Rootlesscosmo: Woman of the Year. That is a totally strange and frequently unwatchable movie, mostly because of the odd intrusions of domesticity–not just the ending that you cite, but also the odd 10-minute adoption of the 8-year old Greek war refugee. Pat and Mike is boring. Desk Set too. For Hepburn-Tracy action, I strongly prefer Adam’s Rib. (But truth be told, I actually prefer the movies she did with Cary Grant to anything she did with Tracy. Tracy was perhaps the first mismatch between leading man and leading woman of the sort that I’ve been complaining about in the modern movies! He was a good actor, not really a leading man type.

I saw only a few of the TV episodes. In the movie, though, Sally Kellerman’s “Hotlips” was a target, nothing else; when she finally objected she was made to look ridiculous doing it and her protest was brushed aside by the Commanding Officer. Ring Lardner Jr. got screenplay credit but disavowed the final version; on the other hand he was responsible for the repellent script of the Tracy-Hepburn “Woman of the Year” in which domestic tranquillity is restored by the woman’s failure to make waffles successfully.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/24/noted_trauma_surgeon_drowns/?page=1

I like your analysis of M.A.S.H. the movie as a distillation of white male New Left politics: anti-war (natch), patronizing attitudes towards non-whites (check) and misogyny (check). M.A.S.H. the TV show toned down some of the sexism–I think it was actors Loretta Switt and Alan Alda who managed not only to subvert the sexism, but to insert some feminist messages into the show. As I recall, Margaret “Hotlips” Houlihan was a strong character who had several story lines in which she confronted the bitter fact that her career was limited in ways that men’s careers weren’t. Of course, they had to call her “Hotlips,” and force her into the humiliating positing of being the mistress of…*retch*…”Frank Burns,” played by the most unattractive actor on the set (Larry Linehan?), including Jamie Farr and the guy who played Radar O’Reilly!

The Robert Altman film of “M*A*S*H*” was a mixture of really offensive sexism, terrible patronizing toward Asians, and refreshing (at the time, and in the context of the Vietnam war) anti-authoritarian, anti-militarist irreverence. (A perfect Supposed Liberal Dood movie, in fact.) I can’t watch it any more, but forty years ago I broke up at the OR exchange: “Is this guy we’re operating on an officer or an enlisted man?” “An enlisted man.” “Make the stitches big.”