Woman of the Year
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the film. For the musical, see Woman of the Year. For the Time magazine Man and/ or Woman of the Year see Time Magazine Person of the Year.
| Woman of the Year | |
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| Directed by | George Stevens |
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| Produced by | Joseph L. Mankiewicz |
| Written by | Ring Lardner Jr. Michael Kanin John Lee Mahin Garson Kanin (original idea) |
| Starring | Spencer Tracy Katharine Hepburn Fay Bainter |
| Music by | Franz Waxman |
| Cinematography | Joseph Ruttenberg |
| Editing by | Frank Sullivan |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) |
| Release date(s) |  19 January 1942 |
| Running time | 114 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,000,000 |
Woman of the Year (1942) is a romantic comedy film in which a feminist, chosen "Woman of the Year", tries to keep the spark in her personal relationship. The film stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn with Fay Bainter, Reginald Owen, Minor Watson and William Bendix. It was directed by George Stevens, produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and written by Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin (his brother Garson Kanin thought up the original idea and worked with Katharine Hepburn along with brother Michael and Lardner on the early drafts, without credit.) The music score was by Franz Waxman and the cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg. The art direction was by Cedric Gibbons and Randall Duell and the costume design by Adrian.
Woman of the Year won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay and was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role. In 1999, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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[edit] Synopsis
Sam Craig and Tess Harding (Tracy and Hepburn) are journalists for the same New York newspaper in the early 1940s. Tess, the daughter of a diplomat, is an internationally inclined political affairs columnist, a linguist educated in various prestigious European universities who has traveled the world. He is everymans' sportswriter who worked his way up.
A feud in their columns, specifically over baseball, develops into romance, love, and marriage, despite their different backgrounds and worlds. At a baseball game, Tess successfully breaks the men only rule in the press box, but is completely confused over the rules of the sport.
After their quickly conducted marriage, a conflict arises over having children. Tess takes on the care of a Greek refuge child without consulting her husband. He is keen on having a child of their own as soon as possible, unlike Tess who merely does not rule out the idea, but Sam is less keen at participating in a humanitarian gesture.
On the evening of her award as 'Woman of the Year', he is disinclined to attend, but Tess insensitively queries whether he could find something more important to do. That evening he returns the child to the home for Greek refuge children and walks out on the marriage (Tess makes an unsuccessful attempt to reclaim custody of the boy later).
Tess invites Sam to the wedding of her father to the aunt who raised her, but he claims to be covering an important boxing match on the same evening, and does not consider their marriage either to have been "perfect" or a "marriage". Listening to the words of the wedding ceremony encourages Tess to attempt a reconciliation.
She illicitly gains entry to Sam's new riverside home the next morning and starts to prepare breakfast. Sam is eventually woken by her noisy manual incompetence in the kitchen, and cruelly uses her lack of dexterity to make his point that Tess is incapable of being a conventional wife. Gerald, Tess' inconsiderate secretary, arrives with a bottle of champaigne and reminds Tess of her commitment to launch a ship at 8.30am. Gerald is taken outside by Sam, a bottle is heard being smashed and Sam returns claiming to have launched Gerald.
[edit] Background
- This is the first of nine films Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were to make together. They met for the first time on this shoot. In the 1993 documentary Katharine Hepburn: All About Me, Hepburn herself says she was wearing high heels at the first meeting with Tracy and producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and said "I'm afraid I'm a bit tall for you, Mr. Tracy". Mankiewicz then responded, "Don't worry, Kate, he'll cut you down to size."
- Hepburn's character of Tess Harding is widely thought to be based on American journalist Dorothy Thompson.
[edit] Awards and honors
American Film Institute recognition
- 2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs #90
- 2002: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions #74
[edit] External links
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