Adam's Rib @ 75: The Best Tracy/Hepburn vehicle
Monday, November 18, 2024 at 9:30PM 
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's love story is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Whether you believe their devotion or side-eye the whole affair, whether you're charmed by their commitment or support the lavender allegations of some, it's impossible to deny how each of the actors' mythos exists in conversation with the other. Part of it stems from the bleeding of off-screen liaisons into the screen proper, immortalizing their partnership at 24 frames per second. They starred in nine pictures together, starting with 1942's Woman of the Year and ending with 1968's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, for which Hepburn won her second Best Actress Academy Award.
Out of this silver screen ennead, Adam's Rib is probably their best, joining the couple with George Cukor's elegant touch and a fantastic Oscar-nominated script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. Today, the comedy celebrates its 75th anniversary…
For all that I've framed Adam's Rib around its two leads, the movie begins away from Tracy and Hepburn's Adam and Amanda Bonner, two married New York lawyers who, like the actors portraying them, like to mix the personal and professional. Well, at least, she does. He would rather not. In any case, they're not present for the dialogue-less opening, where a memorably attired Judy Holliday makes her big screen debut after years consolidating her reputation on stage. As Doris Attinger, she's a nervous little thing, walking through Manhattan in the depths of what looks like a complete nervous breakdown. Gun in hand, she's on her way to confront a philandering husband in flagrante delicto.
One year before she ascended to true movie star status with Born Yesterday, Holliday was already an electrifying screen presence. Moreover, she's agile when dealing with the scene's flexible tonalities, touching on her character's genuine distress while making a comedic feast out of it. The ingredients for a noir prologue are all there, but Holliday and Cukor twist the recipe enough to serve farce rather than crime drama. It's a tragicomic tour de force that grabs the audience's attention and doesn't let go, one of those perfect and perfectly succinct movie openings that showcases the best that Old Hollywood had to offer.
From Holliday's hysterical physicality, the scene transitions to Hepburn's take on physical comedy. Gunshots are fired, and the newspaper headlines transition the action to the following morning, when Amanda Bonner is busy bringing her husband breakfast in bed. There's a cozy domesticity to the whole thing that brings to mind the capitulation at the end of their first on-screen partnership. However, this working woman seems to have found a balance never achieved in Woman of the Year. Amanda is her husband's equal and performs midcentury wifely duties with a loose ungracefulness that's fully embraced, almost celebrated, by the diva and the camera that worships her.
This immediately distinguishes Amanda from the other characters Hepburn played opposite Tracy. She's comfortable in her skin, eager to enjoy marital happiness but not so predisposed to submission or apologies in the face of supposed shortcomings. It's evident when the couple starts arguing over the latest news, amiably bickering on the subject of one gun-slinging Mrs. Attinger. Amanda has sympathy to spare, finding that both law and society hold women to different standards than men in cases of adultery. For his part, Adam is more dismissive, finding her guilty of attempted murder before he's even got out of bed.
In private, wife clashes with husband. In public, it'll be defense lawyer versus assistant district attorney since Amanda makes sure she'll be representing Mrs. Attinger the moment she hears her husband will prosecute. Her argument is basically, "I don't believe in the glorification of murder; I do believe in the empowerment of women." So, gender expectations are the subject of various scenes, both in conversations between the sexes and more homosocial interactions, including Amanda's first meeting with her client, where Holliday gets to break down some more, talking wetly about what a lady should and shouldn't do, her pain, her suffering, her wish to go home to her children. It's fascinating watching how Hepburn lets the other woman (over)shine.
Adam's Rib was partly built to prove Holliday's viability in the movies. Cukor wanted the actress to reprise the lead role in Born Yesterday for a hypothetical screen adaptation of the comedy play. Still, the studios wouldn't risk casting such an unknown property. So, along with friends Hepburn and Tracy and Gordon – who based the characters on a real-life couple of married lawyers she was pals with - and Kanin – who also wrote Born Yesterday - he devised a movie that would show her talents to the suits. Adam's Rib sells Judy Holliday like nobody's business, but none of the other actors are slagging off. Even in that conversation piece, Hepburn is exquisite, an active listener whose every reaction is pitch-perfect punctuation.
