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Woman of the Year

  • 19421942
  • PassedPassed
  • 1h 54m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
10K
YOUR RATING
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • IMDbPro
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942)
  • Comedy
  • Drama
  • Romance
Rival reporters Sam and Tess fall in love and get married, only to find their relationship strained when Sam comes to resent Tess' hectic lifestyle.Rival reporters Sam and Tess fall in love and get married, only to find their relationship strained when Sam comes to resent Tess' hectic lifestyle.Rival reporters Sam and Tess fall in love and get married, only to find their relationship strained when Sam comes to resent Tess' hectic lifestyle.
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
10K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • George Stevens
  • Writers
    • Ring Lardner Jr.(original screen play)
    • Michael Kanin(original screen play)
    • John Lee Mahin(contributing writer)
  • Stars
    • Spencer Tracy
    • Katharine Hepburn
    • Fay Bainter
Top credits
  • Director
    • George Stevens
  • Writers
    • Ring Lardner Jr.(original screen play)
    • Michael Kanin(original screen play)
    • John Lee Mahin(contributing writer)
  • Stars
    • Spencer Tracy
    • Katharine Hepburn
    • Fay Bainter
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 94User reviews
    • 34Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Won 1 Oscar
      • 2 wins & 2 nominations total

    Videos1

    Woman of the Year
    Trailer 3:10
    Woman of the Year

    Photos136

    Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Sam Craig in Woman of the Year (1942)
    Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942)
    722-83 Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in "Woman Of The Year" 1942 MGM

    Top cast

    Edit
    Spencer Tracy
    Spencer Tracy
    • Sam Craigas Sam Craig
    Katharine Hepburn
    Katharine Hepburn
    • Tess Hardingas Tess Harding
    Fay Bainter
    Fay Bainter
    • Ellen Whitcombas Ellen Whitcomb
    Reginald Owen
    Reginald Owen
    • Claytonas Clayton
    Minor Watson
    Minor Watson
    • William J. Hardingas William J. Harding
    William Bendix
    William Bendix
    • 'Pinkie' Petersas 'Pinkie' Peters
    Gladys Blake
    Gladys Blake
    • Flo Petersas Flo Peters
    Dan Tobin
    Dan Tobin
    • Gerald Howeas Gerald Howe
    Roscoe Karns
    Roscoe Karns
    • Phil Whittakeras Phil Whittaker
    William Tannen
    William Tannen
    • Ellisas Ellis
    Ludwig Stössel
    Ludwig Stössel
    • Dr. Lubbeckas Dr. Lubbeck
    • (as Ludwig Stossel)
    Sara Haden
    Sara Haden
    • Matronas Matron
    Edith Evanson
    Edith Evanson
    • Almaas Alma
    George Kezas
    • Chrisas Chris
    Jimmy Ames
    • Cab Driveras Cab Driver
    • (uncredited)
    Herbert Ashley
    • Stage Doormanas Stage Doorman
    • (uncredited)
    Dorothy Ates
    • Phone Girlas Phone Girl
    • (uncredited)
    William Bailey
    William Bailey
    • Baseball Fanas Baseball Fan
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • George Stevens
    • Writers
      • Ring Lardner Jr.(original screen play)
      • Michael Kanin(original screen play)
      • John Lee Mahin(contributing writer) (uncredited)
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
    • All cast & crew

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    Storyline

    Edit
    Tess and Sam work on the same newspaper and don't like each other very much. At least the first time, because they eventually fall in love and get married. But Tess is a very active woman and one of the most famous feminists in the country; she is even elected as "the woman of the year." Being busy all the time, she forgets how to really be a woman and Sam begins to feel neglected. —Chris Makrozahopoulos <makzax@hotmail.com>
    • working women
    • national film registry
    • screwball comedy
    • f rated
    • blockbuster
    • 45 more
    • Plot summary
    • Add synopsis
    • Taglines
      • TRACY'S CRAZY ABOUT HEPBURN...but she's too busy! (Print Ad- Newmarket Era and Express, ((Newmarket, PO)) 23 July 1942)
    • Genres
      • Comedy
      • Drama
      • Romance
      • Sport
    • Certificate
      • Passed
    • Parents guide
      • Add content advisory

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Katharine Hepburn refused to reveal who wrote the screen play to Louis B. Mayer until after he bought the project from Hepburn. Hepburn was afraid that Mayer would low-ball the two authors (Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner Jr.) because, at the time, they were both relatively unknown.
    • Goofs
      In the kitchen scene, Tess uses a vacuum coffee maker (Cona) to make coffee. However, if she had put the coffee in the bottom of the coffee maker and the water in the top, as shown, it wouldn't have made coffee at all. It might even have exploded.
    • Quotes

      Sam Craig: [Sam and Tess are both mildly drunk. Tess's head is resting on Sam] There's something I have to get off my chest...

      Tess Harding: [starts to get up] I'm too heavy...

      Sam Craig: [smiles] No. I love you.

      Tess Harding: You do?

      Sam Craig: Positive.

      Tess Harding: [sighs] That's nice. Even when I'm sober?

      Sam Craig: Even when you're brilliant.

