By Sheila O’Malley
A. Scott Berg, longtime friend of Katharine Hepburn, and author of the wonderful and thoughtful biography Kate Remembered, once asked Hepburn, near the end of her life, why she thought she had flourished professionally for so long when most actors and actresses have only a good decade or two. He reports that this was one of the only questions he asked where Hepburn had to pause before replying. She thought a bit and then answered, “Horsepower.” It is not just talent that helps one succeed.
An acting teacher of mine once said, “Those who are successful are not the most talented. Those who are successful are the ones who are most fanatical about success.” Hepburn’s gifts as an actress are extraordinary. It is a sweeping career, with many facets and phases. But what really strikes me, when I try to look at it as a whole, is not her talent, not her artistry – but her “horsepower”. She had it from the start. She was always in this thing for the long-haul.
My “5 for the Day” focuses on that aspect of Hepburn. Rather than specific films or performances, I have chosen five anecdotes that show, to my taste, what it was that was so special, so positively great about this American icon.
1. In 1930, Harold Clurman, director, producer, dramaturg, big-wig at the Theatre Guild, then the most important theatre group in America, began to hold informal get-togethers for the New York theatre community. His interest was in creating new work, work that was relevant to the times (this became especially important after the stock market crash), as well as forming an ensemble along the lines of The Moscow Art Theatre. Clurman, a brilliant and verbose man, felt that commercial considerations were important, but that they also had the potential to kill really good work. Would it be possible to form a theatre group that could resist those pressures? The people he invited to join these informal get-togethers (which was really an excuse for him to expound on his theatrical theories -- he apparently he could go on for hours at a time) were not just unknowns, but stars of the day. Producers, actors, playwrights, people appearing on Broadway at that time, young hopefuls who had shown promise in small roles … Clurman wasn’t interested in a top-down organization, like the Guild – he wanted to create something entirely new. A collective. (And, eventually, he did. Along with Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre was born. It had a decade of success before folding. A few of the Group Theatre alums eventually went on to become some of the most influential teachers in American theatrical history: Stella Adler, Bobby Lewis, Sanford Meisner. And then, of course, there were folks like Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets who began with the Group.) Clurman’s ideas about theatre attracted many who were disappointed in the typical Broadway fare of the day. There was an economic depression on. Why wasn’t that fact being addressed by the playwrights of the day?
Katharine Hepburn, a young and unknown actress at the time, was invited to come to one of Clurman’s talks. She sat. She listened. Wendy Smith, in Real Life Drama, the encyclopedic book about the Group Theatre, describes the moment:"The ideas Clurman propounded were intoxicating, but not everyone was convinced. An oft-told story concerns a pretty young understudy who attended a few meetings with her friend Eunice Stoddard. Asked what she thought of the Group Idea, she replied, ‘This may be all right for you people, if you want it, but you see, I’m going to be a star.’ Then, as always, Katharine Hepburn knew what she wanted."
It is not that her goals were better than theirs. They were as successful, eventually, as it was possible for them to be. It is that “know thyself” is one of the most important qualities an actor can ever have.
2. While rehearsing for Bringing Up Baby, it became quickly apparent (to Hawks, to Grant, and to Hepburn herself) that she was in a bit over her head. She was by now a star, but she had never before played a screwball comedy and wasn’t sure how to do it. She suffered beautifully as an actress -- had the Oscar to prove it. But Susan Vance, the wacky insane heiress of Bringing Up Baby, was daunting to this seemingly undaunted actress. Cary Grant, whose sensibility was naturally comedic, had no problem submitting to the screwball nature of the thing. But Hepburn struggled. She was telegraphing to the audience, “I know that I’m in a comedy. Watch me be funny,” And it wasn’t working. In a sense, she was condescending to the material. Not out of any malice, but out of insecurity. She was used to drama with a capital D after all.
