quality:corruption, information:extraction, stylistic:style_transfer, structural:reformatting
Stage and screen

In 1945, Tracy returned to the stage for the first time in 15 years. He had been through a dark patch personally—culminating with a hospital stay—and Hepburn felt that a play would help restore his focus. Tracy told a journalist in April, "I'm coming back to Broadway to see if I can still act." The play was The Rugged Path by Robert E. Sherwood. It first previewed in Providence on September 28, to a sold-out crowd and tepid response. It was a difficult production; director Garson Kanin later wrote: "In the ten days prior to the New York opening all the important relationships had deteriorated. Spencer was tense and unbending, could not, or would not, take direction". Tracy considered leaving the show before it even opened on Broadway, and lasted there just six weeks before announcing his intention to close the show. It closed on January 19, 1946, after 81 performances. Tracy later explained to a friend: "I couldn't say those goddamn lines over and over and over again every night... At least every day is a new day for me in films... But this thing—every day, every day, over and over again."

Tracy was absent from screens in 1946, the first year since his motion picture debut that there was no Spencer Tracy release. His next film was The Sea of Grass (1947), a melodrama set in the American Old West with Hepburn. Similar to Keeper of the Flame and Without Love, a lukewarm response from critics did not stop it from being a financial success both at home and abroad. He followed it later that year with Cass Timberlane, in which he played a judge. It was a commercial success, but Curtis notes that co-star Lana Turner overshadowed Tracy in most of the reviews.

A fifth film with Hepburn, Frank Capra 's political drama State of the Union, was released in 1948. Tracy played a presidential candidate in the movie, which was warmly received. He then appeared in Edward, My Son (1949) with Deborah Kerr. Tracy disliked the role, and told director George Cukor, "It's rather disconcerting to me to find how easily I play a heel." Upon its release, The New Yorker wrote of the "hopeless miscasting of Mr. Tracy". The film became Tracy's biggest money-loser at MGM.

Tracy finished off the 1940s with Malaya (1949), an adventure film with James Stewart, and Adam's Rib (also 1949), a comedy with Tracy and Hepburn playing married lawyers who oppose each other in court. Tracy and Hepburn's friends, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, wrote the parts specifically for the two leads. The film received strong reviews and became the highest-grossing Tracy-Hepburn picture to date. Film critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "Mr. Tracy and Miss Hepburn are the stellar performers in this show and their perfect compatibility in comic capers is delightful to see."