Themes: Workplace Romance, Battle of the Sexes, Class Differences
Main Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell, David Wayne
Release Year: 1949
Country: US
Run Time: 100 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Adam's Rib is a peerless comedy predicated on the double standard. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play Adam and Amanda Bonner, a husband-and-wife attorney team, both drawn to a case of attempted murder. The defendant (Judy Holliday) had tearfully attempted to shoot her husband (Tom Ewell) and his mistress (Jean Hagen). Adam argues that the case is open and shut, but Amanda points out that, if the defendant were a man, he'd be set free on the basis of "the unwritten law." Thus it is that Adam works on behalf of the prosecution, while Amanda defends the accused woman. The trial turns into a media circus, while the Bonners' home life suffers. Adam's Rib represented the film debuts of New York-based actors Jean Hagen, Tom Ewell, and David Wayne (as Hepburn's erstwhile songwriting suitor), and the return to Hollywood of Judy Holliday after her Born Yesterday triumph. One of the best of the Tracy-Hepburn efforts, it inspired a brief 1973 TV series starring Ken Howard and Blythe Danner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin's witty and intelligent script (despite many improbabilities, such as the conflict of interest in having a husband and wife contest the same case, and the plausibility-defying circus-like theatrics that Amanda deploys in the courtroom) propels this funny and barbed courtroom comedy. The legal and gender-fueled debates at the center of the film may seem somewhat antiquated today, but the intelligence and wit that inform much of the film's dialogue are still surprisingly fresh. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn share an onscreen ease and familiarity usually reserved for long-married couples. Ironically -- given that the film is about the legal ramifications of a woman's shooting of her philandering husband -- they had become an extramarital item themselves by the time this film was being made. Judy Holliday gives an unexpectedly affecting performance as the woman wronged, while bug-eyed Tom Ewell is solid as her weasel-like philandering husband. However, David Wayne as the lascivious piano composer/neighbor of the feuding legal eagles gives the most impressive supporting performance. His best line? "Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers." Technically, the film is very conventional. Outside of the opening sequences, in which George Cukor's camera roams the busy streets of rush hour New York, the film has a stage-like feel, with static shots of the battling spouses dominating the proceedings. Perhaps Cukor didn't want to distract us from the real star of the show, the clever and insightful Kanin/Gordon script. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
Jean Hagen - Beryl Caighn; Hope Emerson - Olympia La Pere; Eve March - Grace; Clarence Kolb - Judge Reiser; Emerson Treacy - Jules Fr-ikke; Will Wright - Judge Marcasson; Elizabeth Flournoy - Dr. Margaret Brodeigh; Charles Bastin - Asst. District Attorney; Madge Blake - Mrs. Bonner; David Clarke - Roy; Sidney Dubin - Amanda's Assistant; Rex Evans - Fat Man; Glen B. Gallagher; Marvin Kaplan - Court Stenographer; George Magrill; Louis Mason - Elevator Operator; Polly Moran - Mrs. McGrath; Anna Q. Nilsson - Mrs. Poynter; Paula Raymond - Emerald; Bill Self - Benjamin Klausner; Ray Walker - Photographer; Marjorie Wood - Mrs. Marcasson; John Maxwell - Court Clerk; Tommy Noonan - Reporter; Gil Patric; Lester Luther - Judge Poynter; Harry Cody - Criminal Attorney; Bert Davidson - Subway Guard; Joseph E. Bernard - Mr. Bonner; James Nolan - Dave
Prosecutor Adam Bonner (Spencer Tracy) is assigned the case against a woman (Judy Holliday) who tried to scare her adulterous husband (Tom Ewell) and his lover (Jean Hagen) by shooting at them repeatedly, hitting him in the shoulder. Bonner's wife, Amanda (Katharine Hepburn), also a lawyer, decides to defend the woman in court. As the two use every technique they know to win the case, the courtroom tension carries over into the couple's household.
Legal issues
The defendant, Doris Attinger, when narrating to Amanda Bonner her version of the events on the day she shot her husband, describes recognizable symptoms of a dissociative episode. These include a divorcement from the reality of her actions and even psychogenic amnesia concerning her actual wounding of her husband. Given that, one might have expected Amanda to ask the jury for a verdict of not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity, because the defendant had been seized by an irresistible impulse.
Instead, Amanda asks for a simple verdict of not guilty, because all the defendant did was to "try to defend her home", and a man acting similarly might be acquitted. In short, she asks for jury nullification, and wins the case.
The casting of Judy Holliday in the role of Doris was considered by Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to be her audition for the chance to re-create on film her Broadway success in Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday. Receiving positive notices for Adam's Rib, Holliday was cast in the 1950 film version of Born Yesterday, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
It has been noted that in several scenes of the film, there are unusually long takes, where the camera does not move for minutes at a time. Most of these scenes happened when the principal characters were arguing.[1]
In the decades since the film's release, it has attracted the esteem of many critics. In 1992, Adam's Rib was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
AFI has also honored the film's stars, naming Katharine Hepburn the greatest American screen legend among females, and Spencer Tracy #9 among males.
Quotation
"Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers." - David Wayne as Kip Lurie trying to lure Amanda from her estranged husband.
Notes
^Higham, Charles; Greenberg, Joel (1968). Hollywood in the Forties. London: A. Zwemmer Limited. p. 163. ISBN Not Given.
