Katharine Hepburn Totally Explained

Everything about Katharine Hepburn totally explained

Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an iconic American actress of film, television and stage.
A screen legend, Hepburn holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins with four, from 12 nominations (Meryl Streep currently holds the record for most overall acting nominations with 14). Hepburn won an Emmy Award in 1976 for her lead role in Love Among the Ruins, and was nominated for four other Emmys and two Tony Awards during the course of her more than 70-year acting career. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Hepburn as the greatest female star in the history of American cinema. Hepburn wrote an autobiography titled Me.

Biography

Early years

Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of Katharine Houghton Hepburn (née Houghton) and Dr. Thomas Horval Hepburn, who was a successful urologist from Virginia with Maryland roots. She is of English ancestry from both sides of her family.
   Hepburn's father insisted the girls do swimming, riding, golf and tennis. Hepburn, eager to please her father, won a bronze medal for figure skating from the Madison Square Garden skating club, shot golf in the low eighties and reached the semifinal of the Connecticut Young Women's Golf Championship. Hepburn especially enjoyed swimming, and regularly took dips in the frigid waters that fronted her bayfront Connecticut home, generally believing that "the bitterer the medicine, the better it was for you." She continued her brisk swims well into her 80s. Hepburn would come to be recognized for her athletic physicality—she fearlessly performed her own pratfalls in films such as Bringing Up Baby (1938), which is now held up as an exemplar of screwball comedy.
   On April 3, 1921, while visiting friends in Greenwich Village, Hepburn found her older brother Tom (born November 8, 1905), whom she idolized, hanging from the rafters of the attic by a rope, dead of an apparent suicide. Her family denied it was self-inflicted, arguing he'd been a happy boy. They insisted it must have been an experimentation gone awry. It has been speculated he was trying to carry out a trick he saw in a play with Katharine. Hepburn was devastated and sank into a depression. She shied away from other children and was mostly home-schooled. For many years she used Tom's birthday (November 8) as her own. It wasn't until she wrote her autobiography,, that Hepburn revealed her true birth date.
   Hepburn was educated at the Kingswood-Oxford School before going on to attend Bryn Mawr College. While at Bryn Mawr, Hepburn was suspended for breaking curfew and smoking, which at that time was particularly not encouraged for women. Decades later, Hepburn also confirmed that after dark, she'd go swimming naked in the college's "Cloisters" fountain (see Bryn Mawr College). She received a degree in history and philosophy in 1928, the same year she'd her debut on Broadway after landing a bit part in Night Hostess.
   A banner year for Hepburn, 1928 also marked her marriage to socialite businessman Ludlow ("Luddy") Ogden Smith, whom she met while attending Bryn Mawr and married after a short engagement. Hepburn and Smith's marriage was rocky from the start—she insisted he change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow so she wouldn't be confused with well-known rotund singer Kate Smith. They were divorced in Mexico in 1934. Fearing that the Mexican divorce wasn't legal, Ludlow got a second divorce in the United States in 1942 and a few days later he remarried. Katharine Hepburn often expressed her gratitude toward Ludlow for his financial and moral support in the early days of her career. "Luddy" continued to be a lifelong friend to her and the Hepburn family.
   On September 21, 1938, Hepburn was staying in her Old Saybrook, Connecticut home when the 1938 New England Hurricane struck and destroyed her house. Hepburn narrowly escaped before the home was washed away.

