Pre-code: Man's Castle (1933).

Man's Castle (1933). A pre-code film directed by Frank Borzage. Cast: Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young.

During this film, Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy, began an affair that lasted about a year. Young ended the relationship when she wasn't granted absolution because she was dating a married Catholic.

The surviving film, shown on TCM, is the edited 1938 (post-Production Code) re-release, with redesigned title credits.

The story begins with Trina, watching and secretly wishing for the popcorn Bill, is feeding to the most beautiful white pigeons, I have ever seen. He wants to help her, after he hears that she has not eaten anything for two days. He then decides to take her to dinner at a fancy restaurant.

 

After her meal, Bill calls for the manager, so he can inform him that he has no money, also.. to point out that the restaurant throws out food every day, thinking that he could allow her to eat for free just this once. After, Bill's scene the manager throws them both out.

After finding out that Trina, has no place to live, he takes her to his home, located in a riverside shantytown. Even though, he does not want to be tied down to one woman, he allows her to stay. He loves sleeping under the stars and has put a hole in the roof so that he can always watch the sky.

Trina sets up housekeeping and tries not to interfere with his life and even ignoring his fling with a singer named Fay(pictured above).

It is not long before, Trina tells Bill, that she is pregnant and for the first time in his life he cares more about some one other than himself. They ask their friend and neighbor, preacher Ira, to perform their marriage ceremony.

Bill, now needing money for Trina and her baby, reminds Bragg of his plans to rob a toy store payroll. When the robbery fails, Bragg, who has eyes for Trina, calls the police to arrest Bill, hoping she will turn to him.

Flossie, suggests that the couple run away together and then, shoots Bragg and then herself. Trina and Bill, now on the run head for the passing train ....

This is the first time that I had ever seen this film and I absolutely loved it. Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy, have a wonderful on screen chemistry and they help turn this movie into a wonderful romance. It is filmed in such a dreamy way, that their humble home looks very charming and homey. If you get a chance to see this film I do not think you will be disappointed.

Please click here for Silents: Mans Castle(1933) movie review.

Glenda Farrell (June 30, 1904 – May 1, 1971).  Farrell began her career with a theatrical company at the age of 7. She played the role of Little Eva in, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

She later was in the cast of, Cobra and The Best People in 1925.

Farrell was first signed to a long-term contract by First National Pictures in July 1930. She was given the female lead in Little Caesar. Warner Brothers signed her to re-create on film the role she played in, Life Begins on Broadway.

Farrell worked on parts in twenty movies in her first year with the studio. She came to personify the wise-cracking, hard-boiled, and dizzy blonde, along with, Joan Blondell, with whom she would be frequently paired.

Her brassy persona was used in the films: Little Caesar (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Havana Widows (1933), Gambling Ship (1933), Bureau of Missing Persons (1933), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and The Big Shakedown (1934).

She became one of Warner Brothers’ most prolific actresses of the 1930s, solidifying her success with her own film film series, as Torchy Blane, "Girl Reporter". In this role Farrell was promoted as being able to speak 400 words in 40 seconds.

Farrell would portray the character Torchy Blane in seven films, from 1937 to 1939 when the role was taken over by Jane Wyman. in the first of the Torchy Blane series, Smart Blonde (1937) In 1937 she starred opposite Dick Powell and Joan Blondell in the Academy Award nominated Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley directed musical comedy, Gold Diggers of 1937.

When her Warner Brothers contact expired in 1939 she opted to focus on her stage career once again. She said that working in plays gave her more of a sense of individuality whereas in films you get frustrated because you feel you have no power over what you're doing.

Farrell went out of vogue in the 1940s but made a comeback later in life, appearing in Secret of the Incas (1954), the Charlton Heston adventure epic upon which Raiders of the Lost Ark was based a quarter century later, and winning an Emmy Award in 1963, for her work in the television series Ben Casey.

She was appearing on Broadway in, Forty Carats in 1969 when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She remained with the show until ill health forced her departure in November 1970.

Her son with her first husband Thomas Richards was B-Western "sidekick" actor Tommy Farrell. She dated Hollywood film writer Robert Riskin in the early 1930s and married Jack Durant of the Mitchell and Durant vaudeville team in June 1931. In 1941 Farrell became the wife of Dr. Henry Ross, a West Point graduate and Army physician who served on General Eisenhower's staff.

In 1971, she died from lung cancer, aged 66, at her home in New York City.  When Dr. Ross died in 1991, he was buried with her.

Cass Timberlane(1945).

Cass Timberlane, is a novel written by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1945. It is Sinclair Lewis' nineteenth novel and one of his last.It was made into a romantic drama film starring Spencer Tracy and Lana Turner, directed by George Sidney, and released in 1947. Timberlane is a minor character in Lewis's novel Kingsblood Royal.

While Judge Cass Timberlane, a kind-hearted, bachelor, is trying a boring divorce case, he finds a notebook that Jinny left in the courtroom. Attracted to the much younger Jinny, Cass searches for her in the neighborhood where she lives, and finds her playing baseball. Cass offers to umpire her game, after which he takes her out to dinner.

The two fall in love, much to the disappointment of Cass's society friends, who believe that he is wrong to cross social lines. With the exception of his friend attorney, Bradd Criley.

Cass, marries Jinny and as time passes, Cass soon realizes that Jinny is unhappy living in the small town of Grand Republic.

Jinny eventually becomes pregnant, but when the baby is stillborn, she goes into a deep depression. Cass, tries to cheer up his wife by teaching her how to fly an airplane and supporting her while she becomes a stage actress.

Jinny, gets herself into trouble with her performance, while rehearsing a love scene with her co-star, Bradd, who is transferred to his company's office in New York City as a result.

Cass, suggests they take a trip to New York, so he can visit an old friend to look into becoming partners in his law firm. Jinny, wants to stay in New York, after her wonderful day in New York with Brad. When Cass, tells her that he has rejected a job offer in the city, she breaks it off with him.

Cass, tells Jinny that she is welcome to stay in New York with Bradd. It turns out that Bradd, does not really want to marry Jinny. Heartbroken, she jumps out of the speeding car in which they are driving and is seriously injured.

After Lillian Drover, the wife of Jinny's doctor, tells Cass about Jinny's injuries, will Cass rush back to New York to be with her?

This is one of my favorite Spencer Tracy films and he gives an excellent performance. Lana Turner, is also very good. The scenes between she and Zachary Scott have enough sparks to make you wonder if they are guilty of adultery. This is a wonderful film that was well worth seeing.



Fun Facts:

MGM reportedly paid close to $150,000 for the film rights to Lewis' novel.

Walter Pidgeon who has a brief cameo in the film, was at one point considered for the title role.

Jennifer Jones, Vivien Leigh, and Virginia Grey were among those thought out for the female lead.

Fay Hendry, the mother of Sonya Hendry, a young girl who appeared in the film, was awarded nearly $30,000 for injuries she sustained when the girl was struck by a falling reflector at the site of location filming.

Tracy was not initially pleased with the studio's choice of director, hoping to have George Cukor or Vincente Minnelli assigned the position.

