George Stevens’ Woman of the Year is one of the famous Spencer Tracy and Kather­ine Hep­burn double-acts, but there’s no ques­tion who was the real star. Dis­count­ing a brief glimpse of her character’s news­pa­per byline, there is much talk of star reporter Tess Hard­ing (Hep­burn) before her delayed reveal. In a scene that would make Laura Mul­vey’s head spin, the first time we finally spy Hep­burn, the cam­era trav­els up her leg as she adjusts her stock­ing in her editor’s office. Was she flirt­ing with her edi­tor? Is any prac­ti­cal expla­na­tion nec­es­sary to jus­tify a 1940s star­let show­ing a lit­tle leg? It’s hard to imag­ine Hep­burn as a sex­pot. He intel­lect and sass are undoubt­edly sexy, but not in a way I would imag­ine would appeal to a 1942 every­man. Her face and fig­ure are made up entirely out of angles, drawn by pro­trac­tor and cal­cu­lated by slide rule.

It takes balls

Even decades later, the rumor per­sists that one of or both Tracy & Hep­burn were gay, and their mar­riage served as each other’s beards. I don’t bring this up to per­pet­u­ate the gos­sip, but rather to segue into the pri­mary theme of Woman of the Year: a bat­tle of the sexes, or at least, their per­ceived gen­der roles. In the tra­di­tion of Hollywood’s best bed­room farces, two oppo­sites attract into a mar­riage, and it’s not long before the barbs are fly­ing (some of which really smart). Sam Craig (Tracy) is a true man’s man, who cov­ers sports for the paper and hangs out in the pub. But the ques­tion of the movie is, how much of a woman is Tess? She is witty, urbane, edu­cated, and glo­be­trot­ting. But she is deserv­ing of blame for impul­sively adopt­ing a war orphan with­out being con­scious of the respon­si­bil­i­ties. But the movie seems to equate this seri­ous fault with her inabil­ity to make pan­cakes. And I don’t think it’s merely a fact of the 1942 gen­der pol­i­tics or this Dork Reporter’s mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties, for the end of the film is gen­uinely con­fus­ing, send­ing mixed sig­nals about what exactly Sam wants of Tess: does he really want her to relin­quish her inde­pen­dence and be his break­fast chef, and does she really want to acquiesce?

Good god, woman, what is that on your head?

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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