Next time you're in the mood for a snappy romantic comedy, I suggest this one from the vaults:
Adam's Rib.
Battle of the sexes meets courtroom antics. Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy duke it out as opposing lawyers in a case of "Woman attempts to shoot husband and mistress but botches up and now they want to take her kids". Hepburn defends the woman, Tracy the man. The best part, they're a married couple that happen to be madly in love.
Hepburn and Tracy paired up a few times, and this is my favorite of those films. The Ease and mutual respect they held for each other make their on-screen chemistry a thing of beauty.
Kate and Spence were quite the professional pair, and people talked often of their work relationship-as well as their real life romantic entanglement. Katherine was enamored with Spencer and it was rumored she asked him to marry her, but he refused to leave his wife-though they were separated. (The act of faithfulness is attributed to his catholic roots)
That just makes the story of Adam's Rib all the more interesting. Above all things it truly is a fable about marriage and commitment. As the trial progresses, Amanda (Kate) and Adam(Spence) find the proceedings taking a toll on their life at home. Trust and pride become the issues that surface and threaten to sink the love boat these two have been sailing on happily. Who wins? Adam and Husband or Amanda and wife? The true twist isn't even the verdict.
An added bonus is a young Judy Holiday who was an unknown to film audiences at the time. Her role in Adam's Rib was actually a bid cooked up by Spencer and Tracy to get the studio heads to notice her and let her reprise her broadway roll in the film version of Born Yesterday(Which was re-made again in the 90's with Melanie Griffith.)
Thursday, January 29, 2009
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