Director: George
Cukor
Screenplay: Ruth
Gordon and Garson Kanin
Of course, it’s also hard to quantify Katharine Hepburn, a
woman who was way ahead of her time, and probably the best actress of all-time.
This film was way ahead of it’s time; A good 20+ years before the peak of the
Women’s Rights movement, “Adam’s Rib,” details the arguments for and against
equality for women, all taking place in a courtroom.
Like many American films
that dared to touch controversial subject matter, this film is a comedy, a
light-hearted screwball one at that. It’s also probably the best of the
Tracy/Hepburn films. Though he was married, and she remained single all her
life, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were Hollywood’s golden couple on and
off screen from years, starting, I believe with “Woman of the Year,” and
including such great films as “Pat and Mike,” (Also directed by the great
George Cukor) and finally ending with supporting performances in “Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner”, which was Tracy’s final film, and would earn Hepburn her
third Oscar. (She holds the record with 4, and until passed by Jack Nicholson
and Meryl Streep, held the record with 12 nominations.) Tracy died in of a heart
attack in Hepburn’s home just a few weeks after shooting “Guess Who’s Coming to
Dinner”. “Adam’s Rib,” is based around a wife (Judy Holliday) who catches her
philandering husband (Tom Ewell), and tries to kill him. Adam Bonner, (Tracy)
is assigned to the case, which appears to be open-and-shut, but his wife Amanda
(Hepburn) a noted defense lawyer decides to take the wife as her client, and
the showdown is on. The trial between the two would become a circus, even at
one point a strong women lifting Adam over her head, proving the women can be
as strong as men, and not the weaker sex.
Hepburn herself was exhibit A for the
stronger sex in the film and in real life. The film is comedic froth, but
incredibly funny froth. Cukor’s film uses everything from old-fashioned screen
cards to convey information to home movies footage to even what at the time
would have been the most updated special effects. Cukor was one of the first
directors to use special effects particularly well for comedy. He also adored
women, and Hepburn was probably more than anyone his muse, showcasing them in
all his movies, more than any other director up to that point. Cukor's best film from the era, “The Philadelphia Story,” also a combination of Cukor and Hepburn,
and there’s probably three or four other great film that’ll be entered into
this canon of his later. A good director to equate with him now would be Pedro
Almovodar for example. He's also considered the first great homosexual
filmmaker, a fact then only known to those in Hollywood.
The screenplay for
“Adam’s Rib,” by husband & wife Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon earned an
Oscar nomination, and the film today might not nearly be as relevant, but
remember women didn’t start burning their bras until twenty years later. The
script however is pretty fair to both sexes. Judy Holliday’s character, like
many of her characters is almost as flawed as her husband for having stayed
around him without killing him as long as she did. She would win an Oscar a
couple years later in “Born Yesterday,” for playing an even less knowledgeable
dingbat. (Also a Cukor film) Ewell's became most famous for Billy Wilder's "The Seven Year Itch" with Marilyn Monroe.
The one odd male character outside of Tracy, who’s
as passionate about the law as Amanda is about women’s right, who’s even
remotely looked at in a positive light, is a friend of Amanda's, Kip (David Wayne), who after performing the Cole Porter-penned song "Farewell, Amanda", reveals his love for her, despite pretty much every other detail about him being coded homosexual. He even tries to take her from Tracy in the middle of a zany climatic segment. It’s the one
odd piece in the movie that seems too unbelievable. In the movie, he’s a
songwriter, and most believe the part was based on Porter himself. I like to pretend, he was more inspired by George Cukor.
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