TRACY & HEPBURN: THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION (Warner,Fox Sony, Universal 1942-1967) Warner Home Video
Hollywood's
dream merchants of the golden age were savvy businessmen to be sure. But they
were also blessed with intuitive creativity; an essential in the industry then
and one almost entirely, and regrettably, lacking from the movie making
subculture now. One of the most enduring ghost flowers from that mythical age
was the creation of magnificent ‘screen teams’; pairing gifted talents together
that became iconic touchstones of our shared movie going experience. Audiences
looked forward to seeing these familiar faces do familiar things, but always in
new and interesting stories. Over the years there have been many such alliances;
Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Clark Gable and
Joan Crawford, Gable and Lana Turner, and, of course, who can forget Judy
Garland and Mickey Rooney. But if you had to pick just one team to exemplify
this legacy of screen pairings, I have a feeling the vote would be unanimously
cast for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
By the time
they made their debut together, each had already been working steadily - if
unevenly - in the industry for more than 10 years. Their respective bodies of
work apart from each other made their faces easily identifiable. Both had cache
at the box office, although Tracy's was more secure than Hepburn’s by 1942. If,
apart, they held their own, then together they were nothing less than dynamite;
the quintessence of martial perfection seen in 9 movies between 1942 and 1967,
the year of Tracy's death. The truth, of course, was far removed from this
idyllic on screen portrait. Tracy, a devote Catholic, was already married to
Louise with two children of his own, while Hepburn had managed a string of
highly publicized affairs – including one with Howard Hughes - that, like her
movie career seemed to have more downs and ups.
Once labeled
'box office poison', Hepburn had managed to claw her way back to stardom after
appearing in both the stage and screen versions of The Philadelphia Story
(1940). The clout Hepburn acquired from this film earned her the right to
choose her next screen property, Woman
of the Year (1942) and with it her choice of leading man. Hepburn chose
Tracy. It was the beginning of a memorable partnership. In retrospect, George
Steven's Woman of the Year (1942)
seems the ideal vehicle to debut Tracy and Hepburn as two relentless go-getters
who desire one another but have to choose between their respective careers and
true love. In real life, there was never any question as to what came first.
But in the screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin, newspaper
political analyst, Tess Harding (Hepburn) is not at all certain she prefers the
company of crass sports columnist, Sam Craig (Tracy) to her work on the
newspaper.
On the
surface, Tess fits quite nicely into Sam's world, though he remains an affront
to her cultured set, particularly Tess's ever-present male secretary, Gerald
Howe (Dan Tobin). Despite their obvious differences, Tess and Sam are married
and adopt a refugee child, Chris (George Kezas) whom Sam takes to with a
genuine affection, but whom Tess regards merely as another fashionable appendage
to her already overwhelmingly busy social life. Realizing how unfair this is to
Chris, Sam returns him to the orphanage while Tess is out on one of her
political rallies. Infuriated, Tess is told by Sam that their marriage is over.
At the same time, Tess receives a phone call from Ellen Whitcomb (Fay Bainter),
the aunt who raised her. After years of sacrificing her own happiness in the
service of causes, Ellen has decided to marry Tess's father (Minor Watson). As
a result, Tess also comes to realize that a woman of influence must make the inevitable
choice between love and having a career.
To prove her
love for Sam, Tess sneaks into his apartment the next morning, determined to
remake herself into ‘the good wife’ by cooking him breakfast. But this menial
task becomes a hilarious disaster. Nevertheless, Tess’ genuineness at
attempting domesticity strikes a chord with Sam and they are reconciled. Although
no one probably knew it at the time, Woman
of the Year was to become the template for most Tracy/Hepburn movies that
followed. With few exceptions, the two played variations on this sparing couple
formula for the rest of their careers. The first exception to this rule however
became their next film, George Cukor's Keeper
of the Flame (1942); a dark and brooding mystery/thriller with political
undertones, based on Donald Ogden Stewart's best-selling novel. In retrospect, ‘Keeper’
is an ill fit for Tracy and Hepburn, though it did moderately well at the box
office at the time of its release. She plays Christine Forrest, the youthful
widow of a nationally revered elderly political statesman who drove his car
over a bridge one dark and stormy night. But was it suicide or murder?
The rest of
the I.A.R. Wylie screenplay plays fast and loose with a stack of red herrings.
