The first in the Tracy-Hepburn series of domestic/ marital comedies, Woman of the Year was a project devised for Katharine Hepburn by screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr., co-authored by Garson Kanin's brother Michael, and sold to MGM by Hepburn as a project for her and Spencer Tracy, much to the astonishment of many Hollywood insiders, who considered Tracy & Hepburn a very unlikely screen couple. Hepburn then insisted that no MGM directors were good enough for this screenplay: she forced L. B. Mayer to borrow George Stevens - who had directed her in Alice Adams at RKO - from Columbia. Under Stevens' guidance, Woman of the Year emerged as a witty and fast-moving comedy, containing what many critics considered Hepburn's finest performance to date. The story pairs Hepburn as a distinguishd political columnist with a range of foreign languages and international connections, with Tracy as a more down-to-earth sports writer.