fixup! BUG: 2D ndarray of dtype 'object' is always copied upon constr…

…uction (pandas-dev#39263)

doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst

@@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ Datetimelike
 - Bug in comparisons between :class:`Timestamp` object and ``datetime64`` objects just outside the implementation bounds for nanosecond ``datetime64`` (:issue:`39221`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Timestamp.round`, :meth:`Timestamp.floor`, :meth:`Timestamp.ceil` for values near the implementation bounds of :class:`Timestamp` (:issue:`39244`)
 - Bug in :func:`date_range` incorrectly creating :class:`DatetimeIndex` containing ``NaT`` instead of raising ``OutOfBoundsDatetime`` in corner cases (:issue:`24124`)
-- Bug in :class:`DataFrame` constructor always copying 2D object arrays
+- Bug in :class:`DataFrame` constructor always copying 2D object arrays (:issue:`39272`)
 
 Timedelta
 ^^^^^^^^^

pandas/core/internals/construction.py

@@ -230,7 +230,8 @@ def init_ndarray(values, index, columns, dtype: Optional[DtypeObj], copy: bool):
     index, columns = _get_axes(
         values.shape[0], values.shape[1], index=index, columns=columns
     )
-    values = values.T
+
+    array = values.T
 
     # if we don't have a dtype specified, then try to convert objects
     # on the entire block; this is to convert if we have datetimelike's
@@ -248,12 +249,8 @@ def init_ndarray(values, index, columns, dtype: Optional[DtypeObj], copy: bool):
                 return create_block_manager_from_arrays(
                     maybe_datetime, columns, [columns, index]
                 )
-            else:
-                array = values
         else:
             array = maybe_infer_to_datetimelike(values)
-    else:
-        array = values
 
     return create_block_manager_from_array(array, [columns, index])