Thank you, Vixmom. I always felt that way about the original Woman of the Year. I enjoy it, but it is sexist.
The musical faced a similar problem when Lauren Bacall and Harry Guardino played the parts, around 1981 or so.
On opening night in Boston and I guess a while after that, the end of the first act was that Tess Harding and Sam Craig had adopted a young child and Tess was not living up to the responsibility she'd taken on for the child, and Sam Craig was quite understandably upset. Which was a strong conflict but was not right for the breezy feel of the pretty funny jokes and the songs. Except for us loving Bacall, Tess at intermission seemed like an awful person, and we understood Sam's being upset with her, with that young boy she'd adopted not being taken care of.
By the next time I saw the show in Boston, the adopted kid was gone, and the conflict to end Act 1 was - well, I didn't really know what it was, but figured Peter Stone and Kander & Ebb would fix it by New York. But it ultimately seemed to feel like Tess not being around enough for Sam, which -like "Something Greater" in APPLAUSE 10 years or so earlier ("being to your man what woman should be, that's something greater") - felt kind of wrong in the 1980's.
But in Boston, that not taking responsibility for that adopted kid felt very powerful for the plot as an act break, just didn't fit the breezy tone of the writing.
