 Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an iconic
four-time Academy Award-winning American star of film, television and stage,
widely recognized for her sharp wit, New England gentility and fierce
independence.
A screen legend, Hepburn holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar
nominations, with 12, and wins, with 4 (Meryl Streep currently holds the record
for most overall acting nominations, but that includes both Best Actress and
Best Supporting Actress nominations). Hepburn won an Emmy Award in 1975 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 number one female star
in their Greatest American Screen Legends list (AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars).
Hepburn had a famous and longtime romance with Spencer Tracy, both on- and
off-screen.
Hepburn's Early Years
Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Dr Thomas Norval Hepburn, a
successful urologist from Virginia, and Katharine Martha Houghton, a suffragette
and birth control advocate, who, along with Margaret Sanger, helped to found the
organization that became Planned Parenthood. Hepburn's father was a staunch
proponent of publicizing the dangers of venereal disease in a time when such
things were not discussed, and her mother campaigned for birth control and equal
rights for women. The Hepburns demanded frequent familial discussions on these
topics and more, and as a result the Hepburn children were well versed in social
and political issues. The Hepburn children were never asked to leave a room no
matter what the topic of conversation was. Once a very young Katharine Hepburn
even accompanied her mother to a suffrage rally. The Hepburn children, at their
parents' encouragement, were unafraid of expressing frank views on various
topics, including sex. We were snubbed by everyone, but we grew quite to enjoy
that, Hepburn later said of her unabashedly liberal family, who she credited
with giving her a sense of adventure and independence.
Her father insisted that his children be athletic, and encouraged swimming,
riding, golf and tennis. Hepburn, eager to please her father, emerged as a fine
athlete in her late teens, winning a bronze medal for figure skating from the
Madison Square Garden skating club, shooting golf in the low eighties, and
reaching 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 bay front 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, which is now held up as an exemplar of screwball comedy.
When Hepburn was young, she found her older brother Tom, whom she idolized,
hanging from the rafters by a rope, dead of an apparent suicide. Her family
denied that it was self-inflicted, arguing that he had been a happy boy; rather,
they insisted that it must have been an experimentation gone awry. It has also
been speculated that the boy was trying to carry out a trick that his father had
taught him. Hepburn was devastated by his death and sank into a depression. She
shied away from children her own age and was mostly schooled at home. For many
years she used Tom's birthday (November 8) as her own. It was not until she
wrote her autobiography, Me: Stories of my Life, that Hepburn revealed her true
birth date.
She was educated at Bryn Mawr College, receiving a degree in history and
philosophy in 1928, the same year she had her debut on Broadway after landing a
bit part in Night Hostess.
A banner year for Hepburn, 1928 also marked her nuptials to socialite
businessman Ludlow (Luddy) Ogden Smith, whom she had 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
would not be confused with well-known musician Kate Smith. They were divorced in
Mexico in 1934. Fearing that the Mexican divorce was not legal, Ludlow got a
second divorce in the United States in 1942 and a few days later he remarried.
Although their marriage was a failure, Katharine Hepburn often expressed her
gratitude toward Ludlow for his financial and moral support in the early days of
her career.
On September 21, 1938, Hepburn was staying in her Fenwick, Connecticut home when
the 1938 New England Hurricane struck and destroyed her house. Hepburn narrowly
escaped before the home was washed away.
Hepburn's Acting Career Begins
Theatre
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 had 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 that she was almost incomprehensible.
She was fired from the play, 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 could not 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 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 leaping down a flight of steps while
carrying a large stag on her shoulders - an RKO scout (Leland Hayward, whom she
would 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, launching her film
career aside legendary actor John Barrymore and director George Cukor, who would
become a lifetime friend and colleague. In one of Barrymore's many attempts to
bed her, he pinched Kate's behind on the set. 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
RKO was delighted by audience reaction to A Bill of Divorcement and signed
Hepburn to a new contract after it wrapped. But her nonconformist,
anti-Hollywood behavior off-screen, which would make her one of the silver
screen's most beloved stars and a feminist icon, at the time made studio
executives fret that she would never become a superstar. Though she was
headstrong, her work ethic and talent were undeniable, and the following year
(1933), Hepburn won her first Oscar for best actress in Morning Glory. That same
year, Hepburn played Jo in the screen adaptation of Little Women, which broke
box-office records.
Intoxicated with her success - an Oscar followed by a smash hit at the box
office - Hepburn felt it was time to make her 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 movie Spitfire in 1933. 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.
Generally considered a flop, Hepburn's acting in The Lake resulted in 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 foray into
comedy with the films Bringing Up Baby and Stage Door was well-received
critically. But audience response to the two films was tepid, and the good
reviews from 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). With these box office flops,
Hepburn's movie career began to decline.