Career

Stage

Hepburn cut her acting teeth in plays at Bryn Mawr and later in revues staged by stock companies. During her last years at Bryn Mawr, Hepburn met a young producer with a stock company in Baltimore, Maryland, who cast her in several small roles, including a production of The Czarina and The Cradle Snatchers.
   Hepburn's first leading role was in a production of The Big Pond, which opened in Great Neck, New York. The producer had fired the play's original leading lady at the last minute, and asked Hepburn to assume the role. Terror stricken at the unexpected change, Hepburn arrived late and, once on stage, flubbed her lines, tripped over her feet and spoke so rapidly she was almost incomprehensible. She was fired, but continued to work in small stock company roles and as an understudy.
   Later, Hepburn was cast in a speaking part in the Broadway play Art and Mrs. Bottle. Hepburn was fired from this role as well, though she was eventually rehired when the director couldn't find anyone to replace her. After another summer of stock companies, in 1932, Hepburn landed the role of Antiope the Amazon princess in The Warrior's Husband (an update of Lysistrata), which required her to wear a very short costume and debuted to excellent reviews. Hepburn became the talk of New York City, and began getting noticed by Hollywood.
   In the play, Hepburn entered the stage by jumping over a flight of steps while carrying a large stag on her shoulders—an RKO scout (Leland Hayward, whom she'd later romance) was so impressed by this display of physicality that he asked her to do a screen test for the studio's next vehicle, A Bill of Divorcement, which starred John Barrymore and Billie Burke.
   In true Hepburn fashion, she demanded an outlandish $1,500 per week for film work (at the time she was earning between $80 and $100 per week). After seeing her screen test, RKO agreed to her demands and cast her. At 5 feet, 7 inches (1.71 m), Hepburn was one of the tallest leading ladies of her time. Her film career was launched alongside legendary actor John Barrymore and director George Cukor, who would become a lifetime friend and colleague. Barrymore pinched Kate's behind on the set in one of his many attempts to seduce her. She said, "If you do that again I'm going to stop acting." Barrymore replied, "I wasn't aware that you'd started, my dear."

Film

After the audience reaction to A Bill of Divorcement, RKO signed Hepburn to a new contract. But her nonconformist, anti-Hollywood behavior offscreen made studio executives fret she'd never become a superstar. The following year (1933), Hepburn won her first Oscar for best actress in Morning Glory, playing a young actress who rejects romance in favor of her career. That same year, Hepburn played Jo in the screen adaptation of Little Women, which broke box-office records.
   Intoxicated by her success, Hepburn felt it was time to return to the theater. She chose The Lake, but was unable to obtain a release from RKO and instead went back to Hollywood to film the forgettable Spitfire. Having satisfied RKO, Hepburn went immediately back to Manhattan to begin the play, in which she played an English girl unhappy with her overbearing mother and wimpy father. The play was generally considered a flop, and Hepburn's performance elicited Dorothy Parker's famous quip that the actress "ran the gamut of emotions from A to B."
   In 1935, in the title role of the film Alice Adams, Hepburn earned her second Oscar nomination. By 1938, Hepburn was a bona fide star, and her forays into comedy with the films Bringing Up Baby and Stage Door were well-received critically. But audience response to the two films was tepid, and the good reviews from the critics were not enough to rescue her from an earlier string of flops (The Little Minister, Spitfire, Break of Hearts, Sylvia Scarlett, A Woman Rebels, Mary of Scotland, Quality Street). As a result, Hepburn's movie career began to decline.
   Katharine Hepburn would often come to interviews dressed in men's suits, saying that it was comfortable, and not meaning to, made a fashion statement, and women who admired her started wearing trousers, which wasn't encouraged at the time.

"Box office poison"

Some of what has made Hepburn greatly beloved today—her unconventional, straightforward, anti-Hollywood attitude—at the time began to turn audiences sour. Outspoken and intellectual with an acerbic tongue, she defied the era's "blonde bombshell" stereotypes, preferring to wear pantsuits and disdaining makeup. She also had a famously difficult relationship with the press, turning down most interviews, which didn't help her exposure to the public. On her first outing with the Hollywood press corps after the success of A Bill of Divorcement, Hepburn talked with reporters who had invaded her and her husband's cabin aboard the ship City of Paris. A reporter asked if they were really married; Hepburn responded, "I don't remember". Following up, another reporter asked if they'd any children; Hepburn's answer: "Two white and three colored." Hepburn's aversion to media attention didn't thaw until 1973, when she appeared on The Dick Cavett Show for an extended two-day interview.
   Hepburn could also be prickly with fans; though she relented as she aged, early in her career Hepburn often denied requests for autographs. However, on movie sets, she was eager to learn the ways of the stage and camera crews and befriended many of them. Even so, her refusal to sign autographs and answer personal questions earned her the nickname "Katharine of Arrogance" (an allusion to Catherine of Aragon). Soon, audiences began to stay away from her movies.
   Hepburn was already reeling from a devastating series of flops when, in 1938, she -- along with Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and others -- was voted "box office poison" in a poll taken by motion picture exhibitors. In 1939, Hepburn was going to do producer David O. Selznick a favor and play the role of Scarlett O'Hara because he didn't yet have anyone else signed for the role. Hepburn insisted that she didn't have the lustful sexual appeal that the part demanded and told Selznick that his studio needed to find the woman who did. Hepburn rehearsed the lines thoroughly just in case. The night before the deadline, Selznick finally cast Vivien Leigh. Unbeknownst to Hepburn and the rest of Hollywood, Leigh was favored for the role early on, but as a British actress, she was deemed unsuitable for the part. In addition, her affair with Laurence Olivier, while he was in the middle of a divorce, made her a controversial choice. The vast "search for Scarlett" was orchestrated to make it seem as if no other actress could be found, thus limiting the shock of Vivien Leigh landing the role. Hepburn was later the maid of honor at Leigh and Olivier's wedding in 1940. Hepburn remained a close friend of Vivien Leigh until Leigh's death in 1967.
   Yearning for a comeback on the stage, Hepburn returned to her roots on Broadway, appearing in The Philadelphia Story, a play written especially for her by Philip Barry, a year after Hepburn had starred in the film version of his play Holiday. She played spoiled socialite Tracy Lord to rave reviews. With the help of ex-lover Howard Hughes, she purchased the film rights to the play and sold them to MGM, which adapted the play into one of the biggest hits of 1940. As part of her deal with MGM, Hepburn got to choose the director—George Cukor—and her costars—Cary Grant and James Stewart. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her work. Her career was revived almost overnight.

