The Hepburn-Tracy Project, #1: "Woman of the Year" (George Stevens, 1942)

In late April, Warner Home Video scored a coup of sorts and put out a DVD box called Tracy & Hepburn: The Definitive Collection, which puts togeth­er all nine of the films co-starring legends Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in one handy-dandy pack­age. A great num­ber of the films they made togeth­er are not under the Warner rub­ric, so, like the recent Kazan box set from Fox, this is a bit of a dip­lo­mat­ic achieve­ment. The thing about the Tracy-Hepburn col­lab­or­a­tions is that, until I’d say as late as Adam’s Rib, they don’t look as if they were really approached as such, that is, as col­lab­or­at­ive works by two dis­tinct­ive artists; they were just films that had the two stars, who were romantic­ally involved off-screen, work­ing togeth­er. They did­n’t sig­ni­fy as “Tracy and Hepburn” pic­tures in oth­er words.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself. Or I should say ourselves. When I got the box set, I pro­posed to My Lovely Wife Claire that it might be a fun thing for us to assess togeth­er, since she and I are so VERY much like Tracy and Hepburn them­selves. But ser­i­ously. Claire did some DVD review­ing for me back in the Première days, and I’ve always been a fan of her writ­ing, and her over­all per­cept­ive­ness and sun­ni­ness and all sorts of “ness” informs my work at its best, I like to think. So, this inform­al pro­ject, wherein we watch the Tracy/Hepburn pic­tures and con­coct, each week, a “dia­logue” about the picture. 

The first pic­ture is the first that Hepburn and Tracy made togeth­er, of course, the 1942 Woman of the Year, dir­ec­ted by George Stevens, in which sports colum­nist Tracy falls for “eman­cip­ated” high­falutin polit­ic­al colum­nist and knows-all-the-right-people gad­about Hepburn, and shows her the prop­er place for a…well, I don’t need to say it. The movie hap­pens to rank pretty high on our friend The Self-Styled Siren’s “Ten Movies The Siren Should Love…But Does Not” list, and when we popped it in Claire, who had not seen the pic­ture before, was curi­ous as to why. It did­n’t take her long to find out, as our dia­logue below attests…

Claire Kenny: This was not at all what I expec­ted, and I’m afraid I just didn’t much enjoy it…I think you felt the same? I feel like I’m SUPPOSED to enjoy it; I know that it’s a “clas­sic,” and obvi­ously KH/ST have all the fab­ulous zesty crackly brainy inter­ac­tions we expect, but there was just too much stuff I would have to over­look. This is for the obvi­ous them­at­ic (anti-feminist) reas­ons, but they mani­fes­ted them­selves in ways I wasn’t anti­cip­at­ing. I thought, if any­thing, it was going to be one of those things where the big fancy career girl is Just Too Uppity For Her Own Good, and he’s going to have to “tame” her, which would of course have been frus­trat­ing and off-putting. But this was really worse in a way, because it’s not just that Hepburn’s Tess is smart and ambi­tious and suc­cess­ful, it’s that she’s not LIKABLE. She’s selfish and incon­sid­er­ate and flighty, exhib­ited most appallingly in her sur­prise adop­tion of an orphan and sub­sequent dis­in­terest in even the most fun­da­ment­al aspects of his well­being. Meanwhile Tracy’s Sam cranks around this big beau­ti­ful apart­ment, pout­ing over being neg­lected and get­ting no time alone with his new wife, and maybe you should­n’t have got­ten mar­ried after know­ing someone for thirty seconds, Spence?? I’m not sure what we’re sup­posed to get from this—is she insuf­fer­able because she doesn’t embrace her wifely sta­tion, or are we sup­posed to think of her as insuf­fer­able by nature, and in turn think of this qual­ity as essen­tial to fem­in­ine suc­cess? I real­ize I should make allow­ances for its dated­ness, but it may have aged past the point of being bear­able.  The end­ing is…meh. The slap­stick ele­ment of Tess’s attempts to make break­fast for Sam don’t really work—something is off with the pacing, it’s just not mad­cap enough—and her implied assump­tion of a more sub­ser­vi­ent role irks. On the oth­er hand, I wasn’t clear what she was going to do exactly—it seemed the plan was basic­ally “work less, hyphen­ate last name, leave my slick apart­ment behind for this town­house com­plex.”  Which is fine, I guess. No sug­ges­tion that Sam was going work less, but this is prob­ably too much to expect for 1942.

