Tickling “Adam’s Rib”
I recently got around to watching the classic 1949 movie “Adam’s Rib,” featuring the charismatic duo Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
The movie is about a married couple—Tracy and Hepburn—who are also lawyers. Tracy’s character, Adam Bonner, is an assistant district attorney. Hepburn’s character, Amanda Bonner, is a Yale law grad and apparently in private practice. The two live what we might these days call a DINK (double income, no kids) lifestyle. They live in a fabulously decorated two-story apartment filled with expensive looking furniture and paintings, where their maid prepares them breakfast and serves it to them in their bedroom on a silver tray; they enjoy retreating to their country home in Connecticut (fully paid for in only six years, they tell their accountant); and when it comes time for dressing, they retreat to their his-and-hers closets where, particularly in Hepburn’s case, there is an abundance of incredible clothes for all occasions. Adam and Amanda are obviously in love. It appears that for each of them, the other’s accomplishments are a source of pride.
Until the day Adam is assigned to prosecute Doris Attinger.