Hepburn and Spencer Tracy

Hepburn made her first appearance opposite Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year (1942), directed by George Stevens. Behind the scenes the pair fell in love, beginning what would become one of the silver screen's most famous romances, despite Tracy's marriage to another woman.
   Hepburn and Tracy became one of Hollywood's most recognizable pairs both on-screen and off. Hepburn, with her agile mind and distinctive New England accent, complemented Tracy's easy working-class machismo. When Joseph Mankiewicz introduced the two, Hepburn, who was wearing special heels that added several inches to her lanky frame, said, "I'm afraid I'm too tall for you, Mr. Tracy." Mankiewicz retorted, "Don't worry, he'll soon cut you down to size." As the Daily Telegraph observed in Hepburn's obituary, "Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were at their most seductive when their verbal fencing was sharpest: it was hard to say whether they delighted more in the battle or in each other."
   Most of the films with Hepburn and Tracy together stress the sparks that can fly when a couple try to find an equable balance of power. The sexy sparring over power and control is almost always resolved in an agreement to share and share alike. They appeared in a total of nine movies together, including Keeper of the Flame (1942), Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), for which Hepburn won her second Academy Award for Best Actress.
   Hepburn and Tracy carefully hid their affair from the public, using back entrances to studios and hotels and assiduously avoiding the press. They were undeniably a couple for decades, but didn't live together regularly until the last few years of Tracy's life. Even then, they maintained separate homes to keep up appearances. Their relationship was complex and there were often periods of estrangements. Tracy, a Roman Catholic, had been married to the former Louise Treadwell since 1923, and remained so until his death.
   Some biographers have speculated that Hepburn's devotion to Tracy was in part due to her family history of depression, including the suicide of her brother, which made her determined to "save" Tracy.
   Hepburn had had several prior liaisons, most notably with her agent Leland Hayward and Howard Hughes. Tracy, however, seems to have been her true love. Tracy had several affairs while estranged from Hepburn, notably while filming the Plymouth Adventure with his co-star Gene Tierney. Hepburn took five years off after Long Day's Journey Into Night to care for Tracy while he was in failing health. Out of consideration for Tracy's family, Hepburn didn't attend his funeral. She described herself as too heartbroken to ever watch Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, saying it evoked memories of Tracy that were too painful.

The African Queen

One of Hepburn's best performances came as she played Rose Sayer in The African Queen (1951), for which she received her fifth Best Actress nomination, losing to Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire. She played a prim spinster missionary in Africa, who convinces Humphrey Bogart's character, a hard-drinking riverboat captain, to use his boat to attack a German ship. The African Queen was filmed mostly on location in Africa, where almost all the cast and crew suffered from malaria and dysentery—except director John Huston and Bogart, neither of whom ever drank any water. Hepburn, ever the urologist's daughter, disapproved of the two men's drinking and piously drank gallons of water each day to spite them. She wound up so sick with dysentery that, even months after she returned home, the famously vigorous actress was still ill. The trip and the movie made such an impact on her that later in life she wrote a book about filming the movie: The Making of The African Queen: Or, How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind, which made her a best-selling author at the age of 77.
In an interview in Playboy, Huston spoke of how on their days off, he and Bogart would go hunting for big game, and how one day Hepburn asked to go along. He described her as a "Diana of the Hunt" - utterly fearless - and able to shoot with the best of them.