Grant was very close to Hepburn, so he was able to speak frankly to her. He said, “Listen, dear, every time I fall, I am just going to look more and more depressed.” Meaning: we don’t have to “act” how funny it is that I just fell on my ass. What is funny in the moment is how embarrassed I am, how devastated I am that once again I look so foolish. But Hepburn still wasn’t quite clicking in to the energy of the thing. Howard Hawks understood the problem and said later, “I tried to explain to her that the great clowns, Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, simply weren’t out there making funny faces, they were serious, sad, solemn, and the humor sprang from what happened to them … Cary understood this at once, Katie didn’t.” [excerpted from Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, by Todd McCarthy]
So Hawks enlisted the services of a friend, Walter Catlett – an old vaudevillian warhorse who had major comedic chops. Hawks showed some of the rushes to Catlett, and Catlett immediately grasped what the problem was in Hepburn’s performance. Hawks wanted Catlett to talk with her about it, but Catlett hesitated. He said he would “coach” Hepburn, but only if Hawks set it up with her beforehand. Hawks set up a rehearsal with Cary Grant, Hepburn, and Catlett.
And here is the genius of Hepburn. Here is, for me, the reason that her acting and her work ethic touches me so much: Catlett, during this rehearsal, read through some scenes with Cary Grant, with Catlett playing Hepburn’s part. He was basically showing her how to do it. So many other actresses would balk at such interference. Not Hepburn. Within 2 or 3 exchanges between Catlett and Grant, the light-bulb went on over Hepburn’s head. Hawks describes what happened:
“Walter played a whole scene of hers out with Cary Grant, played it with every mannerism of hers, very serious, and she was entranced. She said, ‘You have to create a part for him in the picture.’ And I did.”
Catlett played the buffoonish sheriff of the town who puts everybody in jail at the end, before being bamboozled by Susan to let them all out.
What I love about this anecdote was that Hepburn, a huge star, realized where she was lacking. She was still learning, and still open to learning. She could have been completely resentful of the “interference” of someone like Catlett, showing HER, the Oscar-winner how to play the scene. But no. She watched, agog, soaking it up, pores open, mind open … and look at the result. Bringing Up Baby was not a hit at the time, but history has obviously vindicated everyone involved. The film is a classic. Hepburn allowed herself to be in the position of student – and she allowed people who “knew better”, people like Hawks, and Grant, and Catlett – to show her the way. This is a true survival instinct at work.
3. Another example of Hepburn’s willingness to learn, to take direction, is this anecdote from the chaotic bug-ridden filming of The African Queen. Hepburn, in her book The Making of The African Queen, describes her initial frustration with John Huston on that shoot, how he never wanted to sit down and talk about the script with her. She loved to have script conferences, to talk about the story … but Huston was always putting her off, “Sure, honey, sure, we’ll get to it … tomorrow … we’ll talk about the script tomorrow …” Tomorrow then came and again it was, “Sure, honey, sure, we’ll talk about the script … tomorrow …”
Now at this point in her career, it may be assumed that she knew how to act. Of course she did. But what this anecdote shows is, again, her flexible mind, her willingness to give up her OWN idea about playing the part, and recognizing when someone has given her a gem, a “way in”.
After the first day of shooting, Huston came up to her. He obviously had a sense of HOW she was planning on playing this part, and he needed to gently steer her in another direction. Hepburn describes their conversation in her book. Watch how he handles her. And watch how she lets herself be led.
Excerpt from The Making of the African Queen, by Katharine Hepburn:
John came one morning to my hut.
“May I have a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, of course – what?”
“Well – I don’t want to influence you. But incidentally … that was great, that scene, burying Robert. And of course you had to look solemn – serious … Yes, of course – you were burying your brother. You were sad. But, you know, this is an odd tale – I mean, Rosie is almost always facing what is for her a serious situation. And she’s a pretty serious-minded lady. And I wondered – well – let me put it this way – have you by any chance seen any movies of – you know – newsreels – of Mrs. Roosevelt – those newsreels where she visited the soldiers in the hospitals?”
“Yes, John – yes – I saw one. Yes.”
