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George Stevens directed with an even but unexceptional hand this first (of eight) screen pairings of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and the unmistakable chemistry between the two actors led to a surreptitious (Tracy was married) lifelong relationship. Drawing on traits that would become nearly archetypal, the witty but inconsistent Woman of the Year script by Ring Lardner and Michael Kanin exploits the contrasts between the rumpled blue-collar Everyman appeal of Tracy and the cool, aristocratic intellectualism of Hepburn. Though not in the same league as Adam's Rib, the film does have some wildly comic passages, but they are spliced together with awkwardly directed scenes of political commentary. The film also suffers from a jarring change of tone when the protagonists' marriage unravels, and is unconvincingly wound back up again. The World War II conflict informs the film's political bent, as the isolationist (Tracy-probably intended to be portraying an Eleanor Roosevelt-type) does battle with the interventionist (Hepburn). The predominant political and conventional morality of the day demands that Tracy's buffoonish sports columnist wins out over the feminist antifascist journalist played by Hepburn, but viewers today may shudder at the political shortsightedness and elements of political incorrectness in the film. Lardner (a communist who would later be blacklisted) and Kanin won Oscars for their screenplay, while Hepburn was nominated for best actress.