Thanksgiving night with Tracy and Hepburn

After you've finished your Thanksgiving turkey, if you don't like football you can always spend the evening with TCM, who are counterprogramming with five of the nine movies to pair Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with Desk Set, one that I've never actually blogged about in full and would do so if today weren't Thanksgiving and I didn't have a bunch of other things to do. The movie stars Hepburn as the head of a TV network's research library; into that library comes computer expert (for 1957 computers) Tracy, who's trying to sell the network a computer that will help in research. Unsurprisingly, the research librarians think the computer is going to replace them. Complicating matters is that Tracy and Hepburn's characters fall in love along the way. Pay special attention to the computer. It's the same one that would be recycled by Fox several years later in the Dick Van Dyke section of What a Way to Go! which was just on TCM earlier this week. I suppose that vintage computer could be the subject for a post of its own if I had good screencaps of it.

Coming up at 10:00 PM is Woman of the Year, which I blogged about four years ago. Political columnist Hepburn meets sportswriter Tracy; the two fall in love despite their differences.

At midnight is State of the Union, which has Tracy running for the presidency with his wife Hepburn as support; unfortunately the campaign threatens to take his humanity away from him.

You can catch Pat and Mike at 2:15 AM; here Hepburn plays a female athlete who is discovered by Tracy who becomes her manager; again the two fall in love along the way.

Finally, at 4:00 AM is Adam's Rib, with Tracy and Hepbrn playing married lawyers who wind up on opposite sides of a criminal trial when Hepburn takes the defense of Judy Holliday, who is on trial for shooting her husband.

Happy Thanksgiving!