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This chapter is about the Hollywood actors Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, who epitomised the adage that opposites attract. Sexual difference is not their only opposition: she is upper-class, while he is lower-class; she is liberal, he is conservative; she is Anglo-Saxon Protestant, he is Irish Catholic; she is intellectual, he has common sense. The various textual and extratextual discourses about the Hepburn/Tracy couple repeatedly work out this structural opposition through a process of moderation. Seemingly having nothing in common, Hepburn and Tracy's union symbolises the moderation of oppositional idiosyncrasies creating a stable equilibrium. The metaphor of economy and excess proves extremely useful in characterising this dynamic, but it also suggests a hidden gender essentialism: male as practical and rational, female as impractical and irrational—or the difference between a straight line and a spiral.

In 1937 Fleming directed one of his most famous films, Captains Courageous, an adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling novel. Louis Lighton reunited with Fleming for the script and added Catholic overtones to increase the element of redemption in the coming-of-age story. This chapter analyzes the film’s plot and discusses the production of the film, which starred Freddie Bartholomew as the young protagonist and Spencer Tracy as the sailor father figure. Captains Courageous was also one of the first appearances for a young Mickey Rooney.

Though Fleming started his first long-term contract with MGM at the beginning of 1940, progress on his project The Yearling stalled after his attempts at preparation. In its place, the studio gave him control over the adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At the same time, actor Lee Bowman married Fleming’s stepdaughter, to Fleming’s frustration. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, released in 1941, starred Spencer Tracy and introduced Fleming to the emerging starlet Ingrid Bergman. This chapter gives a detailed summary of the film’s plot and the backstage actions of Fleming and his cast. Though Fleming did not immediately fall for Bergman, she became infatuated with her director by the end of filming.

This chapter studies five films that Cukor made with Katharine Hepburn and / or Spencer Tracy as stars. It aims to give more precise form to his suggestion that a director's role entails understanding what actors can do and facilitating their performances. This examination of the studio director-as-collaborator engages with recent scholarship that has reopened the question of film authorship, moving beyond approaches indebted to either a reconstructed Romanticism or poststructuralism, and tackling directly the thorny issues of intentionality and multiple authorial contributions. At the same time, in its close study of performance this chapter contributes to the growing body of work that explores the manner in which screen acting functions and intersects with those facets of film style that facilitate its operations.

As World War II broke out, many individuals involved in the movie industry began aiding in the war effort; even Clark Gable joined the Air Force. Fleming and MGM attempted to do their part with the wartime film A Guy Named Joe, starring Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, and Van Johnson. The story revolves around a pilot who dies and returns as a ghost to help guide a novice pilot and to convince his lover to move on. This chapter discusses the problems and triumphs of filming a movie during the war, including a change to the film’s ending that was demanded by the government. The movie received mixed reviews, which Fleming claimed was due to the government’s interference with the plot.

Tone and genre significantly affect gender presentation within the course of a highly productive decade in Cukor’s career. The Women (1939), Susan and God (1940), and Edward, My Son (1949) are all films based on plays originally written as satire or parody. They become more complicated productions when adapted for film by “actor’s director” Cukor. By emphasizing earnest and dramatic portrayals of heavily gender-normative portrayals, the director shifts both the tone and the impact of the satirical films. In The Women, the serious, sympathetic central character detracts from the social critique of wealthy, catty wives. Susan and God shifts from romantic comedy to melodrama and holds the wife character to account for the confines of conventional marriage, excising potential social critique. Finally, Edward, My Son, one of Cukor’s major and more interesting failures, yields its satirical bite to the questionable casting and directing of its hypermasculine lead.

Fleming found a balance in home life; he bought a house in Bel-Air that he shared with his wife and now two daughters. He found his next big hit with Test Pilot, a story of romantic love and friendship, starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy, respectively. The film was the only time these three stars appeared together in a movie. It was also a commercial and critical success, earning several Oscar nominations.

After finishing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fleming returned to his attempt at directing The Yearling. Both for publicity and out of necessity, MGM auditioned child actors across the country for the role of the protagonist, Jody, though Fleming would eventually come to regret their casting selecting. There were multiple delays in filming on the set in Central Florida due to poor weather and arguments among the cast. In May of 1941, Fleming shut the production down and resigned as director; he was quickly replaced. Speculations as to why he quit include the theory his expectations were too high, especially after the successes of The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, and that the cast and crew’s various frustrations backstage spilled over into filming.