Pat and Mike (1952)
Pat and Mike (1952)
Directed by George Cukor and earning husband & wife writers Ruth Gordon & Garson Kanin their third and last Best Writing Oscar nomination (without a win) this comedy-romance features another successful teaming of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Mike (Tracy) the manager of a boxer (Aldo Ray) meets Pat (Hepburn) when he notices what a great golfer she is. He also learns that she’s quite an accomplished multi-sport athlete and begins to manage her sports career also. It takes him longer to decipher her handicap that she can’t perform under the watchful eye of her fiancee (William Ching).
Many memorable sports action sequences as well as scenes with Pat physically defending Mike and cutesy interaction between Mike’s two star athletes. Plus this film contains one of the few on-screen tennis matches in all of classic film! Real life athletes: gold medal Olympian Babe Didrikson Zaharias and tennis Grand Slam champion Don Budge appear as themselves. Charles Bronson Chuck Connors Jim Backus and Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer also appear.