“Do you remember, Katie dear, that lovely smile - ?”
“Yes, John – yes – I do.”
“Well, I was wondering. You know, thinking ahead of our story. And thinking of your skinny little face – a lovely little face, dear. But skinny. And those famous hollow cheeks. And that turned-down mouth. You know – when you look serious – you do look rather – well, serious. And it just occurred to me – now, take Rosie – you know – you are a very religious – serious-minded – frustrated woman. Your brother just dead. Well, now, Katie – you’re going to go through this whole adventure before the falls and before love raises its … Well, you know what I mean – solemn.
“Then I thought of how to remedy that. She’s used to handling strangers as her brother’s hostess. And you ‘put on’ a smile. Whatever the situation. Like Mrs. Roosevelt – she felt she was ugly – she thought she looked better smiling – so she … Chin up. The best is yet to come – onward ever onward … The society smile.”
A long pause.
“You mean – yes – I see. When I pour out the gin I – yes – yes – when I …”
“Well,” he said, getting up to go. He’d planted the seed. “Think it over .. Perhaps it might be a useful …”
He was gone.
I sat there.
That is the goddamndest best piece of direction I have ever heard.
4. The fact that at the top of her game, at the top of her film career, Hepburn decided to go back to the stage and “work on Shakespeare” is indicative to me that, with all her stardom, all her ambition, Hepburn was interested mainly in the work itself. Shakespeare scared her. Therefore, Shakespeare must be tackled! She toured with Shakespeare productions for years. She toured the world with As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew. She writes in her autobiography (with the unceremonious title Me):"Looking back on my notices, which I had not read at the time, I have the impression that I was irritating to the critics. They liked me in Philadelphia Story, but in Shakespeare – well – it was sort of ‘she has a nerve to be doing this.’ Well, I don’t know. I did study and work hard and Constance [Collier] was a great help and it was exciting. At least I enjoyed it."
Hepburn was a woman who made risk-taking part of the game. So many actors, when they become stars, begin to make choices based out of caution, and self-protection. Perhaps at the beginning they took risks, when they had less to lose, but once the peak is reached, some actors lose that fearlessness. They are afraid of being “found out”. Hepburn never gave a crap about all of that. Her entire career is a testament to that courage.
5. And I’ll end with yet another anecdote of Hepburn and a director. Sidney Lumet was at the helm of the film version of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. A young man, a phenom, he was not at all lacking in ego. But the prospect of directing Hepburn was a bit frightening to him. She was a legend. A grande dame. How would he handle her? Would she test him? Would she be difficult? At first she was. She struggled to dominate. She wanted to hold rehearsals at her house in Connecticut. She told him point-blank that she needed to know more about the script than he did. Lumet knew enough to back off at first. He writes about this experience in his book Making Movies.
These stories bring tears to my eyes. The bravery, the willingness to NOT KNOW, to still learn, to be okay with failing, to get up and try again.
Excerpt from Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies:
____________________________________________
"During the first three days of rehearsal I said nothing to her about Mary Tyrone’s character I talked at length with Jason [Robards], who’d played his part before, with Ralph [Richardson] and Dean [Stockwell], and, of course we talked about the play. When we finished the run-through reading on the third day, there was a long pause. And then, from Kate’s corner of the table, a small voice called out, ‘Help!’ From then on, the work was thrilling. She asked, she told, she fretted, she tried, she failed, she won. She built that character stone by stone. Something was still tight about the performance until the end of the second week. There’s a moment in the script when her youngest son, trying to cut through her morphine haze, screams at her that he’s dying of consumption. I said, ‘Kate, I’d like you to haul off and smack him as hard as you can.’ She started to say that she couldn’t do that, but the sentence died halfway out of her mouth. She thought about it for thirty seconds, then said, ‘Let’s try it.’ She hit him. She looked at Dean’s horrified face, and her shoulders started to shake. She dissolved into the broken, frightened failure that was so important an aspect of Mary Tyrone. The sight of that giant Hepburn in such a state was the personification of tragic acting."
