Woman of the Year (1942)

In their first of nine co-star rings, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy play Tess Harding and Sam Craig, reporters at a newspaper who get married. Naturally, Sam assumes that Tess will "settle down" and just be a wife, but she is very independent, with events to cover all over the world. They sort of forget that they're married.

You just can't beat a pairing like Tracy and Hepburn. "Woman of the Year" moves along like a...I can't even come up with a good comparison, but I basically mean that it's very brisk. It's impossible not to like this movie. You would have to be a full-scale sourpuss not to like this movie. A comedy classic.

Fmovies: This delight from director George Stevens was the first Tracy/Hepburn collaboration and as we all know by now, they fell in love.

That the film doesn't always portray them as a loving couple is down to their superb acting - they had to act as though they hated each other at times.

Back at the time, during WW2 (film was released in 1942) and with women having more and more general employment, due to the men having been conscripted, many could see possibly a situation where the woman wore the trousers, to coin an outdated expression. We have Ms Hepburn, running here and there - the film starts with press releases telling us that she is interviewing Winston Churchill - she is a very important and much in demand person.

Similar in a way to their later 'Adam's Rib', we have in the other corner, an everyday bloke, set in his ways and here he is someone who has a very male-dominated profession - that of a sports correspondent. Naturally, Tess (Hepburn) who's extremely intelligent and inquisitive, wants to know the ins and outs of baseball. She tries to enter and understand his world.

Naturally, this all causes slight havoc. She's always got her personal assistant hanging round her. She never knows which senior politician is going to phone her up - or when. Then, she is voted "Woman Of the Year". Her fiancé, Sam (Tracy) should be delighted. But isn't. The dreams he had of a normal, happy marriage slips further away from him....

The narrative flow IS a bit lumpy - there are scenes - the final kitchen scene is in real-time and we just let it unfold naturally - but that's what life - and love - is often about. I rather like the way it is broken up by changing tempos and situations, being more natural and as a result, the pair seem very real to us.

Some fans of the two actors believe that this is their best pairing, others think Adam's Rib is. I'm going to go for the second, myself, as it is slightly cleverer and the story is a touch stronger. Never-the- less, this is still extraordinarily good film-making and a fine movie.

I watched the DVD as part of the Tracy/Hepburn 4 disc boxset.

Most commentators on this movie miss the its point completely, and criticize what they misunderstand as the outdated sexual politics of the 1940's from the standpoint of the outdated sexual politics of the 1970's. Blinded by political correctness, they miss the many virtues of the sparkling script.

The point of the script is actually relatively modest. It is not, in fact it is far from, The Taming of the Shrew, or the subjugation of the independent woman. Tracy's character admires Hepburn's character's independence and competence, and he doesn't want her to renounce them to become the "little woman" -- that is the burden of his "kitchen speech" at the end. He simply understands better than she does, at least until the end of the film, that maintaining a relationship and a marriage requires time, work, and attention. That may well be an unwelcome message, but it is not an unwise one.

The comedy of the film comes from their characters' different worlds -- Tracy is a sportswriter and Hepburn an international politics columnist. The drama comes from their different levels of commitment to being a couple. The script delicately and for the most part successfully (with the possible exception of the Greek orphan subplot), balances these two conflicts and the comedy and drama.

Woman of the Year fmovies. Katharine Hepburn already established the headstrong aspect of her screen persona in 1938's "Holiday" and 1940's "The Philadelphia Story", but she adds a worldly intellect and a beguiling sexual ardor that prove most fetching in her portrayal of multilingual political journalist Tess Harding in this 1942 film classic. In her first teaming with lifelong off-screen partner Spencer Tracy, she sets off palpable sparks with the normally taciturn actor, who plays sportswriter Sam Craig working at the same newspaper. Written by Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin, the plot is about the characters' whirlwind courtship from an immediate sexual attraction to an impulsive marriage, all the while struggling with each other's priorities. Needless to say, given that it's a product of its era, it becomes a matter of time before Tess bends to Sam's will but not until some intriguing observations are made about sex roles in a basically fractious relationship.

However, rather than the comic fireworks generated by their later collaboration, 1949's "Adam's Rib", this film treads in unexpectedly sentimental melodrama, especially in the episodes where Tess has to let go of a Greek orphan she wants to adopt and in the climactic scene when she tearfully recognizes her wifely responsibilities as her aunt Ellen marries her father. Still, the pair's familiar bantering occurs when Sam explains the rules of baseball to Tess and in the final feminist reversal as she fails miserably in her attempt at domesticity. George Stevens directed the film, and he displays his sure hand with actors and an acute sense of craftsmanship throughout. Intriguingly, for a Tracy-Hepburn vehicle, it feels much more like her movie than his, and consequently their rapport is not quite up to their normal standard here. The supporting characters also feel more incidental here, even though Fay Bainter shines briefly as Ellen. It's not my favorite of their films together, but it is certainly required viewing for their fans. There are no extras with the 2000 DVD.

this film sparkles like champagne. Okay the plot is flimsy, not to mention corny, but the magnetism and chemistry that goes on between Tracy and Hepburn is enough to keep you enthralled for hours. The dialogue is witty and snappy, and there are many hilarious moments not to be missed. It's lovely to see such an old fashioned fun movie that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. The most wonderful moment in the film has got to be when they kiss for the first time, it's wonderful, and you can feel the warmth between them.

Aside from the historical value of first teaming Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn (she had wanted Tracy in the previous year's THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, but scheduling conflicts had prevented it), WOMAN OF THE YEAR holds its own as a bright, smart 'Odd Couple' romantic comedy/drama, with witty dialog, a rich, textured performance by the reliable Tracy, and Hepburn showing a sexiness that she rarely gets to project on film.

The scenario is simple; Beautiful, brilliant Claire Booth Luce-type journalist(Hepburn) and practical, salt-of-the-earth sportswriter (Tracy) clash over whether athletic events should be suspended for the duration of the war (she finds them too frivolous in such serious times, he believes them essential for morale). After she makes some insensitive comments on the radio, he criticizes her in his sports column. Despite the paper-selling feud that results, their editor brings them together to make peace...and the pair, seeing one another in person for the first time, fall in love! Despite their busy schedules, he takes her to a ball game (which she loves) and she introduces him to her international friends (which he doesn't). Nonetheless, they marry, but he quickly discovers she is so busy 'saving the world' that she can't make time for him...and then she 'adopts' a war orphan, without consulting him, or considering how little time for 'motherhood' she's willing to give. He realizes a drastic step must be taken, as she is clueless about what being a 'wife' and 'mother' means...

While the domesticity scene concluding the film seems out of place (the story goes that MGM added it to make Tracy the 'winner' of the 'battle of the sexes', to a much more chauvinistic 40s audience), so many scenes ring true that the film goes beyond simple comedy/drama to a timeless statement about commitment, priorities, and accountability for one's actions. And despite the serious issues raised, it makes you laugh, too! Hepburn's reactions at the ball game, and Tracy, trying to be inconspicuous at the women's club meeting, are among the comic highlights. The star duo are so natural together that it's hard to believe this was their first teaming, and the chemistry carried over into their private lives as well, beginning a romance that lasted 25 years.

WOMAN OF THE YEAR is, deservedly, a classic!