These include the possibility that Christine killed her husband after he
learned she was having an affair with her cousin, Geoff Midford (Forrest
Tucker), or perhaps was toying with Robert's social secretary, Clive Kerndon
(Richard Whorf). After surveying the outpouring of public grief at Robert's
funeral, Reporter Steven O'Malley (Spencer Tracy) begins to suspect Christine
of all sorts of wickedness, particularly after he has a brief tete a tete with
Robert's insane mother (Margaret Wycherly) who suggests that her son's marriage
to Christine was a destructive doomed union. Eventually, the real truth
emerges, that Robert was a fascist working from his time-honored political
connections within the government to secretly destroy the United States. In
retrospect, Keeper of the Flame is a
nonsensical espionage thriller. Hepburn doesn't do the haunted femme fatale
thing well at all and Tracy seems more lugubrious and lumbering as the
investigative reporter. That Tracy/Hepburn spark of chemistry and magic so
potent in Woman of the Year is
entirely absent herein.
Perhaps
because of this, Hepburn and Tracy would not make another film together until
1945's Without Love, a charming
minor programmer based on Philip Barry's smash stage hit. This film returns
Tracy and Hepburn to their romantic comedy roots. Tracy is Patrick Jamieson, a
brilliant scientist who takes a room in the mansion of a young spinster, Jamie
Rowan (Hepburn) to conduct his vital experiments for government research in her
basement. After an initial misunderstanding, a gradual friendship blossoms
between these two and Jamie suggests that they marry 'without love' to conceal the true reason for his staying at her
home. Patrick is reluctant on the subject, having had nothing but bad luck with
relationships. Nevertheless, the two are married and agree to a platonic
understanding that eventually gives way to genuine feelings of romance.
The next film,
Elia Kazan's Sea of Grass (1947) is
a rather breath-taking melodrama set against the vast expanses of the western
frontier. Based on Conrad Richter's novel, the screenplay by Marguerite Roberts
and Vincent Lawrence is a battle of wills. Hepburn is Lutie Cameron, a prim St.
Louis bride who marries New Mexico rancher, Colonel Jim Brewton; a man who uses
intimidation and force to keep settlers off the unspoiled plains. Jim's arch
enemy in town is Brice Chamberlain (Melvyn Douglas), who eventually becomes an
elected judge and thereafter launches a full scale attack on Jim's interests in
the name of the law.
After Jim's
stake in preserving the plains leads to a near fatal bludgeoning of
homesteader, Sam Hall (James Bell) and the miscarriage of his wife, Selina's
(Ruth Nelson) child, who just happens to be Lutie's good friend, Lutie realizes
that her husband is the aggressor, not the hero of the west that she has imagined
for herself. This revelation begins a rift in their marriage, one that leads
Lutie into an affair with Brice in Denver. The result of this fleeting moment
of passion is a son, Brock (Jimmy Hawkings as a child, Robert Walker as an
adult) that Lutie reveals is not Jim's while she is in labour. Loyal friend,
Doc J. Reid (Harry Carey) vows to keep Lutie's secret, but eventually the
town's folk begin to suspect the affair and Jim's marriage to Lutie crumbles.
Lutie leaves her children in Jim's care but eventually returns to his side, the
years having mellowed the differences that once divided them.
I didn't
expect to enjoy Sea of Grass as much
as I did, especially when I read that director Kazan hated the finished film so
much that he encouraged his friends not to see it. Yet, the final product is a
considerable masterwork with a sweep and grandeur that only a studio like MGM
could pull together during its heyday. True enough, this isn't the
Tracy/Hepburn chemistry that fondly or even immediately comes to mind but the two
deliver competent performances that are faithful to the source material. The
Roberts/Lawrence screenplay manages to bring believable concision to the
expansive novel and, as a result, we get a generational narrative that only
occasionally seems mildly rushed.
The next film
in the Tracy/Hepburn cannon remains one of their very best; Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948); produced
independently for Capra's Liberty Films production company and distributed by
MGM. Once again, Tracy and Hepburn are cast as an established married couple;
Grant and Mary Matthews. Grant is a U.S. Senator whose pureness of heart in the
political arena is about to be corrupted by wily publicist Jim Conover (Adolph
Menjou) and newspaper maven, Kay Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury). In fact, Kay and
Grant have been having an affair for some time in Washington D.C. while Mary
has remained back home. Convinced by Conover that Grant has a real spot at
becoming President, Grant is also informed by Kay that to have a real shot at
the office he must patch things up with Mary before embarking on the campaign
trail as a viable 'family oriented' candidate.
