Trivia for
Woman of the Year (1942) More at IMDbPro »

• The first of nine films to feature Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
  
  
• As Katharine Hepburn's close friend and frequent director, George Cukor was a natural choice to direct, but for her first film with Spencer Tracy, Hepburn wanted Tracy to be as comfortable as possible, so as a quasi-producer, she hired George Stevens, who had directed her in Alice Adams (1935). As Hepburn said, "I just thought he (Tracy) should have a big, manly man on his team - someone who could talk about baseball." Cukor (who was openly gay and known for his friendships with actresses) would later become a good friend of Tracy and would direct both actors in Keeper of the Flame (1942), Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952).
  
  
• Hepburn refused to reveal who wrote the screen play to Louis B. Mayer until after he bought the project from Hepburn. Hepburn was afraid that Mayer would low-ball the two authors (Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner Jr.) because at the time they were both relatively unknown.
  
  
• The Broadway musical version opened at the Palace Theater on May 29, 1981, ran for 770 performances starring Lauren Bacall and Harry Guardino and was nominated for the 1981 Tony Awards for the Best Musical, Book and Score.
  
  

• SPOILER: The entire final sequence where Tess tried to win Sam back by making him breakfast and thus proving her marriage to Sam worth saving was written and filmed after the original ending tested poorly in preview. Apparently the original final sequence is lost.
  
  
• SPOILER: The reason for the changed ending is revealed in the book A Remarkable Woman: A Biography of Katharine Hepburn by Anne Edwards. It says, "The original ending of the Lardner-Kanin script had Tess Harding take an honest interest in baseball (her husband's passion) and become more enthusiastic than he at the game, which implied not compromise but growth and love. But Mankiewicz and Stevens were concerned that 'the average American housewife, seated next to her husband, staring for two hours at this paragon of beauty, intelligence, wit, accomplishment, and everything else, (could not) help but wonder if her husband (wasn't) comparing her very unfavorably with this goddess he sees on the screen.' Stevens, who for all his charm was a dedicated male chauvinist, decided with Mankiewicz that Tess Harding had to have her comeuppance."
  
  

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