Later film career

Following The African Queen, Hepburn often played spinsters, most notably in her Oscar-nominated performances for Summertime (1955) and The Rainmaker (1956), although at 49 some considered her too old for the role. She also received nominations for her performances in films adapted from stage dramas, namely as Mrs. Venable in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and as Mary Tyrone in the 1962 version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Hepburn received her second Best Actress Oscar for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. She always said she believed the award was meant to honor Spencer Tracy, who died shortly after filming was completed. The following year, she won a record-breaking third Oscar for her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, an award shared that year with Barbra Streisand for her performance in Funny Girl. Peter O'Toole, her co-star in The Lion in Winter, has said in many interviews, including with host Charlie Rose, that Hepburn was his favorite actor to work with. He and Hepburn remained great friends until her death.
Hepburn continued to do filmed stage dramas, including The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), The Trojan Women (1971) by Euripides, and Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance (1973). In 1973, she first appeared in an original television production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. Two years later, Hepburn received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Special Program (Drama or Comedy) for Love Among the Ruins, which co-starred friend Sir Laurence Olivier and was directed by George Cukor. Hepburn also appeared with John Wayne in Rooster Cogburn, which was essentially The African Queen done as a western. Hepburn won her fourth Oscar for On Golden Pond (1981), opposite Henry Fonda. In 1994, Hepburn gave her final three movie performances—One Christmas, based on a short story by Truman Capote, as Ginny in the remake of Love Affair; and This Can't Be Love, directed by one of her close friends, Anthony Harvey (The Lion in Winter).

Personal life

On June 29, 2003, Hepburn died of natural causes at Fenwick, the Hepburn family home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96 years old, and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut. In honor of her extensive theater work, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for an hour.
The book Kate Remembered, by award winning biographer A. Scott Berg, was published just 13 days after Hepburn's death. It documents the friendship between the actress and Berg. He makes one passing reference to her possible bisexuality, referencing a comment made by Irene Selznick. Later writers treat this reputed bisexuality in more detail. Constance Collier was a drama coach for many famous actors, including Hepburn during her world tour performing Shakespeare in the 50s. Upon Collier's death in 1955, Hepburn "inherited" Collier's secretary Phyllis Wilbourn, who remained with Hepburn as her secretary for 40 years.
In 2004, in accordance with Hepburn's wishes, her personal effects were put up for auction with Sotheby's in New York. Hepburn had meticulously collected an extraordinary amount of material relating to her career and place in Hollywood over the years, as well as personal items such as a bust of Spencer Tracy she sculpted herself (used as a prop in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on the desk where Sidney Poitier makes his phone call) and her own oil paintings. The auction netted several million dollars, which Hepburn willed mostly to her family and close friends, including television journalist Cynthia McFadden.

Family

Hepburn's genealogy has been researched through the Whittier line back to King Louis IX of France. She is listed as one of the descendants of the Mayflower compact author William Brewster (her family tree

). Her paternal grandfather, Sewell Hepburn, was an Episcopal clergyman, but on the subject of religion, she told another member of the journalism community she loved so much to shock (this time a Ladies Home Journal reporter) in October 1991, "I'm an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people."
   In 1910, the Hepburn family lived at 133 Hawthorne St. in Hartford, Connecticut. Eight years later, they were recorded living at 352 Laurel St., also in Hartford. By 1930, Katharine's parents and four younger siblings had moved to a large eight bedroom house at 201 Bloomfield Avenue in West Hartford. As of 2006, the house is owned by the University of Hartford.
   Margaret "Peg" Perry, Hepburn's last surviving sister, died on February 13, 2006, aged 85. Perry was a librarian in Canton, Connecticut. She was survived by a daughter and three sons.
   Robert Hepburn, the last surviving sibling of Katharine Hepburn, died on November 26, 2007. Robert was a doctor who followed in the footsteps of their father, Dr. Thomas Hepburn. He was the head of the urology department at Hartford Hospital for more than 30 years. He is survived by two children and four grandchildren.
   Hepburn's professional legacy is today carried on within her family. Hepburn's niece is actress Katharine Houghton, who appeared as her daughter in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Hepburn's grandniece is actress Schuyler Grant; the two appeared together in the 1988 television movie Laura Lansing Slept Here.