Sheila O'Malley blogs about movies, books, and mortifying high school memories at The Sheila Variations.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
5 for the Day: Kate Hepburn
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24 comments:
She was by now a star, but she had never before played a screwball comedy and wasn’t sure how to do it.
The tremendous effort to help her "get" her role is absolutely amazing as the final product in Bringing Up Baby looks so natural. I'd always thought Hepburn was a perfect comedy actress after seeing Baby. It's mind boggling that it didn't just immediately come natural to her.
And Grant's advice is superb. Is there anything that man can't do?
Jeffrey - I so agree. I love that Bringing Up Baby story (and she told it on herself as well - there are multiple witnesses to the thing) because the effort put into that performance is so invisible in the final product. She's so wonderful in it!!
And amen to your question about Cary Grant. He's my all-time favorite. Just so so good, so smart.
I just read Lumet's book a few weeks ago, and that was one of the anecdotes that stuck out for me. I'm afraid I can't go with you on the Kate Remembered book, which I found a chore to read.
I've always been fascinated by Kate ("rally I am!"). She was a combination star and actress back in the days when a person could easily be both. And she bucked the system, refusing to subscribe to what others believed a woman should be. The fact she was willing to listen to and absorb lessons bestowed upon her makes me respect her even more (the Hawks anecdote was just wonderful). I wonder if Meryl Streep does that.
I was happy to see her onscreen one last time, though I wasn't exactly enamored of the movie she was in, nor did I think Beatty's dialogue was worthy of her talent. "Fuck a duck?" My last memory of Hepburn on the big screen is of her saying "fuck a duck." But then again, my last memory of Bette Davis on the big screen was Larry Cohen's Wicked Stepmother. I guess I should be grateful. Quack quack.
Thanks for writing this piece and for choosing these anecdotes about the way Hepburn worked. She's my favorite actress. Stanwyck was more natural, Davis had more range, Moreau is always fascinating, and Streep can't be ignored. But there's just something about Hepburn...and it isn't just publicity.
"Stage Door," "Bringing Up Baby," "The African Queen" and "Summertime" are films to watch all your life. And her Mary Tyrone is definitive. Even her Dick Cavett interviews are dazzling (they were pointedly excerpted on the Sopranos two weeks ago...)
It's her hundredth birthday this month, and I thought I was Hepburn'd out, but I guess I'm not, and never will be.
I love "Holiday" too. There's just something so poignant and ... kind of wrenching about her character and how she plays it. "Someone stop me! Just someone try and stop me!!" Perfect performance as far as I'm concerned.
You paint a very complex portrait of Hepburn here, Sheila. On one hand, she's professionally indomitable, very much interested in acquiring and holding onto stardom. But at the same time she seems to have almost no ego where the mechanics of acting were concerned. That anecdote about her sitting there in rehearsal for "Bringing Up Baby" watching another actor not just showing her how she should do it, but doing it in the style of Hepburn, is profoundly illuminating.
My favorite Hepburn performances are "The African Queen" (she and Bogart's chemistry is unique: they're a couple of immovable objects who become an irresitible force) and "Bringing up Baby" (where she's pure chaos with a smile -- an innocent creature of the id).
I also love her in "On Golden Pond," which is not too memorable as a play, but had a deep effect on me as a child; it might have been the first movie that showed me the young lovers inside grandparents, the sense that the body ages but the personality doesn't.
I, too, like her a lot in The Philadelphia Story. That movie is a miracle, as is Cary Grant, as is Jimmy Stewart. The scene of Hepburn and Stewart dancing on the lip of the fountain is movie magic, as is when Hepburn realizes just what Cary Grant is feeding her to say at the door to the "chapel". One is pure delight in movement and the other is pure delight in pathos. The way she moves and registers emotions is, rightly, something special, something to be cherished.
Since you used a lot of quotes in your delightful piece I thought I would quote...myself. In an email to my friend, Steven Boone, I wrote something I think Kate Hepburn (and you Sheila?) would appreciate:
"I want to embrace the forever-neophyte we all have in our cores, at bottom. That way, everything is a delightful surprise."