The poem that Cass Timberlane recites at the picnic with Virginia is "First Fig" by Edna St. Vincent Millay and goes "My candle burns at both ends / It will not last the night / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends / It gives a lovely light!"

In late 1946, Marie McDonald campaigned for the female lead.

Margaret Lindsay (September 19, 1910 - May 9, 1981) After attending National Park Seminary in Washington, D.C., Lindsay convinced her parents to enroll her at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

She then went abroad to England to make her stage debut. She performed in plays: Escape, Death Takes a Holiday and The Romantic Age.

Lindsay was often mistaken as being British due to her convincing English accent, which impressed Universal Studios enough to sign her for their 1932 version of, The Old Dark House.

After some minor roles in Pre-Code films such as Christopher Strong and Baby Face, which starred Barbara Stanwyck, Lindsay was cast in the award-winning, Cavalcade.

Later, Lindsay performed in a small but memorable role as Edith Harris, a doomed English bride whose honeymoon voyage takes place on the Titanic. Her work in Cavalcade earned her a contract at Warner Bros. where she became a supporting player, working with Paul Muni, Errol Flynn, Henry Fonda, Warren William, Leslie Howard, George Arliss, Humphrey Bogart, Boris Karloff and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Lindsay was cast four times as the love interest of James Cagney, from 1933-1935. She performed with Cagney in four films: Frisco Kid, Devil Dogs of the Air, G-Men and Lady Killer. Lindsay co-starred with Bette Davis in four films: 1934's Fog Over Frisco; in 1935's Dangerous (for which Davis won her first Best Actress Academy Award); in Bordertown, co-starring Paul Muni, and as Davis's rival for Henry Fonda's affections in Jezebel (1938), which earned Davis her second Best Actress Academy Award.

The Law in Her Hands (1936), she performed a leading role as a mob lawyer. It was rare among gangster films of the 30's to have a female in such a male-dominated role. Made after the Motion Picture Production Code came into effect, The Law in Her Hands was forced into a reactionary stance towards the gender switch and concluded with a plot twist that was the complete opposite of the Pre-Code period (1929–1934), when "female characters on the screen could say, do and be whatever they wanted".

Lindsay's best known film role was, The House of the Seven Gables in 1940, with George Sanders and Vincent Price.

Her 1940s film series work in Hollywood included: Ellery Queen series from 1940-1942. Lindsay, performed in a supporting role in the 1942 film, The Spoilers, starring John Wayne and in Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street in 1945. While her work in the late 1940s would occasionally involve a supporting role in MGM films like Cass Timberlane with Spencer Tracy, her film career faded, soon after.

She returned to the stage and co-starred with Franchot Tone, in The Second Man. 1950s and 1960s She made her television debut in 1950 in, The Importance of Being Earnest. More television work soon followed.

Lindsay performed in only four films during the 1950s and two in the 1960s. Her final feature film was, Tammy and the Doctor (1963). Lindsay lived with her sister Helen in Hollywood. Later in life, she lived with her youngest sister Mickie.

Despite being romantically linked to actors such as William Gargan and Edward Norris, she never married. Margaret Lindsay's sister, Jane Kies (1909–1985), was also an actress under the name of Jane Gilbert. In 1940, Jane married the son of Hedda Hopper, actor William Hopper, best known for his role as Paul Drake in the Perry Mason television series. Their daughter Joan was born in 1942, and the couple divorced in the early 1960s. Lindsay's niece Peggy Kenline and great-nephew Brad Yates were also actors.

Riffraff (1936).

Riffraff(1936). Cast: Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy. The movie was written by Frances Marion, Anita Loos, and H. W. Hannaford. Directed by J. Walter Ruben.

As the fishermen are all about to strike against tuna cannery boss Nick Lewis, Dutch Muller talks them out of it, realizing that Nick wants them to break their contract with him so he can hire cheaper labor.

On the day of Dutch's and Hattie's wedding, Dutch shows her their new home and tells her that he will be the new union head because Brains, is going to be replaced. As his first official act, Dutch calls for a strike.

Weeks after the strike Brains tries to work a settlement with Nick and replaces Dutch. Now broke, Dutch watches as their furniture is repossessed and refuses Brains's offer to take him back into the union. "Flytrap," arrives with Hattie's repossessed fur. Because Nick is in love with Hattie, he has paid all of her bills. Dutch, becomes angry with Brains when he tells him to give up his conceit. When Hattie agrees with Brains, Nick walks out.

Nick convinces Hattie to get a divorce, but.. she still refuses to marry him. When Dutch's friend Lew tells her that Dutch is sick and has been living in a hobo camp, she asks Nick for money, but he refuses. She takes it, leaving a note promising to pay him back, but at the hobo camp, Dutch jumps a freight to avoid seeing her. Nick then presses charges against her and she goes to prison, even though she is pregnant.

After the baby is born, Hattie's sister Lil takes care of him. Hearing that Hattie has been jailed, but not knowing about the baby, Dutch goes to Nick for help, but he refuses and the union also does not want him back. Dutch then goes to see Hattie with an escape plan, but.. she says she never wants to see him again.

She tells two other inmates about Dutch's escape plan and they convince her that it will work.

Meanwhile, Dutch goes to Brains begging for a job to help Hattie, and Brains gets him a job as a night watchman.

One rainy night, Hattie and two other women escape from prison through a drain pipe, but one of the women is killed. That same night, while Dutch is standing guard, his friend Belcher and some other men come to him with a plan about sabotaging the docks, but Dutch refuses to go through with it and stops their plans.

Hattie has arrived at Lil's and asks Jimmy to find Dutch, who has just heard about Hattie's escape. Jimmy tries to talk to him, but Dutch sends him away because, the police are there asking him questions. Will Jimmy ever return to Hattie and their baby?

 I'm a huge Jean Harlow fan and she looks wonderful in this movie. Spencer Tracy, plays a immature and bull headed character. Who, is always getting in arguments or fights at every opportunity. Not one of my favorite Spencer Tracy characters. Una Merkel, plays the sister and a very young Mickey Rooney, plays the brother.

Dorothy Appleby (January 6, 1906 – August 9, 1990) , performed in over 50 films between 1931 and 1943. Appleby was seen in many supporting roles and never progressed to leading roles in important pictures because of her height, which made her difficult to cast. The trim brunette stood just over five feet tall, and her early leading men (like comedian Charley Chase) towered over her.

She soon found steady if not prestigious work in Columbia Pictures' two-reel comedies. She appeared frequently with The Three Stooges, who were only a few inches taller than she was, and in 1940 she became Buster Keaton's leading lady, for the same reason: her height complemented his. She also worked with Columbia comics Andy Clyde, El Brendel, and Hugh Herbert.

Some of her Stooge comedies were Loco Boy Makes Good, So Long Mr. Chumps, and In the Sweet Pie and Pie. One memorable appearance was as Rosita in 1940's Cookoo Cavaliers. In the film, Appleby gets hit by the Stooges when a facial "mud pack" made of cement dries on her face.

One of her last screen roles was a one-line bit (playing a college co-ed at age 35) in the 1941 Jane Withers feature Small Town Deb. Appleby left Hollywood in 1943 and married musician Paul Drake soon after. They remained married until her death August 9, 1990.

