Word: tess
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Career woman marries family man, sees the light, and patches up: that's a skeleton of a plot we know so well. But it's doctored up so that the career woman is Tess Hardy, a diplomat's daughter turned political columnist (sort of a combo of Dorothy Thompson and Mrs. Roosevelt all rolled into the frame of La Hepburn), and the family man is sports writer Sam Craig (better known as Spencer Tracy on M.G.M.'s payroll). Up until their wedding night, the picture hits all the heights of humor and contrast you could ask for. His friends...
...Tess Harding, China-born, Swiss-schooled daughter of a U.S. diplomat, Miss Hepburn is easily recognizable in her role of highfalutin' female newspaper columnist. Spoiled, selfish, intellectual, well-informed, too busy to be feminine, she thinks nothing of advocating (by radio) the abolition of baseball for the duration of the war. She is promptly dusted off by another columnist: Sam Craig (Mr. Tracy), sportswriter, of her own paper. The tone of his piece, which calls her "the Calamity Jane of the fast international set," is less politely echoed by one of his colleagues: "Women should be kept illiterate...
From that point, Woman is the story of a speedy courtship and a rocky marriage. Tracy takes Tess to her first baseball game. She sits in the press box, observing that it is silly for her paper to have two men to cover a game when it has only one man in Vichy. For anyone remotely familiar with baseball, her painful introduction to America's favorite sport is Grade-A comedy...
...time Tess has acquired a small Greek refugee and the title "Outstanding Woman of the Year," Husband Tracy is not sure whether he is married to a woman or a teletype machine. He leaves to find out, observing: "Do I look like the outstanding husband of the outstanding woman of the year?" Tess eventually lures him back by promising to be just an outstanding wife...
Remember is not exciting, but it has a casual authenticity and charm. Its reconstruction of World War I society is very near the life. So are the performances of young Croft and Miss Colbert. This first-rate melding of an understanding script (Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis, Allan Scott) with superior photography (George Barnes) and music (Alfred Newman) is a peacock feather in Director Henry King...