Adam's Rib (1949)

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn are husband and wife, and Tracy is the public prosecutor in an attempted murder case; Hepburn is the defending lawyer. In 1949, professional women were still a rarity and much is made of the complications of a loving couple opposing one another in the courtroom.

As the alleged murder attempt was by a wife who caught her husband cheating, Hepburn asks the jury to consider the gender stereotypes of the time, and asks them to use their imagination about some of the protagonists as if they were the other gender. Two women are shown and they morph into men, and one man turns into a woman.

The morphing is very well done, considering the year of production of the film, and the actual transformation process lasts about a second or so, with hardly any displacement of the subject.

Here (pic) is the second woman.

But they are only briefly seen in their new gender before they change back. They don't move while transformed.

Here is the man ...

... and here he is changed.

HF February 2003

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