A Guy Named Joe (1943)

A Guy Named Joe(1943). Directed by Victor Fleming, produced by Everett Riskin, from a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, adapted by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan from a story by Chandler Sprague and David Boehm. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne and Van Johnson, with Esther Williams in a minor role. Musically, it featured the popular song "I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You)" by Fred Ahlert and Roy Turk, sung by Ms. Dunne. A Guy Named Joe was remade by Steven Spielberg in 1989 as Always with Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter and John Goodman, updating it to 1989 and exchanging the World War II backdrop to one of aerial firefighting.

The story begins with,"Dare Devil pilot" Pete Sandridge, commanding officer "Nails" Kilpatrick and cargo flyer Dorinda Durston, worried that someday their friends luck is going to run out.

After another dangerous flight, Nails, decides to transfer Pete and his best friend, pilot Al Yackey, to a quieter base in, Scotland. Dorinda, is not very happy about the transfer and half jokingly asks Pete to marry her.

It does not take long before, Pete and Al are bored with their new assignment and are more than happy to see Dorinda, when she flies in for a visit. She can not shake the feeling that Pete's "number is up." and begs Pete to accept Nails's, offer to become a flying instructor in America.

Pete initially rejects the idea, until she promises that she will give up flying, if he goes home, or she will transfer to Australia. Not wanting to lose her, he promises to take up Nails's offer. Al, comes in and tells Pete that they must leave to pick up a large German aircraft carrier.

On the flight, Pete does not take unnecessary chances, but.. is attacked by a German plane. After being wounded, he orders his crew to bail out, then crashes his plane onto the carrier. When Al returns to the base, Dorinda has already sensed that the love of her life is gone.

Meanwhile, Pete finds himself walking up in the clouds, when recognizes an old friend, Dick Rumney, who went down with his plane. Pete says "either I'm dead or I'm crazy," and Dick answers, "You're not crazy."Pete is then introduced to the General, who gives him the assignment to return to earth and share his knowledge with new flyers. Pete and Dick then go to a military flying school in Arizona, where Pete becomes a "ghost tutor" to wealthy Ted Randall. Pete, is not impressed with Ted, but.. as he guides him through training he becomes proud of him.

Dick and Pete's, flyers are sent to the South Pacific, their "ghost tutors" who hope to keep the men safe through combat, tag along. Soon after arriving, Ted goes to the local officers' club, with Pete following close behind. Pete sees Dorinda, sitting at a table and he goes to talk with her, but.. Ted, interrupts him to invite her to dinner. At first she turns him down, but.. encouraged by Al, she accepts.


Both Dorinda and Ted, notice the many odd similarities between Ted and Pete. When Ted is promoted to captain, he proposes to Dorinda and she accepts.

Dorinda, is visited by Pete, who advises her, through her subconscious, to marry Ted. Soon after, Ted stops by to inform her of his next assignment to destroy a Japanese ammunition dump in the South Pacific. She still thinking about Sam, tells him.. that she can not marry him.

When she learns that Ted, will be flying on an extremely dangerous mission, she rushes to the airbase and sneaks into his plane and takes off. Wanting to protect her, Pete sits behind her during the mission. Will he be able to keep her safe from the enemy?

Fun Facts:

There was no way to composite Spencer Tracy's image into the scenes where Van Johnson is flying, so he actually had to be standing behind Johnson and, later, Irene Dunne for the filming of these scenes. The same approach was used for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (techniques for superimposing one image onto another were not invented until much later).

The War Department initially did not approve the script, fearing psychological damage to new and experienced pilots and their parents. It relented after 2 revisions and promised full cooperation.

This picture was featured as MGM's big Christmas spectacular of 1943.

The General, played by Lionel Barrymore, wears the Medal of Honor ribbon on his uniform, but the ribbon is displayed upside down (the five stars forming a "W" instead of an "M"). Interestingly, James Doolittle also wore the Medal of Honor ribbon upside down, leading some to ask if there might be an aviation connection .

Along with Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne insisted the film's production be halted until Van Johnson was well after his auto accident, in which he was seriously injured. During this period, MGM snatched Dunne up to make The White Cliffs of Dover, released the following year as the MGM 20th Anniversary film. As a thank you for her gratitude, Johnson appears in a small role in 'Dover.'

Van Johnson was critically injured in an automobile accident on 31 March 1943 and MGM was set to replace him, but Spencer Tracy insisted that they shoot around him during his convalescence. Johnson didn't return to work until the first week in July of 1943, more than three months later.

Reportedly Steven Spielberg's favorite movie, he remade it in 1989 as Always. The remake included the three main characters (Pete Sandich, Durinda Durston and Al Yackey), plus the characters of "Ted" and "Nails."

Irene Dunne was actually eighteen years older than her love interest, Van Johnson.

This is one of my favorite Spencer Tracey movies, Irene Dunne, is also at her best here. I also think one of Van Johnson's best performances. If you've never seen "A Guy Named Joe," I strongly recommend it with a box of Kleenex.

Ward Bond (April 9, 1903 – November 5, 1960), attended the University of Southern California and played football and was a starting lineman on USC's first national championship team in 1928. Bond and John Wayne, who as Marion Morrison had played tackle for USC in 1926 before an injury ended his career, became lifelong friends. Bond, Wayne and the entire Southern Cal team were hired to appear in Salute (1929), a football film starring George O'Brien and directed by John Ford. It was during the filming of this movie that Bond and Wayne became friendly with Ford, and both actors would perform in many of Ford's later films.

Bond made his screen debut in Salute, and thereafter played over 200 supporting roles, rarely playing the lead in film, until starring in the television series.. Wagon Train from 1957 until his death in 1960.

He was frequently typecast as a friendly policeman or as a brutal thug. He had a long-time working relationship with directors John Ford and Frank Capra, performing in such films as: The Searchers, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Quiet Man, and Fort Apache for Ford, with whom he made 25 films, and It Happened One Night and It's a Wonderful Life for Capra.

Some of his other well-known film: Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sergeant York (1941), They Were Expendable (1945), Joan of Arc (1948),  Rio Bravo (1959), and The Big Trail, which also featured John Wayne's first leading role. It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and The Searchers (1956).

Bond has also been in 11 films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, which may be more than any other actor: Arrowsmith (1931/32), Lady for a Day (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sergeant York (1941), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), The Quiet Man (1952) and Mister Roberts (1955).

He performed with With John Wayne in the films: The Searchers (1956),Rio Bravo (1959). The Wings of Eagles (1957), The Searchers (1956), Rookie of the Year (TV drama 1955). Hondo (1953), The Quiet Man (1952), Operation Pacific (1951), Fort Apache (1948), 3 Godfathers (1948), They Were Expendable (1945), Dakota (1945), Tall in the Saddle (1944), The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), The Long Voyage Home (1940), Conflict (1936), and The Big Trail (1930).

Rumor has it that... country singer Johnny Horton died in an automobile accident while driving to see Bond at a hotel in Dallas to discuss a possible role in the fourth season of Wagon Train. Although Horton was indeed killed in a car crash at 1:30 a.m. on November 5, 1960, and Bond died from a massive heart attack at noon that same day, the two events were unrelated.

