TRACY AND HEPBURN: THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION (WB) Woman Of The Year (1942) D: George Stevens, KEEPER OF THE FLAME (1942) D: George Cukor, WITHOUT LOVE (1945) D: Harold S. Bucquet, THE SEA OF GRASS (1947), D: Elia Kazan, STATE OF THE UNION (1948) D: Frank Capra, ADAM’S RIB (1949) D: Cukor, PAT AND MIKE (1952) D: Cukor, DESK SET (1957) D: Walter Lang, GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967) D: Stanley Kramer, w/ Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn. Rating: NNNNN DVD package: NNNN Rating: NNNNN
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn are as good as screen couples get. Through their nine pairings, all collected here, they engage in a spirited give-and-take that radiates genuine love through a full gamut of emotions.
Woman Of The Year sets the template, pitting Tracy’s quiet, salt-of-the-earth sportswriter against Hepburn’s expansive, patrician, modern political reporter. Love and marriage follow, but temperament and lifestyle threaten the union. In Adam’s Rib they’re happily married lawyers who come to grief when he prosecutes and she defends a woman who’s shot her cheating husband.
You might choke a bit on State Of The Union’s honest industrialist and nobility-with-tears finale, but there is brisk drama in the tale of a man’s run for the presidency and the marital stress it involves.
Apart from a few touching minutes at the end, Katharine Hepburn says little about her 25-year off-screen affair with Tracy in her feature-length tribute, The Spencer Tracy Legacy. Instead, she gives a straightforward overview of his career, with interviews from the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra on his personality, work methods and acting greatness. If you want a comparable look at Hepburn, check out Warner’s double-disc edition of The Philadelphia Story.
EXTRAS Feature-length Tracy bio, three cartoons, three shorts, commentary, more. Widescreen, full-frame, b&w, colour. English, French, Spanish audio and subtitles (varies from film to film)
