***You’ve Come A Long, Long Way, Tess-Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy’s Woman Of The Year

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Woman Of The Year, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, MGM, 1942 

I have been on something of a tear over the past several years in viewing black and white films, mostly suspense and detection stuff but more recently comedies, melodramas and the like. Mainly though not viewing the many of “social question” films of the 1930s where the brave filmmakers looked at let’s say the plight of the Okies going to California out of the dustbowl or a look at the cruel retribution-dominated and torturous prison system, issues like that. Then I came upon the film under review, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy’s Woman of the Year, which on the face of it appeared to be a slight romantic comedy or a witty social question drama with moments of pathos. But seventy odd years later this film is more like temperature check on the “woman question” at it appeared near the mid-20^th century. That probably was not the main intent of the director, George Stevens, the writers including Ring Lardner, Jr. or perhaps Ms. Hepburn who championed the film to the producer and the film company but unlike many other black and white films which are of interest now mainly for the photographic effects this one has withstood the ages.           

The reason for that statement is quite simple once you gather in the plot which I will get to in a minute since this plotline addresses the issue of the fate of the career professional woman which then was something of a novel and exceptional circumstance for stay-at-home-Mom America (although very shortly women would be “drafted” into the workforce in droves once the men are off to World War II but then they pushed back homeward again when the men came home for the “golden age” 1950s). That novel and exceptional idea of a woman trying to make a career in a man’s world in the 1940s and being very good at it rather than staying at home is today’s norm with women remaining single longer, or forever, forgoing marriage, foregoing children (or having them as a conscious single parent) and having a fruitful and socially useful life. In fact the whole plotline of this film today would have to revised, or be subject to some wicked humorous antics to get any notice.     

Here is how things looked the 1940s though. Two professional writers, Tess the social commentator (played by Hepburn) and Sam the regular guy sportswriter (played by Tracy), work for a New York City newspaper (where else?) and by fair means or foul having  had a dispute about the virtues of baseball, well, fell in love, yeah, got all misty-eyed over each other. Go figure, opposites attract, okay. And that is all well and good but deep down Sam is an old-fashioned guy who wants a wife who will cater to his needs, and bring forth children. Tess however is in the center of a whirlwind of important 1940s social and political events for which she will eventually receive an award as “woman of the year” and thus not inclined to pursue his dream for her.

So you can see the problem, love and all, since their schedules don’t coincide, their day to day concerns don’t coincide and Tess lets the secret out- Sam’s work as a topnotch sportswriter is not important, not in the great scheme of things. Sam is put upon, is made to feel like a second-class citizen, is made to feel, well, like a woman then, and probably more than we want to admit now as well. Sam can’t take it anymore after a while and leaves. Of course in 1940s melodramatic time the resolution here revolves around Tess trying to be a good wife, a good housewife if you can believe that (and mercifully failing as even Sam can see). Yeah, today that story ending would certainly have to be updated. Oh, by the way, this film also shows in passing how two actors who are involved with each other off-stage (the beginning of the big Hepburn-Tracy affair) can go the extra mile in a performance to get that right dramatic effect like I noticed as well with Bacall and Bogart in To Have Or Have Not.