Tracy & Hepburn

So I've finally (and I guess it was about time) seem my first Tracy/Hepburn movie, Adam's Rib. It came on TCM just as my dad and I were sitting down to dinner, and he loves it, so we watched it.

Maybe I'm too jaded by my years of watching Law & Order in its various incarnations, but all through the trial scenes I kept muttering, "It's not about women's rights, it's about the fact that she shot her husband, she admits she shot her husband, so can we please disperse with the irrelevant 'examples of American womanhood' witnesses?" Okay, it was funny when the circus lady lifted Spencer Tracy over her head. Hee. And I get that it was 1949 and it's also a movie, and a "battle of the sexes" comedy at that, so obviously we're not up to Dick Wolf standards here or anything. The courtroom scenes were funny, especially when they both duck under the table to pass notes or blow kisses. Very cute.

I thought Will Wright, who played Judge Marcasson, seemed familiar; or just his gravelly voice, actually. Of course I looked him up on IMDB, and I guess I'm remembering him from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, or maybe it was as the voice of "Friend Owl" in Bambi. Or it's entirely possible I'm confusing him with someone else altogether. Ooh, I bet it's Eugene Pallette, another gravelly-voiced actor who was in My Man Godfrey and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Yeah, I bet that's it.

Anyhow. Adam's Rib. I liked it, and while I'm not rushing out to rent more Tracy & Hepburn movies right this second, I will give some of their others a look.

A funny story that Peter Bogdanovich told after the movie (he's hosting The Essentials now) : Spencer Tracy was asked once about the fact that they were always billed as "Tracy & Hepburn." Hadn't he ever thought about "ladies first"? Tracy replied, "This is the movies, chowderhead, not a lifeboat." Heh.