She's also very good in "Rooster Cogburn," which is sort of an older, more rambling, unofficial remake of "The African Queen." She's one of the only leading ladies ever to appear opposite John Wayne who genuinely seemed to intimidate him. There are some priceless Wayne double-takes in that film -- a mix of incredulity and awe, as if he's forgetting that he's John Wayne and letting his face say what's in his mind: "Dear God, I am helpless before this woman."
Ryland - I love your quote!! How profound! I'm adding that to my quote book - it is so so so true. How much we lose when we abandon our inner neophyte.
Matt - my favorite stories at times are of these great actors in their struggles. We know that they triumph - their careers are proof of the ultimate triumph ... but I love to hear about the blood, sweat, and tears that go into it. The sheer workmanship of these people.
Hepburn obviously had a natural gift for acting - nobody ever doubted that. But in that Lumet anecdote - the fact that she hesitated before taking on Lumet's direction to slap her son, even just for 30 seconds ... shows the struggle we all have to be great, to just let go. Why not just say "Yes" to everything? If you fail, you fail!! But we all have our moments when we say "No", out of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, whatever ... and I just love to hear those moments, especially with these giants of the craft. It's so human.
Also - when you see the final product, and you see how seamless it is - how unbelievable the craft is ... it's just even more inspiring.
I'm a little surprised that there's been no mention of her work with Spencer Tracy in this thread(she didn't suffer from a lack of great leading men!). I've only seen Adam's Rib and part of Woman of the Year, but Tracy seems to be a key personal and professional relationship for Hepburn.
And as Matt eloquently put it, you (Sheila) drew that line between her drive for fame and absence of ego (where it counts) very well. It seems to tie in to her notion of horsepower and being in it for the long haul.
I scrolled through THND homepage and stopped cold at the Hollywood glamour photo of Kate Hepburn. A picture is truly worth a thousand words...
Let me point my fellow Hepburn fans to one of her earlier performances in "Alice Adams" (1935, original novel by Booth Tarkington, film directed by George Stevens.)
It's a small film in many ways, but she is so sparkling and, I think, so brave in her performance. The dinner scene, featuring the incomparable Hattie McDaniel, is by turns hilarious and cringe-inducing.
I always cry during the scene near the end, after Alice has been humiliated, has triumphed, and has been humiliated again, when her father (Fred Stone) tells his socially unsuccessful daughter, "I wouldn't trade you for the whole kit'n'boodle of'em!"
And of course, she's a diamond in "The Philadelphia Story," "The African Queen," and in another less often cited film, "The Rainmaker" with Burt Lancaster as the snake-oil pitchman Starbuck. Watch for the scene in the barn where he takes down her hair.
Jeffrey: You're right. Nobody's mentioned Spencer Tracy here yet. I can't speak for anybody else, but that omission was quite deliberate on my part. Individually, Tracy and Hepburn were two of the great original stars in Hollywood movies. And together, yes, they were funny and charming and believable, and we now know that the chemistry was at least partly due to the fact that they were powerfully attracted to each other and were lovers for quite a long time.
And yet I just can't think of Hepburn's work with Tracy as ranking anywhere near the pinnacle of her accomplishments. It's not that she's bad or he's bad -- they're always good together. There's a comfort level that comes through onscreen. But I often get the sense when watching their films that Hepburn is tamping things down a bit, or that the movie is somehow conspiring to keep her nonthreatening. It's disheartening how often the message of earlier Hepburn-Tracy pictures is, "Hepburn needs to be tamed by Tracy." It's not a true meeting of the minds. Tracy's always (or nearly always) the irresistible force that neutralizes Hepburn's immovable object. "Adam's Rib" I found especially irritating in this regard.
