"Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy team up in this talkative comedy about two scientists who discover love through co-habitation. Wartime housing shortages are in effect, so for purely pragmatic reasons Pat Jamieson and Jamie Rowan decide to get married. Romance is never supposed to enter the picture -- she's mourning her dead husband and he's pining for a long lost love -- but things don't work out quite the way they planned." [Amazon.com]

RUNNING TIME
    111m's

MONTH OF RELEASE
    May 1945

STUDIO
    MGM

COLOR/B&W
    B&W

DIRECTOR
    Harold S. Bucquet

WRITERS
    Donald Ogden Stewart
    Philip Barry (play)

CINEMATOGRAPHER
    Karl Freund

FILM EDITING
    Frank Sullivan

ART DIRECTORS
    Cedric Gibbons
    Harry McAfee

PRODUCER
    Lawrence Weingarten

Without Love was MGM's third romantic-comedy pairing of Hepburn and Tracy.  After this film, Lucy would work with Keenan Wynn on Easy to Wed.  Her being relegated to a supporting role in this film was partially du to an Audience Research Survey which indicated her popularity had dipped a few points.

Just before this film began shooting, Lucy had been in the running for a promising part in a new William Powell film, The Hoodlum Saint, but Angela Lansbury got the part.  The film was a flop, yet Lucy would get back at Lansbury in the early '70s when she beat out the Murder, She Wrote star for the lead in Mame.

The film was originally a moderately successful play, written by Philip Barry (The Philadelphia Story), which Hepburn starred in on Broadway in 1942.

When Without Love was released in May 1945, the script was panned, but Lucy and Keenan Wynn received surprisingly good reviews as the second leads.  It was the only critical flop Hepburn and Tracy ever had.

Without Love is available on videotape.  You can buy the video online from Ted's Lucille Ball Bookstore (in association with Amazon.com).  Click here to order.

".  Tracy and Hepburn have never been livelier, but script...lets them down....  Wynn and Ball are excellent second leads." [Leonard Maltin]

"One of the dreariest films in the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy series; it has a metallic flavor.  ...  Keenan Wynn and Lucille Ball, who play a second pair of lovers, are much more likable then the stars." [Pauline Kael]

"It is good to see Lucille Ball doing so well with a kind of role new to her." [James Agee]

"Lucille Ball handles her lowly wise-cracks so well as to set up a new career for herself." [Time]

"Every time Lucille Ball strolls in to drench the place with acid wit, it's a pleasure." [New York World-Telegram]

"Lucille's best work on the screen." [Harrison Carroll, Los Angeles Herald-Express]