Horton was really on his way from Austin to Shreveport, Louisiana, not Dallas. Bond was in Dallas to attend a football game. Bond was 57 at the time of his death; John Wayne gave the eulogy at his funeral. Bond's will bequeathed to Wayne the shotgun with which Wayne had once accidentally shot Bond.

For his contribution to the television industry, Bond has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Blvd. In 2001, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. There is also a Ward Bond Memorial Park in his birthplace of Benkelman, Nebraska.

I Take This Woman (1940)

I Take This Woman(1940), Drama film starring Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr.

Heartbroken, after breaking up with Phil Mayberry, a married man who refuses to divorce his wife. Georgi Gragore, decides to end her life by jumping into the sea from the upper decks of the ocean liner. Dr. Karl Decker, saves her just in time. After arriving in New York, Georgi decides to visit Karl, at his clinic. Karl gives Georgi, a job and soon finds himself falling in love with her. After the two are married, Karl meets Georgi's wealthy friends and begins to worry about supporting her in the style to which she is used to. When Dr. Duveen, offers him a position in private practice, Karl gives up his clinic, to make more money.

Georgi, still struggling with her feelings for Mayberry, goes to see him at his apartment, where she soon realizes that she no longer in with love him. When Karl hears about Georgi's visit, he is crushed. Soon after, Karl, is called back to the hospital on an emergency, where a young woman dies. Karl, disillusioned with his life, gets ready to leave for China. Will Georgi be able to stop him in time?



Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr, made a odd couple. Lamarr's performance was my favorite, she is always so much fun to watch.

Mona Barrie (December 18, 1909 – June 27, 1964). An English actress who made her debut as a ballet dancer at the age of sixteen. In 1933 she moved to New York and was given a screen test which led to her film debut in, Sleepers East(1934). Her film career spanned almost twenty years and she performed in more than fifty films.

The Films of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Part 4

Desk Set (1957)
***
Director: Walter Lang

In Desk Set Katharine Hepburn plays Bunny Watson, head of the reference department at a national television network, an all-female department staffed by Hepburn and her three coworkers (Dina Merrill, Sue Randall, and a delightful Joan Blondell). When their territory is invaded by an absent-minded "methods engineer," Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy), who shows up unannounced one day and begins measuring the office space, Bunny assumes Sumner is some sort of efficiency expert hired to reorganize the layout of the office. But nobody knows for sure what he is up to until twenty minutes or so into the film, when he drops a bombshell. He is actually a computer engineer whose job is to install a giant computer (or "electronic brain," in the jargon of 1957) to store all the information currently held in the department's archives of print sources. Bunny, who has an absolutely retentive memory for all sorts of minutiae organized according to her own idiosyncratic method, is intellectually offended by the prospect of being replaced by a machine. "I'd match my memory any day against any machine," she boasts. The other women in the office have a more practical concern: they can't afford to lose their livelihood.

As you might expect, romantic complications soon arise. For seven years Bunny has been dating an executive at the network, Mike Cutler (Gig Young), in the expectation that a proposal of marriage is forthcoming, but to no avail. After she and Richard are caught in a rainstorm, she invites him to her apartment, where they slip into bathrobes and enjoy a comfortable dinner (fried chicken prepared by Richard) while their clothes dry. When Mike shows up unexpectedly, he jumps to the wrong conclusion and leaves in a huff. Things reach the crisis point during the drunken office Christmas party when Mike finally proposes—but on the assumption that Bunny will give up her career and life in New York and follow him to his new job in California—and the entire office learns that the new computer is to be installed the next day. The rest of the movie explains how Bunny's romantic dilemma and the department's uncertain future are ultimately resolved. (Happily, of course, for this is a comedy.)

This was the first Tracy-Hepburn movie shot in color. It was also the first not made by MGM, but instead at 20th Century-Fox, by Fox house director Walter Lang. The British film critic and historian Leslie Halliwell calls him a "director of competent but seldom outstanding entertainments," and I would say that is a fair summation of this film. When the plot begins to drag, you can sit back and admire the elaborate production design and the chic wardrobes of Hepburn and her female costars. Or you can always direct your attention to the imaginative ways Fox house cinematographer Leon Shamroy applies the CinemaScope screen ratio typical of the studio's output in the 1950s to the intimacy of a romantic comedy. Especially interesting is the way he treats the reference department as a sort of stage (the movie was, in fact, based on a play), spreading the actors and props across the screen and using dollops of color to break up the monolithic shape of the frame.

Desk Set is a bit slow to get started, the exposition of its first section more functional than engaging. The situations and characters surrounding Tracy and Hepburn have the slightness of a sitcom, although a very smoothly engineered and not unintelligent sitcom. When the focus settles on Tracy and Hepburn, however, things immediately pick up. Their interactions are quite well written, especially the scenes in which they are the only two characters present, and form the core of the film's appeal. By the time Desk Set was made, these two were so comfortable with each other onscreen that they could have taken turns reading the telephone book and made us believe it was as witty as the dialogue in a play written by Oscar Wilde. There is no doubt that their personal charisma and their star power are the things above all else that put this movie over.


Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
**^½
Director: Stanley Kramer

In Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's last film together—and Tracy's last film ever—they play a married San Francisco couple, Matt and Christina Drayton. He's the editor of a newspaper and she owns an art gallery. When their 23-year old daughter Joey (played by Hepburn's niece, Katharine Houghton) returns from a vacation and announces plans to marry after a whirlwind romance with a man she has known only a few days—a widower nearly fifteen years older than herself—her mother is alarmed. She is in for an even greater shock when she meets the man and finds he is black. He is Dr. John Prentice, a medical researcher played by Sidney Poitier. As political liberals, the Draytons claim to have no objection to the marriage on racial grounds. It's the reaction of society and the problems they believe their naive daughter will encounter as part of a mixed-race marriage that trouble them. Christina quickly comes to accept the idea but realizes that the greatest obstacle to the marriage will be her husband.

Prentice further complicates matters when he proclaims to Matt that he won't marry Joey without her father's approval, and moreover that since he will be leaving for Geneva the next day, Matt has twenty-four hours to make up his mind. An additional complication ensues when Prentice's parents suddenly announce they are flying up from Los Angeles and plan to come to dinner at the Draytons' home. As the film builds to its long climactic scene, the dinner party, the women have agreed to support the marriage, but sparks are still flying between the men—Matt, Dr. Prentice, and Dr. Prentice's querulous, disapproving father—and the question of Matt's final decision in the matter is still up in the air.

Director Stanley Kramer got his start in the late 1940s as a producer of social issues movies and, after becoming a director in the mid-1950s, directed a series of issues movies of his own. But by 1967 Kramer's once-daring liberalism was beginning to look ponderous and tired. His attempt to make a serious statement about the contemporary state of race relations in the U.S. in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner seems hopelessly dated and unrealistic, and I mean dated not just in today's terms, but in the context of its own time. In the year that Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, even In the Heat of the Night were released, the sensibility of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner seems just plain out-of-step with the times. And Kramer's direction of the film, with its obviously fake backdrops of San Francisco and long didactic conversations, is as outdated as his take on its subject.