I realize that other Hepburn films share a similar arc -- she plays a firey woman who is ultimately domesticated, or at least brought to heel, but the love of a good man; or maybe she's forced to get in touch with her feminine side. ("Philadelphia Story" has a whiff of that. It's a good movie, very funny, and she has way more sexual spark with Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart than she ever had with Tracy, in my opinion. But it always bugged me that the film revolves around the question of what's keeping Kate's character from being a total, ideal woman, and the answer turns out to be, "The ability to be vulnerable with a man," or "a willingness to acknowledge that she's got a soft side," or something like that.)
I know the films are products of their time and one can't make gender politics the primary yardstick by which one decides to like or dislike a movie. If that were the case I wouldn't be able to like almost any movie, since so many of them ignore or subordinate or dehumanize women, or else imply that they can't be happy unless they've been in some way domesticated (if not by actual children, then by total abject self-sacrificial worship of a man). I nearly always am in love with firebrand women in movies from the very first frame and spend the whole running time dreading the moment when they decide to let the facade crumble. I like Hepburn better at the start of "The Philadelphia Story," "Adam's Rib," "Pat and Mike," and so forth, than at the end.
My favorite Hepburn films are the ones where her character sets the emotional terms and the man does most of the visible changing. "Bringing Up Baby," "The African Queen," "Rooster Cogburn." She's so brilliant (or at least entertaining) in everything that I adore her anyway, even when the movie is setting her up as a poster child for the downside of female autonomy. It's often her technique and her spirit that I respond to, more than the totality of the movies, which I honestly think were not really ready to handle a woman who epitomized total individuality and autonomy in the way that Hepburn did.
I'm going to stop now before I turn into Molly Haskell.
I just finished Hepburn's Me, so this thread is a happy discovery. The Philadelphia Story is my favorite film. Period.
I second eve m's fondess for Alice Adams and The Rainmaker - both are somewhat overlooked, despite her Oscar noms for each. (And both are on DVD, so add them to your queue. You'll be glad you did!)
I've never seen Bringing Up Baby myself, but I recently encountered this distinctly contrarian take on the film that seems like a good conversation starter:
Here we have a seventy year old comedy.
When it was new, it was so disliked it drove Hepburn out of Hollywood. Hawks, the director was shunned for a while. Hepburn stopped sleeping with and being paraded by Howard Hughes, determined to change her image. Hawks and Grant considered it a disaster and for their next pairing ("His Girl Friday") were careful to get an actress and script that really could carry the weight of a screwball comedy. I'm with them: "Friday" was a masterpiece of screwball: frantic timing and highly abstract situations. This is a disaster in all but one dimension.
And yet there are people today who think this is hilarious. Enough even to place this on several "best of" lists. Its one of the great puzzles in life, this. I mean its a mystery as big as the sun why people laugh in the first place. But why they laugh at different things, just boggles.
In my opinion, Hepburn does a fine job in looking truly attractive in a sugared nutcase sort of way. Her incompetence in handling the character sort of works with her one strength: how to manage what's dangled, what's seductive. But her comic timing is all off, and it throws Grant off too. No one can see what Grant and Russell did in "Friday" in how they established a rhythm that Hawks could extend into the container of the banter, no one can see that and think this worked.
But they do. The only explanation I have is that we now are used to intended incoherence, and we as moviegoers accepted Kate in her re-engineered state. So we project modern measures back on this.
I didn't laugh. Perhaps you will.
... Rebuttals?
I wouldn't say that Hepburn's timing is "off," but that she's deliberately messing with the timing of Grant, in a way that's just right for a comedy in which a meek man who's built a life of no surprises gets his cage rattled by a woman who has no filter between her brain and her mouth. Hepburn's working at cross-purposes with Grant and her other costars is an actor's choice -- her timing is exquisite throughout her career -- and it was the result of a collaboration between Hepburn, her director and the rest of the cast (as cited in Sheila's piece).