After some
reluctance, Mary returns to Grant's side, partly because she truly believes in
him as a strong and honest man who is right for the job. Cynical press agent,
Spike McManus (Van Johnson) starts out on Grant's side with his own misgivings
but gradually comes to respect Grant as Mary does. All the more reason for Mary
and Spike to suddenly find themselves bitterly disillusioned when Grant starts
to take his cues from Conover and Kay, who suggest that the only way to win the
party's nomination is to lie, steal and cheat. State of the Union is Capra's most inspired, politically themed
film since Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939). Hepburn and Tracy are
superb together as a married couple torn apart by external forces that threaten
not only their marriage but also the very essence of who they are as people.
Anthony Veiller and Myles Connelly's screenplay, based on the stellar stage play
from Howard Lindsey and Russell Crouse is as slick and fast moving as the
political machinery that threatens to destroy an honest man. This is a great
film!
Tracy and
Hepburn move on to what is today probably considered their most fondly
remembered sparring, in George Cukor's Adam's
Rib (1949); a fascinating battle of the sexes made fashionably funny long
before the ‘60s rise of feminism and sexual revolution. They play Adam and
Amanda Bonner, two halves of the legal system. He is a prosecuting attorney.
She is a defence lawyer. Both find themselves on opposite ends of the same case
when a woman named Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) is charged with attempting to
murder her philandering husband, Warren (Tom Ewell).To prove her point in the
courtroom - that women are judged inferior to men by a patriarchal society -
Amanda is willing to place her relationship with Adam on the line, even
encouraging the flirtatiousness of song writing playboy, Kip Lurie (David
Wayne). Once seen, few can forget the iconic moment when Adam, who is giving
Amanda her rubdown in their apartment midway through their case, decides to
slap her behind instead to silence her from singing Kip's song. When challenged
by Amanda, who suggests to Adam that his reaction is 'typical masculine brutality', Adam replies "What do you have back there? Radar equipment?"
Adam's Rib is delightfully astute in its critique of the unique
qualities that separate male from female and masculinity from femininity. Ruth
Gordon and Garson Kanin's screenplay is as poignant as it is hilarious, taking
an exceptionally rare and deft excursion that rings more than a few 'true to
life' bells along the way. Tracy and Hepburn chew up the scenery with
galvanized performances that are as relevant as ever. After a hiatus of nearly
3 years, George Cukor's Pat and Mike (1952)
proved - as though proof were required - that the Tracy/Hepburn chemistry was
as vital as ever. Once again Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin provide a stellar
screenplay, this one casting Hepburn as Patricia Pemberton, a superior all
around lady athlete who can withstand any adversary except the condescending
stare of her stuffy academic fiancée, Collier Weld (William Ching). To ease her
anxieties, Patricia enlists the help of Mike Conovan (Tracy) who is currently
involved in training brain dead pugilist, Davie Hucko (Aldo Ray) for the
heavyweight championships. Unable to quantify that elusive quality that makes
Pat so proficient an athlete, Mike knows too well what her downfall is. To the
purpose of securing Pat's own successes for the newspapers and provide himself
with a perennial meal ticket, Mike becomes Pat's full time trainer, keeping
Collier at bay. Narrowly rescued by Pat from having his legs broken after a bet
goes sour, Mike decides that Pat is the only gal for him.
In retrospect,
Pat and Mike is the last truly great
Tracy/Hepburn film. It also happens to be the final movie they made for alma
mater, MGM. Their next endeavor, Walter Lang's Desk Set (1957 at 20th Century-Fox) is an atypical retread of
themes already explored elsewhere. Leon Shamroy's cinematography is much more
concerned with celebrating the expansive rectangular layouts of Cinemascope
(that I must confess, are grand), than it is in re-interpreting the old
Tracy/Hepburn intimacy for the widescreen. The screenplay by Phoebe and Henry
Ephron isn't bad, per say, but it does tend to meander somewhat, losing focus
on the increasingly romantic friendship between efficiency expert, Richard
Sumner (Tracy) and research analyst Bunny Watson (Hepburn). To a large extent,
the old Tracy/Hepburn chemistry is blunted by the intrusion of Gig Young as
Mike Cutler, Bunny's soon to be ex-fiancée and, strangely enough, by Hepburn's
performance that attempts to balance the strong savvy archetype she helped to
create in films like Adam's Rib with
a more giddy school-girlish fascination for Mike that seems grossly out of
character.
The final film
to star Tracy and Hepburn also proved to be the last for Tracy who died at the
age of 67 a scant two weeks after filming Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). Viewed today, the film's 'love is color blind' social critique -
then timely in a country struggling with race relations in the middle of the
civil rights movement - seems moderately clichéd and occasionally heavy-handed today.
