Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [346]
Moments later, as if on cue, Hepburn came sauntering onto the set in a white flannel pantsuit, George Cukor at her side. “We want to talk to you,” she said, ignoring the fact that director Richard Thorpe and the assembled cast and crew were ready to make a scene. “Well, fine,” said Tracy, gesturing grandly toward the bustling set, “we’ll call off all this.”
Love Is Legal, of course, became known as Adam’s Rib, possibly the best of all the Tracy-Hepburn pictures and certainly one of the sharpest romantic comedies ever to come out of Hollywood. Significantly, the idea, and the script that evolved from it, owed nothing to the development process that put producers in charge and rendered writers as interchangeable as transcription typists. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin had authored exactly one original screenplay, an uncommonly intelligent backstage drama called A Double Life. Written entirely on spec, it went on to earn Academy Award nominations for the Kanins and for George Cukor—who directed the film on loan to Universal—and a late win for Ronald Colman as Best Actor. Kanin described motoring through Connecticut on a dreary winter afternoon when he asked his wife to tell him “something interesting about Connecticut.” She responded with the story of two couples who had divorced and intermarried after a week’s vacation together in England. One couple was actor Raymond Massey and his wife, the actress Adrianne Allen. The other was William Dwight Witney and his wife Dorothy, both of whom, as it turned out, were successful New Haven attorneys.
“Can you see it as a movie?” Kanin asked excitedly.
“Not really,” said Gordon. “Unbelievable. Too pat. Like life.”
“What about just the first half then? Two lawyers. Married. And they get onto opposite sides of a case.”
They began spinning the idea, and the obviousness of the casting hit them both like a bolt of lightning. “Kate and Spence!” they erupted in unison.
The screenplay, tentatively titled Man and Wife, came together with remarkable speed, and a first draft was back from the steno bureau on November 10. Following consultations with both Tracy and Hepburn—Kate in particular—a revised 152-page version was submitted to Dore Schary via Hepburn and the William Morris Agency on January 27, 1949. Three days later, a deal was closed for $175,000, which included the authors’ services should any rewrites be necessary.
“It was the first time in thirty years the studio had ever seen a screenplay that was ready to shoot immediately, without changes,” said Larry Weingarten, who was assigned to produce the picture with Cukor directing. So when Kate appeared with Cukor on the set of Operation Malaya and said to Spence, “We want to talk to you,” it was not simply a social call she had in mind but an impromptu script conference.
Man and Wife grew expressly from the Kanins’ intimate knowledge of the Tracy-Hepburn relationship, but putting that relationship on screen in all its tones and colorations was risky business, given how fiercely private the two people in question were. “Their on-camera relationship reflected both the easy intimacy they shared in the off-camera relationship and much of my own marriage to Ruth,” said Kanin, who came west with his wife. “They were easy to write for.”
That Cukor was assigned the project made perfect sense, as he too had observed Spence and Kate at close range over a number of years. Moreover, as an actress, Ruth Gordon had been directed by Cukor and knew his strengths. Their collective experience on A Double Life had been pleasant and rewarding. With Weingarten producing and, in effect, shielding the company from front-office interference, the package proved the perfect incubator for a well-crafted movie.2 “The