I think the best rebuttal to this statement is "The Hudsucker Proxy." In that film, Jennifer Jason Leigh, a modern star in what's basically the biggest screwball comedy since "1941," attempts a performance that's in the spirit of Rosalind Rusell's work in "His Girl Friday" and Hepburn's performance in "Baby." She even tries to throw other actors' rhythms off, a la Hepburn, stepping on their lines, making strange and seemingly unmotivated gestures wit her hands, rushing through and drawing out lines of dialogue for no discernible reason. It's too self-conscious and it doesn't work. Hepburn's performance feels organic and instinctive, and it does work.
If that doesn't work for a rebuttal, I will have to go with, "Well, I think she's just peachy!"
That quote cited in the comment above is from Ted Goranson, a very unusual critic who posts comments on IMDB. He's also a computer systems expert who's interested in narrative as a means of understanding why the world is the way it is. His site is here.
I would also say that "His Girl Friday" is an altogether more perfect and watchable film, but "Baby" is stranger and more original, to the point where it bears more resemblance to a Marx Bros. film than to anything else Hawks did. Hepburn deserves much of the credit for that.
Matt - I'm inclined to agree with you about Tracy/Hepburn, but I've only seen a bit of their work together. I've always thought that one day I'd immerse myself in their movies and relish it - picking up on some subtlety that escapes me now - but I never think today is the day. So I've sort've been putting it off.
As for His Girl Friday - great film, but I still prefer Baby for the Marxist chaos factor, largely due (I believe) to Hepburn's brilliant timing...and Grant's reaction to it. Of course, the madcap timing of Friday is great and more rhythmic and more imitable (I think Leigh was doing 90% His Girl, though she had it turned to 11). Both movies show just how much of a comedic force Grant was - by playing almost polar opposites. I can't really think of another star or actor that can lapse into comedy so well.
Great article, Sheila.
I read it because I love old movies and the stars Hepburn acted with, esp. in the 1940s
But I never understood, for the life of me, how it is that Hepburn has been accepted as a great star, much less a great actress.
True, she makes an elaborate effort to carry herself off as "a grand dame," but even that seems ludicrously transparent.
As for her sex appeal -- WHERE THE HELL IS IT???? (Set up roadblocks, send out a search party.)
She has a grating voice, as well as the kind of lock-jawed, take-two-you're-not-opening-your-mouth-wide-enough-dahling uptightness that's rivaled only by another wooden, overrated, hopelessly narcissistic actress, Jane Fonda.
Who exactly has gotten "hot" over Hepburn in any of her movies? And don't tell me Bogart in "African Queen." ... What other biped-female was on the goddamn boat? (Talk about stacking the deck, John Huston!)
Even actresses as pedestrian as, say, Ann Sheridan or Donna Reed had more blood to them than grating-Katie.
Anyway, let the gal rest in peace, she pulled the wool over plenty of eyes, so more power to her pencil-thin keister.
Still, for all you masochists out there, consider this as a "hell" --having to listen to Katherine Hepburn being interviewed by Dick Cavett and Dick being hard of hearing and asking Kate (between Dick's fainting spells) to repeat herself after each of her *grand pronouncement.*
Mercaaaaay!
I never had the feeling that any of the actors playing opposite Hepburn ever really wanted to schtup her.
This, I believe, is no small matter. "Mystery" is very important in a male-female relationship. What mystery did Hepburn bring to her persona? I'd say what mystery did Hepburn bring to her *characters* but did she ever really create *different* characters? All her roles seemed to be based on her one-trick pony, three-card monte ... schtick. That, good for her, she pulled off.
But, pleeeeze, don't tell me she was a great actress or a great comedian.
All her "Ooooh, my ....!" "Ooooo, this, Oooooo that!" bullshit didn't contain much eros in it, did it? Didn't contain much humanity or warmth, did it?
Take, by contrast, Rosalind Russell, especially in "Front Page" with Cary Grant (though I think they changed the stage name from "Front Page" to something else for the movie version).
Someone in this thread claimed that K. Hepburn had great timing. OK, Chacon a son gout (each to his own taste), but **Rosalind Russell** had timing! She also had a comedic physicality that made K. Hepburn look anemic by comparison.