I do give the movie bonus points for Tess’s father’s scrump­tious coun­try house in Connecticut.  I’m a suck­er for classic-movie coun­try houses.

Glenn Kenny: You got more takeaway from the ostens­ible con­tent than I did…or is it that I’m just an insens­it­ive male? Everything you’re say­ing about the offens­ive­ness of the chau­vin­ism is entirely cor­rect, but none of that registered for me as strongly as just what a logy, dry, and leaden pic­ture this is from stem to (almost) stern. George Stevens at his best is, as we all know from read­ing our cop­ies of The American Cinema, an auteur, but damn, when I see a Stevens film that does­n’t click for me I tend to ask myself, where the hell is George Stevens at his best, because this sure as hell is pretty far from it. [N.B., that’s merely a quasi-rhetorical ques­tion designed to con­jure my par­tic­u­lar feel­ing of frus­tra­tion with this movie; but for actu­al answers con­cern­ing Stevens’ great­ness, you could do worse than to check out Raymond De Felitta’s pieces about him at Movies ‘Til Dawn—part one is here—and/or The Siren’s recent break­down of a clas­sic scene from Giant.]The Hepburn/Tracy “chem­istry” is there but just barely…it seeps through the cracks of the cret­in­ous plot­ting (man, that busi­ness with the orphaned kid is bey­ond crassly lame) and only really comes to life —and here’s the main thing I dis­agree with you about con­cern­ing the film—in the finale, which, con­tent aside, is a funny slap­stick bit that harks back to Stevens’ days as a dir­ect­or of Laurel and Hardy shorts, and under­scores the teams’ core tal­ents in the com­ic arena. It is, admitedly, almost com­pletely out of place here, but wel­come non­ethe­less. If I may be so bold I’d like to spec­u­late that had Hepburn and Tracy not wound up togeth­er romantic­ally, they might have nev­er been cast togeth­er again on the “strength” of this film. That’s my story and I’m stick­ing to it!

Claire Kenny: It’s not that I got more out of this than you did–I think I was hav­ing the same prob­lems as you, and the most inter­est­ing emo­tion­al response I could find was right­eous indig­na­tion. Which is really not say­ing much–“the only thing your movie offered me, Mr. Stevens, was enough offens­ive con­tent to keep me mod­er­ately annoyed for two hours.” I keep think­ing about your last state­ment, though, and I can­’t decide wheth­er or not I agree. It’s of course a false exer­cise, because we have all the bene­fits of hind­sight and a body of ter­rif­ic joint work to look back on, but I can see why a view­er in 1942 would look at this and see the poten­tial for lots of won­der­ful future pair­ings. Neither act­or is at all like any oth­er film act­or I can think of, of any peri­od, and the com­bin­a­tion of their spe­cif­ic tal­ents and intel­li­gences and weird rough edges is some­thing that does­n’t make con­cep­tu­al sense until you see it onscreen. Even from this weak start, I see what made people want more. And I’m still not with you on the finale. Here’s why: I think that for slap­stick (which I’ll admit is not my favor­ite thing) to be really effect­ive, the envir­on­ment­al obstacles almost have to take on the qual­it­ies of anoth­er char­ac­ter who’s in act­ive battle with the performer(s). And for THAT to work, the per­former has to appear to *believe* that the obstacles have wills of their own, and might win the battle–whereas Katharine Hepburn is not believ­able as someone who can­’t mas­ter her envir­on­ment. She’s only effect­ively undone on film by some kind of emo­tion­al cir­cum­stance; she does­n’t read as someone incap­able in prac­tic­al ways. So here, she looks like someone very good at waffle-making pre­tend­ing like she does­n’t know how to make waffles. Stevens com­pensates for this with linger­ing shots of the waffle­maker bub­bling over, or whatever, which kills the pace.

Glenn Kenny: Touché. I can’t say you’re wrong in your ana­lys­is of that pen­ul­tim­ate scene, Maybe I was so long­ing for a Laurel and Hardy short by that point in the dreary Woman that I over­com­pensated ima­gin­at­ively. In any event, the pic­ture itself is suf­fi­ciently dis­pir­it­ing as a view­ing exper­i­ence (as opposed to a sub­ject for his­tor­ic­al study, that is) that I’m almost over­eager to get to the next…

The next will be Keeper of the Flame, dir­ec­ted by George Cukor. Stay tuned!