everybody connected with it might be