Back at home, where the Bonners are throwing a dinner party, the stars are free from Holliday but the camera keeps many of the same strategies of the scenes showcasing her. Despite trying to serve as a stepping stone for a stage actress to jump into film, Adam's Rib is not straining to be "cinematic." Instead, it seems more interested in the theatrical strategies that can gain new life on screen, privileging long takes and static compositions that work with the actors moving in and out of frame to build visual jokes, modulate funny talk across space, and suggest censored intimacies. A little vacation video interlude almost seems to underline this, a meta-textual wink.
The dinner party is a bust, if not for the guests, then for the hosts. It starts smoothly enough, with frothy flirtation and Hepburn bedecked in a Walter Plunkett number that's got to be one of the best gowns she ever wore. Things take a turn when Adam becomes aware of Amanda's ploy to take their private debate on gender and Mrs. Attinger to the public court. It's a great bit of comedic surprise on Tracy's part, settling into a more familiar flavor of disappointed paternalism as the night draws to a close. And yet, Adam's Rib curbs expectations by treating the Bonners' dispute lightly. They reconcile alone, in soft shadow, a moment of unexpected closeness that makes the viewer feel like a voyeur. It won't be the last time either.
The next day and for most of the remaining movie, a pattern emerges: court conflict by daylight and more disagreements in the comfort of home at night, sometimes with a drink followed by a one-liner chaser. Hepburn and Tracy are intent on avoiding cliché and making the trial proceedings into sublimated foreplay. Hell, they insinuate more carnality in Adam's Rib than in their other eight collaborations combined. If possible, the domestic part of this dynamic is even more delicious. On the trial's first night, they even act out a kitchen-set lark, well-oiled and impossibly smooth, that, again, seems to recall Woman of the Year. Or, more accurately, it recalls George Stevens' movie to improve on its model.
Between bouts of bickering, the two stars find plenty of opportunity for flashes of softness, looks of such heart-warming affection that you can't, for a single moment, doubt Adam and Amanda's love. In some ways, that provides the comedy with a sense of comfort and stakes. No matter how acrimonious their courtroom battle may turn, there's no reason to believe this union could ever crumble. On the other hand, feeling their bond so viscerally gives the audience something to root for, something to treasure, and whose dereliction would leave everyone broken. David Wayne is also there, playing piano to compliment and counterpoint the husband and wife intellectual spar.
He's one of many supporting players that, though not as foregrounded as Holliday, still make strong impressions and elevate Adam's Rib to the higher echelons of postwar American comedy. Jean Hagen is a mischievous standout as Beryl, Mr. Attinger's mistress, and can duel with the lawyer leads like the best of them. Also, she looks as fetching in boy drag as Holliday for one of the film's niftiest sight gags. Tom Ewell embraces the adulterer's pathetic side, bringing enough venom to give the Attingers' backstory some necessary bite while never jeopardizing the movie's humor. And there's Hope Emerson, brought in to hilariously demonstrate a woman's physical strength and upend stereotypes.
George Cukor was one of Old Hollywood's best director of actors and Adam's Rib is emblematic of his talents. I'm especially impressed with the man's ability to draw something electric out of Spencer Tracy, an actor I've always struggled to appreciate even when I can see the mechanical merits of his work. Here, he's tasked with performing a crescendo, from mild humiliation to a boiling point of anger so destructive it'll lead the Bonners to potential divorce. I won't spoil the ending if you haven't seen Adam's Rib yet, but I'll say Tracy makes it work against all odds, and so does Hepburn. Maybe it's a parasocial projection on my part, but the film feels like a peak behind the curtain, revealing in ways that endear it to my heart. Are you similarly charmed?
Adam's Rib is streaming on Tubi. You can also rent it from Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and the Microsoft Store.
Reader Comments (2)
This is a fine discussion of one of my favorite films. It plays as well today as it did in the ‘50s.
Marvelous!
What can I say about Katharine Hepburn, the greatest actress in Film History? And also my idol, my role model, my love? ❤️
And about her chemistry with Spencer Tracy?
I confess I prefer "Woman of the Year", but "Adam's Ribe" is brilliant.
They don't make 'em like that anymore...