Tracy plays assistant district attorney Adam Bonner. Hepburn is his wife, defense attorney Amanda Bonner. Adam gets assigned the sensational case of Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday), a wife accused of attempting to murder her husband after finding him in the arms of another woman. Sympathetic Amanda decides to defend the woman, setting up a battle in court between two pairs of husbands and wives.

For the audience, Doris’ guilt is not in doubt. Before we met the Bonners, we follow her as she spies on her husband, then, after shakily reading an instruction manual, breaks up her husband’s tryst and fires erratically at the pair, hitting him in the arm. Amanda’s case does not dispute Doris’ actions, only her intentions. She passionately argues for a woman’s equality in the eyes of the law; if a man had burst in on his cheating wife and injured her, he would be seen as justified and would not be charged of a crime (Remember that this film took place in 1949, before the womens liberation movement). Doris was, according to Amanda, merely protecting her family from the advances of a home wrecker. Adam merely argues for justice under the letter of the law; one person shot another and that is illegal.

The balance between Tracy and Hepburn comes from the way the script, by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, puts the emphasis on the pair’s compatibility, rather than their differences. Adam and Amanda are a loving couple, and though he is a political conservative, he is supportive of his working wife. He helps cook dinner, and even cries from time to time. A less intelligent movie would make Adam a male chauvinist and turn the courtroom scenes into a barrage of insults. Here he is simply a man who believes in the law, and in an impassioned speech in a closet of his home, argues for its sanctity. “Good or bad, the law is the law!” he pleads. “If the law is bad, then let’s change it!” Certainly, women deserve equal rights, but should they have the equal right to get away with attempted murder? Amanda believes in a just cause, but may be fighting for it at the wrong time and place. Obviously, the name “Adam” refers to the title and all it suggests, but notice the very deliberate name selection for Hepburn’s character: “a-man-da.”

Every review of a Tracy/Hepburn film must mention their offscreen romance, and now this one is no exception. Tracy was married to another woman but, as a practicing Catholic, refused to divorce, and instead lived a life separate from his wife with Katherine. The two were familiar costars and longtime lovers by the time ADAM’S RIB was made, and perhaps because they were playing roles they could never assume in real life - husband and wife - they appear a truly happy couple, at least until the case begins to tear them apart. Their styles; his subdued, hers boisterous, fit their parts perfectly and Hepburn looks sexier here than in films from a decade before.