Woman of the Year(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) was made to order for bold Katharine Hepburn. She saw to it that it was: she helped edit the script (authored by two comparatively unknown Hollywood-sprites: Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin) sold it to Metro for an unprecedented $100.000, demanded and got her own leading man (Spencer Tracy) and (from a rival studio) her favorite director (George Stevens).
The result is not so form-fitting as her last made-to-order picture (The Philadelphia Story), but it is an adroit and amusing comedy, with an appetizing dash of social satire.
As Tess Harding, China-born, Swiss-schooled daughter of a U.S. diplomat, Miss Hepburn is easily recognizable in her role of highfalutin' female newspaper columnist. Spoiled, selfish, intellectual, well-informed, too busy to be feminine, she thinks nothing of advocating (by radio) the abolition of baseball for the duration of the war. She is promptly dusted off by another columnist: Sam Craig (Mr. Tracy), sportswriter, of her own paper. The tone of his piece, which calls her "the Calamity Jane of the fast international set," is less politely echoed by one of his colleagues: "Women should be kept illiterate and clean, like canaries."
From that point, Woman is the story of a speedy courtship and a rocky marriage. Tracy takes Tess to her first baseball game. She sits in the press box, observing that it is silly for her paper to have two men to cover a game when it has only one man in Vichy. For anyone remotely familiar with baseball, her painful introduction to America's favorite sport is Grade-A comedy.
By the time Tess has acquired a small Greek refugee and the title "Outstanding Woman of the Year," Husband Tracy is not sure whether he is married to a woman or a teletype machine. He leaves to find out, observing: "Do I look like the outstanding husband of the outstanding woman of the year?" Tess eventually lures him back by promising to be just an outstanding wife.
Actors Hepburn and Tracy have a fine old time in Woman of the Year. They take turns playing straight for each other, act one superbly directed love scene, succeed in turning several batches of cinematic corn into passable moonshine. As a lady columnist, she is just right; as a working reporter, he is practically perfect. For once, strident Katharine Hepburn is properly subdued. When she met her leading man for the first time, before shooting began, she observed: "I'm afraid I am a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy." Said he: "Don't worry, Miss Hepburn, I'll cut you down to my size."
It is anything but standard Hollywood practice for a star to select her own director, and few would have the nerve to try it. But Katharine Hepburn has a way of getting what she wants. Her reason for choosing George Stevens was as direct as her own personality: "Because he's the best director in Hollywood."
Miss Hepburn's high regard for her favorite director is well founded—and mutual. He is one of the best in the business, and he brought his admirer back from obscurity seven years ago with Alice Adams. That picture, his first try at an A production, also made his name. The script was bad, and he made up many of the scenes himself. The love scenes were the first he had ever directed.