Keeper of the Flame is a 1943 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) drama film directed by George Cukor, and starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart is adapted from the novel Keeper of the Flame by I. A. R. Wylie. Hepburn plays the widow of a famous civic leader who has suddenly died in an accident, while Tracy portrays a former war correspondent who intends to write a flattering biography of the dead man, only to find that his death is shrouded in mystery. Screenwriter Stewart considered the script to be the finest moment of his entire career, feeling vindicated by the assignment as he believed that Hollywood had punished him for years for his political views. Principal filming began in the last week of August 1942, four months after the release of the nov