    • Connections
      Featured in George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984)
    • Soundtracks
      Bridal Chorus (Here Comes the Bride)
      (1850) (uncredited)

      from "Lohengrin"

      Written by Richard Wagner

      Played on an organ at the wedding

    User reviews94

    Review
    Top review
    8/10
    The sexual politics of role reversal...
    WOMAN OF THE YEAR stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in their first film together, his Sam Craig matched with her Tess Harding; his subtle, underplaying acting style with her stylised, personality-driven performance. It's an acting tour de force, to be sure--the two of them make the best of (and often far surpass) a somewhat limited script and interesting but stiffly played-out plot. In fact, their chemistry in this film is palpable. When someone speaks of cinematic magic, of chemistry sparking off (if not engulfing) the screen, *this*--Tracy, Hepburn, Tracy and Hepburn--is what they are talking about, even back in the days of the Hays Code. It's all mostly chaste kisses and long eye contact, often carried out in semi-darkness, and yet the two main players establish a relationship more sexual and believable than so many of the relationships portrayed in films these days. (Take the tiny moment in the cab--not the drunk scene that everyone loves, but that moment when he says, "I've got to get something off my chest", and she mumbles, "I'm too heavy", and raises her head. When he gently pulls it back to where you feel it would always belong, you know that these actors are doing something incredible.)

    This isn't to say that the film is without flaws. Far from it. The writing is clipped and most of the words on their own have little spark. (It takes Spencer Tracy's glowering eyes, or Katharine Hepburn's radiant smile, to add life to those words.) Even the relationship between Sam and Tess isn't set up in the most fluid of ways, leap-frogging from moment to moment, from scene to scene, without quite making the necessary connections--if you believe in Sam and Tess together (and I do), it's only because you can truly believe in Tracy and Hepburn together. The film occasionally feels like a play cobbled together from various scenes, until it hits its stride midway through the film (after Sam and Tess get married).

    Script aside, the plot is interesting, and certainly quite radical for its time. However, the ending (a hilarious set-piece of comedy though it might be) leaves things largely unresolved. We have a wonderful, strong female character in Tess Harding--this is clear enough in the first half of the film. But her strength, her forceful personality and go-getting attitude, become her weakness in the second half, so much so that she becomes almost a caricature of the original Tess Harding. Some of the things she does (her 'humanitarian' wholesale adoption of Chris, for example; her rudeness and blithe ignorance of Sam's worth) are truly reprehensible, and the point the writers are making is clear--a female who tries too hard to be a male loses her feminity, and cannot ever really be fulfilled. In this sense, the gender politics, as other commenters have pointed out, is 'deplorable'.

    And yet there is a grain of truth in it; if one *can* be brought to believe that Tess could really treat Chris and Sam in the way she does, one can't help but applaud Sam's decision to leave. The role reversal is almost complete--Sam himself comments on the fact that she 'makes love' to him to smooth over their quarrels. She charges on her own merry way without asking him about his life, his opinion, or anything that remotely matters to him. Their union was neither perfect, nor a marriage, as he justifiably charges.

    The uneasy tension between the admirable and the deplorable Tess Hardings comes at the end: you most certainly get the impression that the film itself didn't quite know whether or not to affirm the Tess character. In fact, by all accounts (even Hepburn's own), the film originally ended with an unqualified affirmation of Tess's character--promising to be more involved in her husband's life, Tess is depicted at a baseball game, cheering alongside Sam, getting louder and louder and rising higher in her seat above him. It was both an affirmation of Tess the character, and a lingering question mark about the Harding-Craig reunion.

    Test audiences didn't like it. (Apparently, it was the *women* who felt threatened by the character Hepburn portrayed on screen. She was too strong, too beautiful, too *everything* all at once.)

    What transpired in the end, then, was a re-shot ending that muddied the moral of the film in suggesting that women could not really be fulfilled without their men. Sam wants her to be Tess Harding Craig; she wants to be Mrs. Craig; she wants to change; he thinks (and probably knows) she can't. The logical ending would have seen Tess, cast as she had been in the traditional masculine role, wooing Sam back, only to cast doubt over whether her atypical (for the time) strength as a female would unequivocally threaten the typical male figure as embodied in Tracy's character. The original ending would have better borne out the logic of the film--a valuable DVD extra if ever there was one. You can perhaps applaud the spirit of the film, without accepting the fact that it seems to let that spirit fade away in the end.

    So what is there of worth in WOMAN OF THE YEAR, with its original ending gone, and its revolutionary potential muted by a slapstick scene in a kitchen with exploding waffles, too much coffee, and a woman who just can't seem to figure out how to separate eggs? Well, the answer is simple, and it's already been given. This is a movie to watch, and to watch *again*, because it is the first cinematic pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. For a couple of hours, you're allowed to watch these two great, mythical actors playing two people in love... while falling in love themselves. That is most certainly a rare privilege, if ever there was one.
    helpful•43
    9
    • gaityr
    • Jun 2, 2002

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • March 5, 1942 (Canada)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • French
      • Russian
      • German
      • Spanish
      • Greek
    • Also known as
      • Günün Kadını
    • Filming locations
      • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA
    • Production company
      • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 54 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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