NFR Project: 'Woman of the Year' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Woman of the Year”

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: Ring Lardner, Jr., Michael Kanin

Pho: Joseph Ruttenberg

Ed: Frank Sullivan

Premiere: Feb. 19, 1942

114 min.

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn were both respected actors when they collaborated for the first time on this film. The chemistry they generated was amazing, and it enlivened the next eight films they made together. Their real-life romance comes to life on screen in Woman of the Year.

The idea for the movie came from writer Garson Kanin, who passed off writing responsibilities to his brother Michael when he joined the armed services during World War II. The premise is based on the reputation of the formidable journalist of the day Dorothy Thompson, who seemed to go everywhere, cover everything, and make informed pronouncements about it to the nation. What would it be like to have a relationship with her?

Tracy was solid, imperturbable, wry, confident. Hepburn was quick, lively, witty, intelligent. On and off the screen, they fell in love. This was complicated largely by Tracy’s marriage, which he refused to leave. They were as together as they could be until Tracy’s death in 1967.

Here, Sam Craig (Tracy) is a sports columnist for the fictional newspaper the New York Chronicle. He gets into a spat with the paper’s political affairs correspondent Tess Harding (Hepburn). They clash, then discover a mutual fascination for each other. Hurriedly, they wed – and Sam discovers that he is just a footnote in Tess’s busy career. He puts up with it for as long as he can, but after an escalating number of castrating events, he declares he is ready to give up on the marriage.

Tess, seeing her father wed her aunt in a beautiful and touching ceremony, determines to make things right with Sam. She returns home and tries to make him breakfast, a task she is not up to. Sam observes her, and goes to her, claiming that he does not want to either be ignored or waited on. He wants a marriage of equals, and Tess agrees.

It is quite obvious from the way Tracy and Hepburn regard each other that they are falling in love on screen. Each of them is witty and engaging, and their comic timing together is perfect. This is a naturalistic film, and both actors play the comedy with a great sense of minimalism and detail. George Stevens was a fine director; here, he leans on two-shots and close-ups, letting the leads take up the screen with their memorable, expressive faces. The script is filled with taut gags (“You read Chinese? Fluently!”)

Tracy’s Sam is grumpy but human. When Tracy is told he must wait outside Hepburn’s office, his features flash into outright anger for a moment, and then relax into a more charitable arrangement in a disarming facial expression. Hepburn bats her lashes and leans in to her conversations with Tracy, fascinated and fascinating at the same time.

The film’s ending was changed after previews. Instead of the breakfast scene in the finished ending, the original conclusion had Tess interfering in Sam’s prizefighting coverage. It seems that Hepburn’s character had to be punished for her presumptuousness, and the breakfast scene takes her down a peg.

The film was wildly successful, and prompted the numerous co-starrings the two engaged in through the next two decades. This is subtle comedy for the emotionally mature.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Yankee Doodle Dandy.