Film
Woman of the Year
Woman of the Year is the origin story of Hollywood's most famous screen marriage — Tracy and Hepburn as rival newspaper columnists who fall for each other's brains before either quite likes what falls into their laps. It's fast, witty, glamorous, and genuinely uneasy about its own argument: can a brilliant, famous woman have both a career and a husband without someone losing? Sharp talk, real chemistry, a famously wobbly ending.
If you liked this
Adam's Rib1949
Tracy and Hepburn reunite as married lawyers on opposite sides of the same case, and it plays like the sharper, funnier sequel this film's ending seems to be arguing for — equality as a punchline instead of a problem.
But If you want new faces or a fresh dynamic, this is the same two people fighting the same fight, just wittier about it.
Pat and Mike1952
The gentlest Tracy-Hepburn pairing — he's a cynical sports manager, she's a golf and tennis prodigy — and for once her competence isn't a threat to the romance but the whole point of it.
But Lower stakes and a slighter plot; it's a comfort watch rather than the sharper argument the other pairings pick.
The Philadelphia Story1940
Hepburn at her most dazzling, torn between three men days before her wedding, in the champagne screwball that revived her career after the box-office-poison label.
But The class comedy and marriage-plot conventions feel more decorative than urgent next to the real argument Tess and Sam are having.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Scenes from a Marriage2021
Strip every joke out of Woman of the Year and you get this: two intelligent people negotiating what marriage owes each of their ambitions, filmed in close-up with none of the escape hatches comedy provides.
Bergman's six-part dissection of a marriage's slow disintegration is devastating and precise, asking the same question the ending papers over — can two ambitious people actually share a life — without flinching from the answer.
But It's long, Swedish, subtitled, and almost entirely two people talking in rooms; there's no romance-movie pleasure, only the truth.
More like this (8)
His Girl Friday1940
Rosalind Russell out-talks everyone as a star reporter her ex-husband won't let leave the newsroom — faster, meaner, and funnier than almost any comedy made before or since.
But It never takes the marriage question seriously; the newsroom banter is the whole show, not a domestic reckoning.
Bringing Up Baby1938
Hepburn again, four years earlier, unleashed as pure chaos on a stuffy paleontologist — the screwball engine at its most anarchic, before anyone worried what it might mean.
But Zero interest in the gender politics that make Woman of the Year interesting; this is farce for its own sake.
Desk Set1957no page yet
Tracy and Hepburn's last go-round, older and easier with each other, pitting a research librarian against the computer installed to replace her — a lighter, more optimistic take on the career-versus-love argument.
But Stakes are low and the technology satire is quaint now; it's comfort food, not confrontation.
It Happened One Night1934
The film that wrote the screwball romance's rulebook — a runaway heiress and a broke reporter squabbling their way to love — with none of the marriage aftermath, just the delicious start of it.
But Black-and-white 1934 pacing and manners will feel gentler and slower than the crackle you came here for.
Kramer vs. Kramer1979
What happens when the marriage doesn't survive the career-versus-home standoff: a custody battle played with real grief instead of wit, taking seriously the ambivalence this film papers over with a joke.
But It's heavy, sad, and utterly unfunny — the opposite mood entirely, useful only if you want the question taken this seriously.
Baby Boom1987
Diane Keaton as an 80s power exec who inherits a baby and has to renegotiate everything, played broad and glossy — the same old anxiety in shoulder pads and a Manhattan office.
But Dated gender politics and sitcom-level plotting make this the least essential item here, watchable but forgettable.
I Love Lucy1951
Same nervous joke mid-century America kept telling itself — a talented, visible woman married to a man anxious about being outshone — just moved from prestige cinema to slapstick sitcom, where the anxiety becomes pratfalls instead of arguments.
Lucille Ball is one of the great physical comedians of the century, and the show's engine — Lucy wanting more than her marriage allows her — is the same one driving Tess and Sam, just played dumber and funnier on purpose.
But It's episodic sitcom, decades of it, with none of the film's ambition to actually resolve anything — pure comfort, no argument.
She's Beautiful When She's Angry2014no page yet
This film fictionalized an era's anxiety about ambitious women in a marriage plot; this documentary tells you what the actual women fighting for equal pay and equal say were doing at the same time, offscreen and unglamorous.
A brisk, archive-rich history of the women's liberation movement that gives real texture and stakes to the debate Tess and Sam have as a domestic squabble — turns out it was a national fight.
But No romance, no jokes, no Tracy-and-Hepburn chemistry — it's a talking-heads history lesson, valuable but a very different kind of evening.
People
Cast
Spencer TracySam Craig
Katharine HepburnTess Harding
Fay BainterEllen Whitcomb
Reginald OwenClayton
Minor WatsonWilliam J. Harding
William BendixPinkie Peters
Gladys BlakeFlo Peters
Dan TobinGerald Howe
Roscoe KarnsPhil Whittaker
William TannenEllis
Ludwig StösselDr. Lubbeck
Sara HadenMatron
Directing
- Robert A. GoldenAssistant Director
- George StevensDirector
Writing
- Michael KaninScreenplay
- Ring Lardner Jr.Screenplay
Production
- Joseph L. MankiewiczProducer