Woman of the Year (1942)

 

Seems like a classic case of American anti-intellectualism. Spencer Tracy (Sam Craig) and Katherine Hepburn (Tess Harding) are both journalists working for the same newspaper. He writes a sports column, while she writes on global affairs. The contrast could not be greater. She speaks many languages, he just one. She intermingles effortlessly at parties, while he communes with other sports reporters at a local bar. He is boring, unimaginative, uninterested in world affairs – probably like most of the audience. 

The principle of not alienating your audience comes into effect here. Do we praise the intellectual and leave everyone in the cinema squirming in their seats, wishing they had paid more attention to their studies? Certainly not: we look for every opportunity to take the intellectual down a peg or two. Therefore, the film puts him in the ascendent with all this. Walter Brennan plays the bartender, and, of course, we warm to him. 

However, there are some slight variations on the anti-intellectual theme. Hepburn is not depicted as asexual. Her first appearance in the film begins with the camera lingering on her legs, and we are invited to think she is clearly aware of the sexual impact of those leg; this is an intellectual and a sexual being, a remarkable combination for 1930s Hollywood. 

The ending of the film is  woeful. Apparently, the final scene was tacked on by the studio, after early screenings were not liked. The audience, and the studio, wanted to see on screen Hepburn being put firmly in her place. It shows Hepburn trying to make breakfast and causing havoc. The scene goes on too long, but conveys the main point: intellectuals can’t cook. Tracy, in contrast, shows us he knows how to cook, although he does not take kindly to cooking for others – he is asked to cook not just for Hepburn but for the assistant, Gerald (Dan Tobin). Clearly, it’s not a man’s job to cook for others. 

As so often in Hollywood, the movie Is memorable for some of the character actors. Gerald, Ms Hepburn’s assistant, has just the right combination of snobbishness and efficiency, implying a put-down just by his manner. Gladys Blake, the woman who shoos the party away from the wedding night has just a few seconds of dialogue, but sorts everyone out with wonderful efficiency.

The final agreement, which we are expected to accept, is that she is not Miss Harding or Mrs Craig, but Tess Harding Craig. Hepburn, replying that “I think it’s a wonderful name”,  makes it clear she has accepted her inferior status. It’s the age-old story, the taming of the shrew.

Compared to the Hollywood screwball comedies, this film is low on jokes but high on relationships and trying to demonstrate solid principles. We listen to the wedding ceremony in great detail, as if this is one of the fundamental gospels of American life. 

Most actors claim only to be following the script, or the director. Yet, apparently, Hepburn chose this story, this director, and was complicit in this ending. I can’t help feeling that the Hollywood stars I want to remember are those that revealed some independence from the system, not those who abandoned their principles in pursuit of stardom. This film is nothing less than the capitulation of someone exceptional - a Woman of the Year, no less - to a position of inferior wife.