The movie has two huge flaws that make its central conflict ring false. Reviewers of the time criticized Poitier's character as being such a paragon that it made the Draytons' agonizing over the engagement seem implausible. But I find his behavior quite passive-aggressive. The "choice" he offers Matt seems more an ultimatum. He says that knowing how much Joey loves her mother and father, he couldn't bear it if a marriage without their approval caused a rift between Joey and her parents. But what does he expect to happen if he refuses to marry Joey because her parents object? Can he honestly believe such an outcome would be likely to preserve good relations between parents and daughter? Another major problem with the picture is Matt's ambivalence about the marriage. He says he only wants to protect his daughter from the unhappiness of being shunned by society. But come on. Never mind that the Draytons live in San Francisco, the most liberal city in America. Just consider that Prentice is a world-famous expert on infectious diseases and a consultant to the World Health Organization. Not only does he mix with highly educated, cosmopolitan people for whom interracial couples would hardly be unheard of, but he could choose to work and live anywhere in the world, in cities and countries where such couples were accepted even in 1967.

Then there is the strangely inconsistent tone of the film. William Rose's screenplay and Kramer's direction waver between treating the film's issues seriously and presenting them almost in sitcom trappings. Cecil Kellaway plays a friendly priest who serves as Matt's speaking conscience, urging him to greater tolerance. Kellaway starts out like a priest from a Leo McCarey picture of the 1940s, complete with Irish brogue and blarney-laden platitudes, then midway through the movie unaccountably loses both the brogue and the leprechaun personality. Isabel Sanford, as the Draytons' outspoken housekeeper haranguing Poitier for the brashness of his designs on Joey, whom she considers a surrogate daughter, comes off as a cross between Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind and Thelma Ritter. Still, she steals every scene she's in. Then there's the cringe-inducing sequence where Kramer attempts to deal with the generation gap by contriving to send Christina and Matt to Mel's drive-in, where they have an unpleasant/humorous encounter with a carhop and a pair of middle-aged-looking youths in a jalopy who seem to have strayed in from an Andy Hardy movie. And this is supposed to be San Francisco in 1967, the year of the Summer of Love!

As a finale to the Tracy-Hepburn collaboration, this film seems in every way a mistake. Tracy might have had success earlier in the decade in movies directed by Stanley Kramer, but Kramer's preoccupation with weighty political and social questions and his obvious discomfort with comedy strike me as a terrible mismatch with Tracy and Hepburn, who were at their best in pictures that concentrated on the personal relationship between their characters and leavened any serious issues underlying the plot with airy comedy. There's just no way around the fact that Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a disappointing end to one of the great acting partnerships of the movies.

The Films of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Part 3

Adam's Rib (1949)
****
Director: George Cukor

Tracy and Hepburn reached what is for me their absolute peak in their sixth movie together, in which they play a pair of married New York City lawyers, Adam and Amanda Bonner. He works for the district attorney's office; she has a private practice. When Brooklyn housewife Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) shoots her two-timing husband (Tom Ewell) in the apartment of his girl friend (Jean Hagen) and is charged with attempted murder, the Bonners find themselves on opposite sides of the case, he as prosecutor and she as attorney for the defense. Amanda sees the case as a question of the social double standard for men and women. She wants to make this the issue and defend her client by painting the shooting as a gender-reversal crime of passion. "Why 'not nice' if he does it," Amanda asks, "and 'something terrible' if she does it?" Adam, on the other hand, sees the case in strictly legal terms and views Amanda's attempt to put society on trial as an underhanded diversion that threatens to subvert the legal system.

The Bonners begin as friendly adversaries. But as the stubborn Amanda tries harder and harder to use the case to score points for feminism, resorting to courtroom showboating to humiliate Adam, and Adam digs in to restrict the trial to strictly legal issues, the legal dispute becomes a personal one that puts their own marriage in jeopardy. Things come to a head during the famous rubdown scene after a long day in court. Frustrated by Amanda's willingness to use any tactic to get her client acquitted, Adam slaps her behind a bit too hard during the rubdown. She retaliates with a sneaky kick to his rear end, and by the end of the evening Adam has packed his clothes and moved out. Now all is out-and-out warfare both personally and professionally. Things are further complicated when their neighbor Kip (David Wayne), an obnoxious Broadway songwriter with a crush on Amanda, takes advantage of the situation by trying to romance her. The question now is not only will Doris be convicted or acquitted, but will Adam and Amanda's marriage survive or fail.

What makes Adam's Rib such a great movie? Where to begin. There's the great screenplay by Ruth Gordon (yes, that Ruth Gordon from Rosemary's Baby and Harold and Maude) and her husband Garson Kanin, the well-known screenwriter/script doctor, playwright, and film director who specialized in romantic comedy. Adam's Rib, the second of four films they wrote for director George Cukor, may be the best "battle of the sexes" comedy ever written for the screen. The dialogue is never mechanical or perfunctory, but always tells us something about what the characters are thinking or feeling without ever seeming contrived to do so. The characters, especially Tracy and Hepburn, don't seem to be speaking lines so much as having real, although highly intelligent, conversations. And both the dialogue and the situations sparkle with wit and humor. Adam's Rib has as many belly laughs as you'll ever find in a movie, all without ever sacrificing its polished tone. This is humor entirely without vulgarity on the one hand, and artifice on the other.

The direction by George Cukor is flawless. From the opening sequence—nearly five minutes long and almost entirely without dialogue—in which Holliday ineptly stalks and finally shoots Ewell, to the mirror image sequence with Tracy, Hepburn, and Wayne at the end, Cukor's perfect coordination of tone and action never falters. His pacing of that fabulous dialogue is impeccable. The physical comedy is also brilliantly handled—always restrained, never coarse, its degree of physicality always right on the mark. The comedic high point of the film comes when Hepburn, addressing the jury in her closing speech, asks them to imagine their reactions to the crime if the gender of each of the principals were reversed. For a few seconds we see a succession of shots of Holliday, Hagen, and Ewell seated in the courtroom which dissolve briefly to shots of each of them in drag. Ewell in particular is hilarious as his female alter ego, flicking her wrist, pursing her lips, narrowing her eyes, and quickly snapping her head to one side with a defiant smirk on her face.

Above all, Adam's Rib is quite simply one of the most entertaining and realistic depictions of marriage ever to appear on the screen. Adam and Amanda Bonner are the very personification of a mid-twentieth century New York professional couple in the MGM mold—intelligent, sophisticated, rich without being ostentatious, yet all too human in their emotions. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn seem so responsive to each other's rhythms and moods that it requires no effort at all to accept them as a married couple who, despite their disagreements, have a deep psychic rapport. In this film they offer us a working definition of "screen chemistry." It is without question the pinnacle of the Tracy-Hepburn movies.


Pat and Mike (1952)
***^½
Director: George Cukor

The follow-up to Adam's Rib was again written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor and again deals with a battle of the sexes. Hepburn plays Pat Pemberton, a physical education instructor at a California college engaged to an administrator at the college, Collier Weld (William Ching). The very first sequence establishes the nature of their relationship. Pat is meeting Collier after class so they can drive to the golf course for a game with a potential donor and his wife. Collier complains about the slacks Pat is wearing, afraid such masculine attire will make a bad impression on his millionaire, and tells her to change into a skirt. And he reminds her that even though she is an expert golfer, she must lose the game. Collier is condescending and bossy towards Pat, but she is apparently so smitten with him (he does appear a few years younger and rather good-looking in a bland way) that she is willing to tolerate his attitude.

