eadoe

They say that behind every great man there is a woman supporting him. Well, "Woman of the Year" demonstrates that behind every great woman there is a man sabotaging her.

Spencer Tracy plays a husband who can't handle being married to a great person. He's a sports columnist and she is an international journalist and humanitarian, yet the script manages to equate in importance his coverage of ballgames with her coverage of World War II. Kate's work is trivialized not because it is trivial work, but because it is performed by a woman, who should instead be attending to the selfish needs of her petulant husband.

Spencer Tracy's character never shows one ounce of interest in or appreciation for his wife's work. He shows no sympathy even with her concern for a Slavic statesman, and dear friend, trying to escape from the Nazis. In fact, his disdain for her demanding work is the only constant in the movie. Poor Kate shows more openness to his work, actually attends a baseball game with him and ends up really getting into the spirit of a silly ball game, while he can't ever get into the spirit of what she is trying to accomplish for the free world in her work. Not once does he compliment her on her commitment, on her accomplishments, on the important impact of what she does. He makes me want to steal a line from "Gone With the Wind" and shout, "Don't you know there's a WAR on, Spencer?" Kate is trying to keep up with the frenzied pace of the Nazi overrun of Europe and can't miss a beat, while Spencer is watching a ballgame and eating peanuts. Yet somehow we are supposed to feel sympathy for him and not for Kate, who is burdened with dragging this unappreciative lout along with her.

Picture Walter Cronkite with a whiny wife who is a fashion columnist and who resents his commitment to his internationally important work. How far would he have gotten with a spouse who undermined him the way Spencer did to Kate in this movie? Picture Walter Cronkite's petulant, immature wife boycotting his "Freedom of the Press" Award the way Spencer boycotted Kate's award. This "loving" husband negates her worth and value as an international humanitarian. And instead of dumping him after this selfish, childish demonstration of his lack of support for her, Kate BEGS him to take HER back, as if SHE were in the wrong! Only in the dreams of a male script-writer would a woman like that ever beg a man like that to take her back.

Okay, Walter Cronkite! Beg that silly fashion columnist to take you back! Vow to quit your job, to spend your life marinating in your spouse's silly, selfish demands! Efface yourself in every possible way, even to demonstrating that you are such an idiot that you can't, as Robert Osborn said, even "make coffee or pour orange juice."

And in the end, we are supposed to pat Spencer's character on the back for condescending to take back a begging, groveling, sniveling Kate. This was 1940s Hollywood's idea of a compromise. For women, there has always been a fine line between compromise and self-betrayal. "Woman of the Year" is an exercise in female self-betrayal, and in male contempt for female accomplishments.

Well, what can we expect from the man who gave us the movie MASH? Ring Lardner Jr. got ramped up humiliating powerful women on screen at an early age – he was 27 when he wrote Woman of the Year. By the time he wrote MASH, he was a no-holds-barred woman hater who conceived of vicious fantasies for humiliating powerful women and used the media to project his fantasies on America. And here is where it all started, folks.

Carlos Mencia continually, violently, hatefully screaming "B**ch!" at women is like screaming "N**ger!" at black people, except it's worse. Remember, the B word, unlike the N word, is the only pejorative term that is still associated on a daily basis with violence. "B**ch!" is the last thing women hear before they are raped, beaten, or murdered. This guy is perpetuating violence by hatefully using the language of violence. Sounds like he may be a gay guy trying to cover by woman-bashing, so that he will sound like a hetero. And how about all the Nazi white guys in his audience giving the fascist salutes while their stupid little bimbo white women whimper tee hee hee at their side, clearly terrified to protest this tidal wave of woman-hating. Tee hee hee. Bet Mencia doesn't believe or support free speech for THEM! Come on, Carlos – do you want women to have the free speech to b**ch-slap you as loudly and violently and big-mouthed as you do, or do you think "free speech" is only for men to crap on women???

I just saw this film and now realize that Sly Stallone must have watched it about a hundred times before staging the fight scenes in Rocky – he even recreated the subtle touch when Toro's coach cuts his eyelid in the fight to release the built-up blood (except in this film, you only see him go for the eye with a scalpel but don't see him actually cut it as you do in Rocky). The final fight at the end of this movie is THE most gruesome fight ever filmed. Stallone tried to capture this in Rocky, but it has nowhere NEAR the realism of the fight in The Harder They Fall. This is partly because it is shot in black and white, which for some reason makes everything seem more gruesome than color; partly because of the foggy, staggering way it is shot, as if you are seeing the punches through the groggy boxer's eyes; and partly because the actor who played Toro was not a star like Stallone or DeNiro in Raging Bull – they could make him look like a true wreck, a distorted, disfigured wreck – without fear of diminishing his "star" quality handsomeness.

My favorite line in this movie is when Bogart angrily asks Steiger how he'd like to have his jaw broken like Toro's. Steiger's henchmen immediately start to converge on Bogart, who says, "He didn't have 5 guys in the ring with him." It's a great line that brings home how the powerful are protected from the very pain they inflict on others.

The movie's title, from the old saying, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall," is also very ironic, because the "big" guys – Steiger and the corrupt fight backers – actually never "fall" – it is only the "little" guys, like Toro, who fall the hardest.

By the way, it was really spooky seeing Max Baer himself re-create his historic fight with Primo Carnera in this film, which is based on Max Baer's historic fight with Primo Carnera! You can see a film of this 1934 fight online, in which Baer knocks Carnera down 11 times in 11 rounds. By round 2, Baer was actually chasing Carnera around the ring, and at least 3 times he knocked him down so hard that he actually fell on top of him!