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 did not help her exposure to the public. When she
did speak with the press, occasionally she fed them lies to amuse herself. 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 had any children; Hepburn's answer: Two white and three colored.
Hepburn's aversion to media attention did not thaw until 1973, when she appeared
on The Dick Cavett Show for an extended two-day interview.
She could also be prickly with fans - though she relented as she aged, in her
early career Hepburn often denied requests for autographs, feeling it an
invasion of her privacy. On movie sets, she was saddled with the label difficult
to work with, an attitude that earned her the nickname Katharine of Arrogance
(an allusion to Catherine of Aragon) among directors and crew. Soon audiences
began staying away from her movies.
Hepburn was already reeling from a devastating series of earlier 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 wanted the role of Scarlett O'Hara, but David O. Selznick insisted
that she did not have the lustful, sexual appeal that the part needed. The night
before the deadline, Selznick finally cast Vivien Leigh.
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 Howard
Hughes, who at one time had been her lover, she purchased the rights to the play
and turned it into a hit movie. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for
her work in the movie, in which she appeared with Cary Grant and James Stewart.
She enhanced James Stewart's performance; in turn he received his only Oscar.
Her career was revived almost overnight.
Hepburn and Spencer Tracy
In 1942, Hepburn made her first appearance opposite Spencer Tracy in Woman of
the Year 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.
They are one of Hollywood's most recognizable pairs both on-screen and off, and
have in large part become the standard by which other film romances are judged.
Hepburn, with her agile mind and New England brogue, complemented Tracy's easy
working-class machismo. Most of their films together stress the sparks that can
fly when a couple try to find an equable balance of power. 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. The
sexy sparring over power and control almost always resolves, in their movies
together, into an agreement to share and share alike.
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.
The pair carefully hid their affair from the public, using back entrances to
studios and hotels and assiduously avoiding the press. Hepburn and Tracy were
undeniably a couple for decades, but did not live together regularly until the
last few years of Tracy's life. Even then, they maintained separate homes to
keep up appearances. Tracy, a Roman Catholic, had been married to the former
Louise Treadwell since 1923, and remained so until his death.
Hepburn appeared in a total of nine movies with Tracy, including Adam's Rib
(1949) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), for which Hepburn won her second
Best Actress Oscar.
Before Tracy, Hepburn had relationships with several Hollywood directors and
personalities, including her agent Leland Hayward. Hepburn also had a famous
affair with billionaire aviator Howard Hughes. Tracy, however, seemed to be her
one true love. Hepburn took five years off from her film career after Long Day's
Journey Into Night (1962) to care for Tracy while he was in failing health. She
was so heartbroken after he died that she never watched Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner after it was released in 1967, saying it evoked memories of Tracy that
were too painful.
Hepburn figures in Martin Scorsese's 2004 biopic of Hughes, The Aviator.
However, the movie is a highly fictionalized portrayal of Hepburn and Hughes'
courtship, and many portions of the movie involving their relationship are
inaccurate. Hepburn did not, as noted in the film, leave Hughes for Tracy;
Hepburn and Hughes had split up years before, in 1938. Hepburn was portrayed by
Cate Blanchett, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.
The African Queen
Hepburn is perhaps best remembered for her role in The African Queen (1951), for
which she received her fifth Best Actress nomination, although she did not win
(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.
Filmed mostly on location in Africa, 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 boozing 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.
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 what some said was
essentially a pedestrian role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. She always said
she believed the award was meant to honor Spencer Tracy, who died shortly after
filming of the movie 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.
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's 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 costarred
Laurence Olivier and was directed by George Cukor. Hepburn also appeared
opposite 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).
Hepburn's Legacy
On June 29, 2003, Hepburn died of natural causes at Fenwick, the Hepburn family
home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96 years old. In honor of her
extensive theater work, the bright lights of Broadway were dimmed for an hour.
Her autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life, was published in 1991. The book Kate
Remembered, by A. Scott Berg, was published just 13 days after her death. It
documents the friendship between the actress and Berg. The book bills itself as
an authorized biography, but that has been called into question by The New York
Times.
Berg has been criticized for inserting himself into the book too much, including
by a columnist for the Hartford Courant. New York Post columnist Liz Smith
called the book a self-promoting fakery, and suggested that Hepburn would have
despised it and his betrayal of her friendship.
Hepburn's professional legacy is today carried on within her family. Hepburn's
niece is actress Katharine Houghton, who appeared with her 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.
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 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.
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
the Katharine Hepburn Medals for lives, work and contributions that embody the
intelligence, drive and independence of the four-time-Oscar-winning actress.
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