When she blows up after forcing herself to lose the match and impulsively quits her job at the college, she takes up the suggestion of a friendly bartender at the golf club and enters a national golf tournament. Here she meets Mike Conovan (Tracy), a professional sports promoter who, realizing how talented she is, offers to become her agent/trainer and represent her as a professional athlete. The only problem is Collier, who doesn't think it seemly for Pat to pursue a career, especially one in competitive sports, after their marriage. His disapproval becomes a jinx, for every time he shows up at a competition, Pat freezes up and fumbles. As she tells Mike, "I can't do anything well while he's watching me." Now she finds herself in the classic dilemma of romantic comedy. Will she stick with the obviously inappropriate romantic interest, or will she acknowledge the growing affection between her and Mike?

Like Adam's Rib, this film seems specifically tailored to the talents of Tracy and Hepburn, but in a completely different way. Hepburn's character is clearly based on her own natural athleticism. Hepburn was well known as a vigorous, active woman who regularly rode horses, golfed, played tennis, and swam. She reportedly swam daily until well into her eighties. It's obvious that for the most part Hepburn is really playing her own golf and tennis in Pat and Mike, with miminal use of a double. That first scene in the film where Pat's fiancé chides her for wearing slacks is surely an allusion to Hepburn's insistence on wearing slacks in the 1930s, at the time something unheard of for female stars in Hollywood. In fact, one anecdote about her recounts how RKO had her slacks removed from her dressing room to force her to wear a skirt. In protest, Hepburn strolled around the sound stage in her underwear until her slacks were returned.

Spencer Tracy was a gifted naturalistic actor whose typical approach to a role was to slip into it without much emphasis on external details. But his part in Pat and Mike, although the male lead, is essentially a character role. Under Cukor's direction, he appears quite comfortable as Mike, having fun with the mannerisms of the character and with the novelty of playing a colorful huckster conceived almost in the Damon Runyon vein. His Mike is certainly an eyeful in his gaudy faux-mobster attire—suits in loud checks, plaids, and chalk stripes worn over dark shirts and light-colored ties. Tracy manages to find the simple nobility in the character, though, despite his obvious lack of education, social polish, and fashion sense.

As much fun as this movie is—and make no mistake, it's a great deal of fun, the most sheerly enjoyable Tracy-Hepburn picture after Adam's Rib—it has a decidedly serious undertone. Even though Adam's Rib deals more openly with gender inequality as a concept, this issue is just as much at the heart of Pat and Mike. Mike's social and educational background may be a mismatch with Pat's, but unlike the patronizing Collier, a classic male chauvinist who tries to suffocate her personality, he actually respects her athletic accomplishments and treats her as an equal. Pat's association with Mike and her experience as an athlete holding her own in a male-dominated environment help her shed her submissive attitude and find her independence. The movie may wrap its feminist sensibility in a sugar coating of humor, but the message comes through nevertheless. The story of one woman's liberation, Pat and Mike is a worthy companion piece to Adam's Rib.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Films of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Part 2

The Sea of Grass (1947)
***
Director: Elia Kazan

The fourth movie Tracy and Hepburn made together is a Western, a nineteenth-century family saga that will remind many of Giant. As the film opens, Lutie Cameron (Hepburn), a young woman from St. Louis, is engaged to Jim Brewton (Tracy), the owner of a huge cattle ranch in New Mexico. When Jim sends a message saying he can't leave the ranch to come to St. Louis for the wedding, that they will have to be married in New Mexico, it's clear where his priorities lie. Once in New Mexico and married, Lutie finds herself in an environment she has trouble adjusting to. Jim is involved in a legal dispute with homesteaders, the kind of conflict that fuels so many Westerns, and is willing to go to any lengths to prevail, even acts of brutality. When his brutality harms a farming couple with whom Lutie has become friendly, forcing them to abandon their homestead, it becomes too much for her and she leaves Jim and her young daughter and goes to Denver.

In Denver the lonely and emotionally vulnerable Lutie runs into Brice Chamberlain (Melvyn Douglas), the lawyer who represents the homesteaders in court and is Jim's bitter enemy. After a one-night stand with Brice, Lutie returns home, contrite and pregnant, and gives birth to a son, Brock. When Jim accidentally finds out the truth about Brock and Lutie refuses to support him in his illegal range war with the homesteaders, he asks her to leave. She goes back to St. Louis and except for one brief visit doesn't return to the ranch until many years later, after her children are grown. Her daughter Sarah Beth (Phyllis Thaxter) has become a sensible young woman, but Brock (Robert Walker) has grown into a surly, impulsive young man with a hot temper. Out of concern for him she finally returns, only to find that he is a fugitive wanted for murder. Brock's tragic outcome proves to be the act that finally reunites the now middle-aged couple at the end of the film.

The Sea of Grass was the second movie directed by Elia Kazan, right before his social issues pictures of the late forties and A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. As such, it doesn't bear the stylistic stamp of his later, better-known films. (Kazan was not pleased with the film. "It's the only picture I've ever made that I'm ashamed of," he writes in his 1988 autobiography.) One thing it does have in common with his later work, though, is the quality of the acting, no surprise since Kazan was a former actor and in late 1947 would become a co-founder of the Actors Studio. Attention is often focused on Robert Walker's flavorful performance as the bad boy Brock, and his acting here is certainly an eye-opener, one of his few early performances that hint at the greatness he was to achieve later in his career as the loopy Bruno in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Still, Tracy and Hepburn hold their own against his more showy role.

One hardly associates Spencer Tracy or Katharine Hepburn with the Method, yet both excel under Kazan's direction. Tracy eschews the relaxed affability he made appear so effortless, instead tapping into the hardness of earlier roles like those in Man's Castle and Fury. His Jim Brewton is a man driven by ambition to create an empire and by ruthlessness to hold on to it at any cost. He is obstinate, domineering, and unforgiving, a man who demands unquestioning loyalty from Lutie and when he doesn't get it drives her out, then redirects his love for her to overindulgent affection for his children. Jim isn't exactly an unsympathetic character, but his flaws do make him a hard one to like completely.

Like Tracy, Hepburn also avoids what comes easily to her. In her straight dramatic performances, she often seemed self-conscious and overly earnest. Her brittle acting style—especially as she aged—was better suited to comedy or to seriocomic parts where she turned her screen image to her advantage by poking fun at it. Toning down her mannerisms, she convincingly portrays Lutie, who ages some twenty years during the picture, by skillfully balancing the character's strength and vulnerability. It's one of Hepburn's unsung performances and lingers in the memory long after the film is over. The range wars plot might be familiar and the personal relationships at times close to soap opera, but the acting can't be faulted. Of the Tracy-Hepburn films, this is the dark horse, the film most likely to rise in one's estimation on repeat viewing.


