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Meanwhile, a completely different comic love triangle unfolds. Scratchy-voiced Judy Holliday catches her sexist clod husband, Tom Ewell, with his dim bulb mistress, Jean Hagen. She shoots and hospitalizes him, but fortunately, he eventually makes a full recovery.
Holliday is put on trial for attempted murder. Against his wishes, Tracy is assigned the case. Hepburn, an advocate for equal rights of women, sympathizes with Holliday so completely that she decides to defend her case.
Thus, Tracy and Hepburn are respectively prosecutor and defense attorney for Holliday's trial. Hepburn makes a circus of it, to the consternation of Tracy, who conservatively interprets the law. Predictably, the marriage becomes strained, with matters aggravated by Wayne, who isn't nearly as witty as he (or Hepburn) thinks he is.
How I felt about it. Adam's Rib ranks among the better Tracy-Hepburn vehicles. Nine were ultimately made, including Tracy's final movie, the overrated Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Tracy and Hepburn had chemistry, both on and off the screen, although Tracy remained married to actress Louise Treadwell.
I won't speculate on how they interacted once the cameras stopped rolling, but their characters were straightforward. Tracy was paternal, taciturn, and readily exasperated. Hepburn was confident, extroverted, and opinionated.
Careful study, though, reveals a naughty boy lurking beneath Tracy's judgmental exterior. This is the fellow who aims a gun made of licorice at Hepburn, and who raised hell as the dark side or Dr. Jekyll in his adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic. Hepburn secretly cherishes this bad boy, just as she encourages Wayne's more narcissistic version of it. She may be flattered that Tracy reveals this 'secret' part of his personality to her, or she simply enjoys a slice of mischief and chaos within her safe, structured existence.
We suspect that Tracy will eventually sock the preening Wayne, an action that would contradict his avowed strict observance of law. He knows that Hepburn regards Wayne merely as a dear friend, but he also knows Wayne has more than friendship on his mind. This puts Tracy in the position of Holliday, attempting to keep the spouse from straying, while ironically having to condemn her actions in court.
Holliday, Ewell, and Hagen are comic supporting characters. It is difficult to take Holliday's defense seriously. She's not guilty of shooting her husband, because she's a woman and men are allowed to shoot their cheating spouses? Since when? Ewell's strange behavior on the stand, indifferently admitting to beating his wife and neglecting his family, must have been as unconvincing in 1949 as it is today, some sixty years later. Hagen plays the dumb blonde as if it is a rehearsal for her later role in Singin' in the Rain.
The film takes a surreal turn when the judge allows Hepburn to introduce random unrelated successful women as proof of women's equality, as if that has anything to do with shooting someone. Tracy gets tongue-tied in his trial summary for no apparent reason, and the same complaint can be lodged against Holliday, Ewell, and Hagen, who eagerly pose together for reporters following the verdict as if they were the best of friends all along. Well, it is a comedy.