What Rosalind Russell DIDN'T have that Hepburn had, in spades, was a god-awful (for wont of a better word) drive and self-centeredness that it's hard to say was worse on-screen or off.
I always felt that the men who, from an acting point of view, "reacted" to Hepburn's assertive bullshit were simply trying to make her look good -- what else could they do? Subtle she wasn't.
If she didn't have one note in her medley, one arrow in her quiver, ok, maybe she had two. (Some of us are still loooking for the second one.)
Let's not forget that K. Hepburn came around at a time when there were no K. Hepburn's with whom to compete.
Also, I don't think it's a coincidence that Hepburn in real life was quite the New England phony. This is in perfect sync with her movie persona.
Politically, she was a leftist wannabe who, at the same time (guess what?), wouldn't DREAM of giving up any of her ruling class perks, either those she was given growing up in New England or else those she scored in Hollywood. ... For what, a principle? ("Dahling, please!")
Hepburn during the McCarthy Era? Not an assertive peep.
Hepburn during the 60s, the 70s?
Zilchville.
If she was such a devout, sincere leftist, where does it appear in her work? Back in the 30s and 40s it was considerably easier than today for a mainstream "star" to express leftist ideas in their work.
Finally, what I suppose is the most obvious question ... If women were not so oppressed back when Kate first made the scene, as well as their being oppressed today (make no mistake about it), would such a "Hepburn persona" have been so popular back then, or now? ... Of course, this can be said of any number of "stars" who have benefitted greatly from America's unique brand of identity, "me-first" politics.
Sure, she could hold her own with heavyweights such as Tracy and Stewart and Grant; but, for me, that's ALL she could do. George Burns once said: Acting is easy, you just remember your lines, say them loud, and get off. If that's all acting is, Kate was terrific. (And George Burns was Sir Laurence Olivier.) "Kourageous Kate" had chutzpah coming out the kazoo. But, if acting (art) is more than that ... well ... acting *is* more than that.
In my previous post, I stated that Hepburn didn't utter an "assertive peep" during the McCarthy Era.
To clarify that point. ...
In 1947, John Huston put together a "committee" of Hollywood celebrities, Bogart, Bacall and Hepburn among them, who went to Washington to protest, generally speaking, "red baiting."
What's notable about this effort is that most celebrities in the committee, once the studios put pressure on them, folded like a cheap suit. They were never heard from again. Not a peep.
Their public recanting, in fact, "innoculated" them against any harrassment from HUAC or any similiar group. They remained good little conformists throughout their personal lives and professional careers.
Rather than actually stand for some substantive broad-based social or political cause, here's an example of Katherine Hepburn's "rebelliousness." ...
In the 1930s, Kourageous Kate would tool around the RKO lot riding her bicyle and wearing (are you ready?) pants and sneakers. This was extremely unusual for a woman at that time, to be wearing sneakers and pants.
The RKO execs didn't like this and threatened to steal away her pants.
Kourageous Kate fought back though: she traipsed around the studio in her underwear.
Now there's a sassy lil' narcissistic rebel for ya! ("Oooooooooh, my!")
To paraphrase Bette Davis: "What ... a ... phony!"
"Anonymous" seems to be rather a phony, a smug bring-down ever so delighted to brandish contrarian twattle as one might wiggle a riding crop. By your false definition of rebelliousness, Anon, Kate should've been a regular whistle-blowing Norma Rae of the Red Scare, but you know, life doesn't work that way (did Roz and Bette battle McCarthyism? does any celebrity now take on the New McCarthyism?), and your comments about her sex appeal are not only arrogant, your remarks are severely misguided -- i.e., sex isn't everything. You seem like the sort of person whom Kate would have escorted downstairs at the end of THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT, escorted down to the dungeon of doom, that is, Anon, to be heard from nevermore.
Sheila M -- great piece of writing -- thoughtful, engaging, and as much from the heart as the head.
@ Anonymous:
Lighten up, Francis!
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