State of the Union (1948)
***^½
Director: Frank Capra

Tracy and Hepburn's next movie, State of the Union, was a political comedy-drama based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by the renowned Broadway writing team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. Tracy plays Grant Matthews, a self-made millionaire industrialist, and Hepburn his estranged wife Mary. Matthews is having an affair with Kay Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury), a newspaper publisher with a Lady Macbeth complex who wants to use her newspaper empire to promote him to run against Harry Truman as the Republican candidate in the 1948 presidential election. (At the time Truman was considered a sure loser. This is the election remembered for the photo of the triumphant Truman holding up a newspaper with the headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.") Matthews is a political amateur running as an anti-politician with an idealistic message of togetherness and cooperation. (Sound familiar?) As Jim Conover (Adolphe Menjou), the slick political adviser Kay hires to mastermind the campaign, puts it, Matthews has the "rare combination of sincerity and drive the common herd will go for."

When his handlers insist they need his wife and children to create the right image for the campaign, Matthews is persuaded to reconcile with Mary. At first she doesn't understand that the reconciliation is a publicity gimmick. After she does, she stays on board to make sure Grant remains true to his political ideals. Matthews soon finds himself in the middle of a complex tug-of-war. He is caught between his wife and his mistress, both of whom want to be the main influence in his campaign as well as in his personal life. He's also caught between staying true to his principles, as Mary urges him to do, and the pandering to special interests that Kay and his advisers tell him is necessary to get the nomination. Things reach a crisis as Grant appears to have sold out to assure his nomination and the film moves toward its climactic sequence, a national radio-television broadcast in which Grant will lay out the policy platform Kay and company have devised for him. When Grant finally sees the toll the betrayal of his principles has taken on a dismayed Mary, what will he do, and what will be the ultimate state of their own union? Integrity or compromise? Mary or Kay?

It's easy to see what drew Capra to this project. An exploitative press, political chicanery, the corrupting influence of money and power, a main character caught in the conflict between idealism and compromise—these are things found in so many of Capra's movies. The hero, Grant Matthews, is an ordinary man enmeshed in a process he doesn't fully comprehend and can't control; the villains are the pompous, the hypocritical, the humorless, the greedy, and the power-hungry. In Capra's hands this material may become another version of his well-worn populist hokum, but it's impossible to resist. Despite all the references to politicians of the time whom few modern viewers are likely recognize, many things in the movie haven't dated at all. References to subjects like tax rates, inflation, economic depression, the dire state of housing and medical care, defense readiness, globalism, and whispering campaigns still seem surprisingly relevant. And the film's cynical view of politics is right in tune with current attitudes.

Of all the Tracy-Hepburn movies, this one seems the least tailored to their familiar screen personalities. Indeed, neither was Capra's first choice. He wanted either Clark Gable or Gary Cooper for Grant, and Claudette Colbert was actually cast as Mary before a dispute over her contract (she insisted that she not be required to work past 5 p.m.) caused Hepburn to step in just two days before filming began. Yet Tracy and Hepburn do great work for Capra. Tracy's everyman quality is well suited to the self-made man motivated more by the desire to serve than by ambition, and he strikes me as more believable presidential timber than the macho Gable or the impassive Cooper. Hepburn's role is clearly secondary to Tracy's, and she seems content to defer to him for a change. Any of a number of actresses could have handled her part capably, but one thing Hepburn puts across more convincingly than another actress might have done is the enthusiastic idealism of Mary, a quality Hepburn was particularly adept at projecting. The cast is rounded out by Lansbury (22-years old playing 40), Menjou, Van Johnson as a wise-cracking reporter commenting from the sidelines, and in smaller parts familiar faces like Raymond Walburn, Margaret Hamilton, and Charles Lane.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Films of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Part 1

Of the many famous screen pairings of the Hollywood studio era, two stand out above all others: Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers and Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn. Astaire and Rogers made ten movies together, Tracy and Hepburn nine. All nine of the Tracy-Hepburn films have now been released by Warner Home Video in Tracy & Hepburn: The Definitive Collection. I decided to observe the release of this collection by watching the only one of their films I had never seen, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and over the next few weeks offering up my thoughts on their work together.

The thing that sets Tracy and Hepburn apart from most other famous screen teams is their well-documented offscreen romance. Other classic screen pairings were strictly professional, but when the cameras stopped rolling, Tracy and Hepburn's relationship continued in private life. This was not just a fling by two stars thrown together while making a movie, but a deep emotional relationship that lasted twenty-five years, the details of which are well known by lovers of classic cinema. The two never married because Tracy was a Roman Catholic who couldn't bring himself to divorce his wife and leave her and his handicapped son. They did often spend time together at the Malibu estate of their friend and frequent director, George Cukor, though. Tracy, who so often played easygoing, self-confident characters, was actually a profoundly tormented man, an alcoholic depressive who went on drinking binges that lasted several days and afterwards left him virtually paralyzed. The devoted Kate would play the role of his nurse during and after these binges, caring for him until he recovered.

Kate apparently developed an interest in Tracy before the two ever met based solely on her reaction to his screen personality, and when she returned to Hollywood in 1940 to film The Philadelphia Story wanted him to costar with her. (She wanted him to play Macaulay Connor, the reporter played to perfection by James Stewart. I've never quite been able to picture this myself, seeing him as better suited to the role of her manly soul-mate, C. K. Dexter Haven.) But Tracy was involved in other films (he starred in no less than four movies released in 1940), and it wasn't until Hepburn's next film, Woman of the Year, that they worked together for the first time.

Conceived by Hepburn as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy and herself, this was, like The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn's project. She commissioned the screenplay, sold it to Louis B. Mayer at MGM, and handpicked as director George Stevens, who had directed her in Alice Adams and Quality Street. Woman of the Year won an Oscar for its writers, Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner Jr., and got Kate an Oscar nomination for best actress. (She lost to Greer Garson for Mrs. Miniver.) Its success led to a contract for Hepburn at MGM, where Tracy had been under contract since 1935, and it was for this studio that she and Tracy made their next six films.

The nine movies Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy made together vary in quality as well as in genre. But even the least successful of them is worth watching to see these two great actors and the way they relate to each other onscreen. I guess that's what star power and star teamwork are all about.


Woman of the Year (1942)
***^½
Director: George Stevens

The first Tracy-Hepburn film, a romantic comedy with serious undertones, is a delight, its screenplay a model of the seriocomic romantic movie. Hepburn plays Tess Harding, a political and current affairs columnist at a New York newspaper, and Tracy plays Sam Craig, the sports columnist at the same paper. A disagreement in their columns over the value of baseball leads to a first meeting in which the feuding pair are immediately attracted to each other. Before long they are in love and married. The problems begin after the marriage and revolve around the seeming impossibility of two such opposite personalities—she highly strung, he mellow—to create a life together.

The most important thing in Tess's life is her position as the country's most prominent female intellectual. Everything else, including her marriage, seems to come second. The down-to-earth Sam reacts to Tess's self-centered attitude with patience, thinking that eventually she will find room in her life for him. When Tess adopts a war orphan less out of concern for the child than as a trophy to complete her new image as working wife and mother, Sam reaches the end of his patience. Realizing that she has gone too far and is about to lose him, will Tess be able to make amends in time to save the marriage?