Nevertheless, the screenplay by William Rose makes the attempt to take an
honest - if gentile - look at the subject of racism from both sides. Tracy and
Hepburn are Matt and Christina Drayton, a forthright older married couple whose
liberalism is put to the test when daughter, Joey (Katharine Houghton, who is
actually Hepburn's niece) announces she is engaged to be married to Dr. John
Wade Prentice (Sidney Poitier) - a man whose skin colour obviously does not
match their own. Christina is at first shocked, but then accepting of their
union. Matt, however, is challenged by a spectre of emotions and feelings he
probably never realized he even had until this very moment.
The family's
close friend, Monsignor Ryan (Cecil Kellaway) is dismayed at Matt's inability
to overcome his prejudices. Yet, even these pale to the intolerances exhibited
by John's own father (Roy E. Glenn) who is discouraged with his son's decision
to marry a white girl. Meanwhile, Christina attempts to win over Mrs. Prentice
(Beah Richards). The film is most fondly remembered today for a brilliant
summation delivered by Tracy during the final moments, where he equates John
and Joey's love for each other with the depth of mutual admiration, respect and
sincerity he and Christina have shared throughout their years together. Yet, in
this abridgement of love's great story there also seems to be a blurring of the
lines between reality and fiction; the very public relationship Tracy and
Hepburn shared for so many years just as meaningfully embodied and on display
in this penultimate poignant declaration.
Warner Home
Video has at long last collected the works of these two formidable icons of the
screen into one deluxe box set, aptly titled 'Tracy & Hepburn: The
Definitive Collection'. And although 'definitive' it most certainly is, at
least in the essence that every movie from their tenure is represented herein,
the quality of these transfers hardly lives up to that moniker.
In fact, with
the exception of Keeper of the Flame
and Sea of Grass, the rest of the
transfers included in this box set are identical to those previously released
from their respective studio catalogues. This is a regrettable oversight, since
Woman of the Year, Pat & Mike
and Adam's Rib (arguably the most
iconic Tracy/Hepburn movies in this set) sport problematic digital transfers
that date all the way back to 1997 and the infancy of DVD mastering.
None of the
transfers are terrible, but Woman of the
Year, Pat & Mike and Adam's Rib
contain a considerable amount of edge enhancement and shimmering of fine
details that this critic had hoped would be eradicated for this new
'definitive' release. Overall, the gray scale has been exceptionally preserved
on all of the B&W movies in this set. Keeper
of the Flame seems to suffer from contrast levels that are just a tad lower
than expected. The transfer on Sea of
Grass occasionally suffers from more prevalent grain than one might
anticipate.
On the whole,
however, the image quality is adequate and will surely not disappoint. The best
looking B&W transfer of the lot unquestionably belongs to State of the Union - released by
Universal Home Video. It's the same transfer as released in 2002, but
remarkably smooth, sharp and full of fine detail throughout. Only Desk Set (from Fox) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (from
Sony Home Entertainment) are in color and widescreen. These are also the same
digital transfers as before, Desk Set
from 2004 and Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner? from its reissue in 2006. Both contain beautiful looking transfers,
the Cinemascope offering on Desk Set
supporting slightly more refined and richer colors, though ironically a little
less fine detail than is evident on Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner?
Extras are
limited to a few short subjects included on Sea of Grass and Keeper of
the Flame. There are also audio commentaries on Desk Set and Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner? The last extra worth mentioning is Kate Hepburn's
personal tribute documentary to Spencer Tracy, housed on a separate disc. The
quality of this transfer is, frankly, terrible. The film clips included are
often blurry, grainy and out of focus. For a definitive collection like this,
it would have been nice to have new masters on all of the titles, but
particularly on Woman of the Year
and Adam's Rib, plus audio
commentaries on each film and, at least chapter stops included on State of the Union, Sea of Grass and Keeper of the Flame!
For the price
point of $49.99, I suppose I can recommend this collection to someone who has
yet to have purchased any of these titles as they originally appeared one
separate discs. But if you already own all but Sea of Grass and Keeper of
the Flame, my advice is to simply buy these two titles as they are sold
separately and add them to your collection. You get nothing new in this set
that would warrant a repurchase.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
Woman of the Year 4
Keeper of the Flame 2.5
Without Love 3
Sea of Grass 3.5
State of the Union 5+
Adam's Rib 5+
Pat and Mike 5
Desk Set 3.5
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? 3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
Woman of the Year 2.5
Keeper of the Flame 3.5
Without Love 3
Sea of Grass 3.5
State of the Union 4
Adam's Rib 3
Pat and Mike 3
Desk Set 3.5
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? 3.5
EXTRAS
2.5
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