Oil And Water Don’t Mix-Right-Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy’s Woman Of The Year

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell  

Woman Of The Year, starring Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, directed by George Steven, screenplay written by Ring Lardner, Junior and friends so it has a great pedigree, 1942

Take a sports guy, Sam, you know an average newspaper sportswriter who spends plenty of time at games, in gin mills, and in smoky rooms playing cards. Take a newspaper reporter, same newspaper as the sports scribe, Tess, an international correspondent who is clueless about games but who has cache with FDR, Churchill and the movers and shakers of the world, the big 1940s world which means a world at war or getting ready for war. No way would they mix, right. No way would they light up the heavens with their passion. Well you would be wrong, wrong if you were discussing the film under review, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy’s Woman Of The Year, although until the end it was a close thing, a very close thing.    

Naturally Sam and Tess, coming as they did from two different worlds had to have their pre-nuptial clash of civilizations before the light of love bit them. But as the film moved on it was inevitable that these two would wind up in bed together, although that too was a close thing (a nice touch while they were circling each other was Sam’s NOT taking advantage of Tess when she was in a drunken amorous state-cinematic conventions times have changed since then mostly). So they got married on the fly and lived happily ever after. Well, not quite, see that was where the battle royal really began. Sam did his sports thing, and Tess well Tess did her “woman of the year” worthy thing. But that was not going to wash with Sam who was kind of old-fashioned although ready to listen to reason when it came to a compromise with his spirited companion. But things got pretty bad as they progressed along in their marriage. Eventually Sam took off figuring, probably rightly, that he had made a mistake in going into that good night different world. Then Tess, seeing Sam was serious about his concerns and seriously gone from her bed, had an epiphany when her long-widowed father and her long in love with her father aunt tied the knot. With new resolve Tess decided she would be the wife, the pleasant housewife she thought Sam wanted. While everybody will give her an A for effort even seventy years later, even Sam, she was out of her depth in a kitchen in a very funny send-up scene trying to perform her domestic duties. In any case even seventy years later she should never be without the services of a cook, a good one. So Sam and milady Tess reunited and decided to let what would happen, happen. Oh yeah, oil and water do mix-at the movies. A classic film.