The characters of Sam and Tess are tailor-made for what Tracy and Hepburn did best onscreeen. As she did in Alice Adams and The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn plays an intelligent, willful woman, a perfectionist who needs to be humanized by being shown the oppressive nature of her own ego. Tracy's Sam, a tolerant and unpretentious man, is shrewd enough to realize that to attempt to do this openly would lead to automatic opposition by the headstrong Tess. True change can be accomplished only if she experiences her own epiphany by seeing what her true feelings for him are.

Some detect an anti-feminist message in this picture, but I just don't see that myself. The negative qualities in Tess's personality—her career obsession, her snobbishness, her lack of humility, her inability to empathize with other people—are undesirable ones that alienate others whether the person with those traits is a woman or a man. At the end of the movie, Sam's reaction to Tess's misguided attempt to save their marriage by becoming the perfect "little woman"—her inept efforts to cook Sam a breakfast like his mother used to make end in a series of comic mishaps—shows that this is not the kind of wife Sam wants. He's no macho man out to tame a shrew, just a man who wants an equal partner as aware, and as respectful, of his feelings as she is of her own.


Keeper of the Flame (1943)
**^½
Director: George Cukor

Tracy and Hepburn's next picture was a complete change from Woman of the Year. Shot just a few months after the U.S. entered the Second World War, Keeper of the Flame is a deadly serious political melodrama-mystery. Tracy plays Steven O'Malley, a war correspondent just back from Berlin who wants to write an inspirational biography of a famous political figure and national hero who has just died in a car crash, Robert Forrest. To do so, he needs to enlist the help of the man's widow Christine, played by Hepburn. But Christine and all of Forrest's associates are ensconced inside the fortress-like Forrest estate and aren't cooperating with the press.

When O'Malley finally gets into the estate and meets Christine, he begins to believe that she is concealing something about her late husband and determines to get to the bottom of the secrets being kept about Forrest's life and the suspicious circumstances of his death. Christine does eventually agree to help O'Malley with his book. But the more he learns about Forrest from Christine, the more apparent it becomes that the real man was far from the heroic patriot he made himself out to be in his carefully cultivated public image. Christine finally reveals the dark truth about her late husband to O'Malley in a spectacularly dramatic finale.

Keeper of the Flame, the first of three Tracy-Hepburn movies directed by Kate's friend and mentor George Cukor, is the most curious of the Tracy-Hepburn films. Hepburn gives a bizarrely ambiguous performance. Is she mad, evil, a murderess, a widow faithful to her husband's memory, part of a cover-up conspiracy, a dupe? Her first appearance, dressed in white from head to toe and bearing a bouquet of enormous white dahlias—more like a bride or vestal virgin than a grieving widow—as she glides toward an idealized portrait of her dead husband, borders on the camp. Her long final monologue, in which she reveals the truth about her dead husband to Tracy, is awkwardly declamatory and politically vague. For fans of Tracy and Hepburn, the biggest disappointment of the film is that the melodramatic plot gives the characters they play little opportunity to relate to each other on an emotional level. The movie's cautionary theme of the danger of blind hero worship takes precedence over any real relationship that might have developed between them.

Cukor and cinematographer William Daniels give the movie the full-out Gothic treatment, with obvious allusions to both Citizen Kane and Rebecca. With its high-contrast Citizen Kane-influenced lighting, its sinister atmosphere, its creepy mansion reminiscent of both Xanadu and Manderley, Forrest's mad mother in the dower house, and its hostile and secretive characters (including Richard Whorf as a worshipful male equivalent of Mrs. Danvers), the film is certainly something to behold. But as Cukor himself acknowledged, Keeper of the Flame "isn't very satisfactory as a whole." Only Tracy, who gives a consistently understated performance, and Percy Kilbride, with his incongruous comic turn as a Yankee cab driver, manage to withstand Cukor's ponderous approach. Cukor was far more successful in the two later Tracy-Hepburn films he directed with a decidedly lighter touch.


Without Love (1945)
***
Director: Harold S. Bucquet

In their third film Tracy and Hepburn returned to romantic comedy, and a welcome return it was. Released just before the end of World War II, Without Love concerns the problems of a scientist working for the government, Pat Jamieson, played by Tracy, trying to find a place to live in Washington during the wartime housing shortage. Through his friend Quentin Ladd (Keenan Wynn) he finds the perfect place, the townhouse of Quentin's unmarried cousin Jamie Rowan, played by Hepburn. After her initial coolness toward Pat, Jamie invites him to stay on as a boarder when she finds that he is a scientist like her father was. As the two become better acquainted, Jamie proposes marriage to Pat, but on a strictly platonic basis—a practical marriage "without love." She will be his research assistant while he gets a convenient place to live and work without the messy emotional entanglements of a marriage based on love. "You'd be safe forever from the other side of love," she tells him.

On their wedding night, the two retire to separate adjoining bedrooms. When Jamie prepares for bed with a dreamy expression on her face and the wistful strains of "The Boy Next Door" well up on the soundtrack, we know that for her at least something deeper than platonic feeling is emerging. Before long both Jamie and Pat begin to experience the very things she told him their arrangement would protect them from, emotions like jealousy and possessiveness, and it becomes clear that their feelings for each other have crossed over to the other side of love. When Jamie is pursued by another man, both are finally forced to admit the true nature of their feelings and act on them.

Like Hepburn's Holiday and The Philadelphia Story, Without Love is based on a play written by Philip Barry (Hepburn had appeared in the Broadway production in 1942) and polished for the screen by Donald Ogden Stewart. Like those earlier films, this is what I would call a concept romantic comedy. Although it is great fun, the movie does have its limitations. The concept that drives the action, the unlikeliness of platonic love between a man and woman, doesn't have sufficient heft to give Without Love the resonance of those earlier films. It's a perfectly serviceable device to base the action on and move it forward, but it's never more than a convenient gimmick. Hepburn's character, Jamie, is an appealing one and plainly the dominant character in the film, but Hepburn doesn't seem totally right for it. On the stage she might have been able to carry off the girlish behavior the role requires, but the closeness of the camera makes us aware that she is a bit mature for her character (she was 38-years old the year the film was released), and a bit too intelligent to portray such naiveté with complete believability.

The film is not without its rewards, though. Tracy acts in his customary relaxed style, deferring in the theatrics department to Hepburn, who shows a flair for physical comedy not seen since Bringing Up Baby. She even has a drunk scene—always a surefire audience pleaser—reminiscent of the one in The Philadelphia Story but in a more slapstick vein. Romantic comedies traditionally have a pair of second leads to provide a counterpoint to the romantic couple, and Without Love has a great pair of second leads in Keenan Wynn and Lucille Ball. Fans of Lucy will be especially interested in seeing her play Jamie's attractive, wise-cracking friend Kitty, the kind of role Eve Arden did so well, leaving the broader comedy to Kate. There is even a cute dog, Pat's cairn terrier Dizzy, the same breed as Toto in The Wizard of Oz. And look for a very young Gloria Grahame in the night club scene as a flower girl with hay fever. All in all, a very entertaining if not great movie elevated, as always, by the appeal of Tracy and Hepburn.

TO BE CONTINUED