Legacy

To honor Hepburn, a theater is being built in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Hepburn lived and died in the Fenwick section of Old Saybrook. In December of 2008, the state-of-the-art Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center and Theater will open. In October 2007, the town of Old Saybrook received a check for $200,000 from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, Historic Restoration Grant for the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center and Theatre, totaling one million dollars received in grants for this project. For information go to www.katharinehepburntheater.org
On September 8 and 9, 2006, Bryn Mawr College, Hepburn's alma mater, launched the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center

, dedicated to both the actress and her mother. At the launch celebration, Lauren Bacall and Blythe Danner were awarded Katharine Hepburn Medals for "lives, work and contributions that embody the intelligence, drive and independence of the four-time-Oscar-winning actress."
   Hepburn lent her name to some liberal social and political causes, particularly family planning. She was once a member of the Communist Party. In 1985, she received the Humanist Arts Award of the American Humanist Association, presented by her friend Corliss Lamont.
   Hepburn, who resided in a brownstone located at 244 East 49th Street in the borough of Manhattan of New York City, was honored posthumously by neighbors in her community. First, a garden near her home was dedicated in her name in 2004. The garden contains 12 stepping stones each inscribed with quotes. One reads "I remember when walking as a child, it wasn't customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition." In addition to the garden, the intersection of East 49th Street and 2nd Avenue has been renamed Katharine Hepburn Way by the city.
   To mark her 100th birthday in May 2007, the cable channel Turner Classic Movies dedicated a week of its evening broadcast hours to her films and documentaries on her life. Warner Brothers Home video also celebrated her 100th birthday by releasing a box set of movies not previously available on DVD -- Morning Glory (1933), Sylvia Scarlett (1936), Dragon Seed (1944), Without Love (1945), Undercurrent (1946), and the TV movie The Corn Is Green (1979).

Awards

Academy Award

Best Actress ;Wins

Nominations

1935: Alice Adams

1940: The Philadelphia Story

1942: Woman of the Year

1951: The African Queen

1955: Summertime

1956: The Rainmaker

1959: Suddenly, Last Summer

1962: Long Day's Journey into Night

Golden Globe Award

Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama ;Nominations

1957: The Rainmaker

1960: Suddenly, Last Summer

1963: Long Day's Journey into Night

1968: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

1969: The Lion in Winter

1982: On Golden Pond

Best Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television ;Nominations

1993: The Man Upstairs

Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy ;Nominations

Emmy Award

Best Actress in a Drama ;Nominations

1974: The Glass Menagerie

Best Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie ;Wins

1975: Love Among the Ruins

Best Actress in a Limited Series or Special ;Nominations

1979: The Corn is Green

1986: Ms. Dellafield Wants to Marry

BAFTA Award

Best Actress ;Wins

1969: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

1969: The Lion in Winter

1983: On Golden Pond

Best Foreign Actress ;Nominations

1952: Pat and Mike

1955: Summertime

1957: The Rainmaker

Tony Award

Best Actress in a Musical ;Nominations

1969: Coco

Best Actress in a Play ;Nominations

1981: The West Side Waltz

Work

Stage

Night Hostess (1928)

These Days (1928)

Art and Mrs. Bottle (1930)

The Warrior's Husband (1932)

The Lake (1934)

Jane Eyre (1936-1937)

The Philadelphia Story (1938)

Without Love (1942)

As You Like It (1950)

The Millionairess (1952)

The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and The Taming of the Shrew (1955)—On tour in Australia with the Old Vic

The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing (1957)—Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare Theatre

Antony and Cleopatra and Twelfth Night (1960)—Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare Theatre

Coco (1969) (Tony Award nomination for Leading Actress in a Musical)

A Matter of Gravity (1976)

The West Side Waltz (1981) (Tony Award nomination for Leading Actress in a Play)

Filmography

Television

The Glass Menagerie (1973)

Love Among the Ruins (1975)

The Corn is Green (1979)

Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986)

The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute by Katharine Hepburn (1986)

Laura Lansing Slept Here (1988)

The Man Upstairs (1992)

This Can't Be Love (1994)

One Christmas (1994)Further Information

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