Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003)
Author of Me: Stories of My Life
About the Author
Actress Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut on November 8, 1907. She attended the Oxford School for Girls and Bryn Mawr College. Hepburn wrote The Making of the African Queen and Me: Stories of My Life. She is one of America's best known actresses, and earned four Academy show more Awards. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Studio publicity photograph, ca. 1941, MGM
Works by Katharine Hepburn
The Making of The African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind (1987) — Author — 827 copies, 16 reviews
Spencer and Me 2 copies
Sylvia Scarlett 1 copy
Coco 1 copy
Little Women 1933/1949 1 copy
Associated Works
Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People Who Know a Thing or Two (2002) — Contributor — 50 copies
The Man Who Shot Garbo: The Hollywood Photographs of Clarence Sinclair Bull (1989) — Preface — 48 copies, 2 reviews
The Cary Grant Box Set (Holiday / Only Angels Have Wings / The Talk of the Town / His Girl Friday / The Awful Truth) (2006) — Actor — 31 copies
The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute by Katharine Hepburn [1986 Documentary film] (1986) — Actor — 24 copies
Katharine Hepburn 100th Anniversary Collection: Morning Glory / Without Love / Dragon Seed / Undercurrent / Sylvia Scarlett / The Corn is Green (1933) — Actor — 11 copies
John Wayne: Screen Legend Collection (Reap the Wild Wind / Rooster Cogburn / The Hellfighters / The War Wagon / The Spoilers) (2010) — Actor — 10 copies
British Cinema Collection 2 - 4 Films: The Inheritance, Love Among the Ruins, Anna Karenina, & St. Ives — Actor — 7 copies
The Iron Petticoat [1956 film] 4 copies
2 Film Box Set: Father Goose [and] Bringing Up Baby — Actor — 4 copies
Stage Door Canteen/Private Buckaroo — Actor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Hepburn, Katharine
- Legal name
- Hepburn, Katharine Houghton
- Birthdate
- 1907-05-12
- Date of death
- 2003-06-29
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Bryn Mawr College (BA|1928)
- Occupations
- actor
- Awards and honors
- Kennedy Center Honors (1990)
Academy Award (Best Actress ∙ 1933 ∙ 1967 ∙ 1968 ∙ 1981)
Volpi Cup (Best Actress ∙ 1934)
NYFCC Award (Best Actress ∙ 1940)
Cannes Film Festival (Best Actress ∙ 1962)
BAFTA Award (Best Actress in a Leading Role ∙ 1968 ∙ 1982) (show all 8)
Emmy (Outstanding Lead Actress Miniseries or Movie ∙ 1975)
Hollywood Walk of Fame - Relationships
- Tracy, Spencer (partner)
- Cause of death
- cardiac arrest
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Hartford, Connecticut, USA
- Places of residence
- Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, USA
Old Saybrook, Connecticut, USA - Place of death
- Fenwick, Connecticut, USA
- Burial location
- Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
- Map Location
- Connecticut, USA
Members
Reviews
One thing I can say about Katharine Hepburn: she clearly didn't employ a ghost writer for her memoirs. For better or worse, Me: Stories of My Life is written in her voice: brisk, disarming, high-handed, New-England-patrician, with prose that veers off into sentence fragments at times. I have to imagine that some of the incidents she recounts here came across much better when told in person, with voices and body language over the dinner table, than they do in print—the whole section about show more going with a guy to pick up a car in Italy, told inexplicably in script format, fell very flat. But when Hepburn's style works, it works very well, as when she recounts the circumstances of her beloved older brother's death by suicide, something which clearly hurt and bewildered her so many decades later.
Lavishly illustrated with candid photos and snapshots taken on the sets of Hepburn's films; also includes a Welsh currant cake recipe and the fact that Hepburn's vocabulary included the phrase "tough titty." show less
Lavishly illustrated with candid photos and snapshots taken on the sets of Hepburn's films; also includes a Welsh currant cake recipe and the fact that Hepburn's vocabulary included the phrase "tough titty." show less
The Making of the African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind by Katharine Hepburn
More than 35 years after making “The African Queen” with Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn wrote about the experience in “The Making of The African Queen” (1987).
The short book, full of photographs (not movie stills), is loaded with charm. In a few, well-chosen words, Hepburn captures the personalities of those involved in making the movie, including director John Huston and producer Sam Spiegel. Her descriptions are often blunt, but never more so than when writing about herself. show more She calls herself an "old fusspot" at one point and says she "looked like a very freckled female impersonator."
About Bogart she says, "To put it simply: There was no bunk about Bogie. He was a man." As for Lauren Bacall, who does not appear in the film, Hepburn describes how effective she is working behind the scenes. She regards Huston as a genius despite what often seemed to her a lackadaisical attitude about the movie.
The adventure of making the movie in Africa almost rivals the adventure in the movie itself. At one point the African Queen sinks. Army ants stream through the middle of Hepburn's hut. She gets very sick, as do many others who drink the bottled water. Those who stick with alcohol do fine.
"Technical problems galore and no chairs — no dressings rooms — no toilet — hot ginger ale and fruit juice and beer — the problem of sending out lunch for forty people," she writes. Complete sentences are not a high priority for Hepburn.
Anyone who loves this movie would love this book. show less
The short book, full of photographs (not movie stills), is loaded with charm. In a few, well-chosen words, Hepburn captures the personalities of those involved in making the movie, including director John Huston and producer Sam Spiegel. Her descriptions are often blunt, but never more so than when writing about herself. show more She calls herself an "old fusspot" at one point and says she "looked like a very freckled female impersonator."
About Bogart she says, "To put it simply: There was no bunk about Bogie. He was a man." As for Lauren Bacall, who does not appear in the film, Hepburn describes how effective she is working behind the scenes. She regards Huston as a genius despite what often seemed to her a lackadaisical attitude about the movie.
The adventure of making the movie in Africa almost rivals the adventure in the movie itself. At one point the African Queen sinks. Army ants stream through the middle of Hepburn's hut. She gets very sick, as do many others who drink the bottled water. Those who stick with alcohol do fine.
"Technical problems galore and no chairs — no dressings rooms — no toilet — hot ginger ale and fruit juice and beer — the problem of sending out lunch for forty people," she writes. Complete sentences are not a high priority for Hepburn.
Anyone who loves this movie would love this book. show less
The making of The African Queen, or, How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and almost lost my mind by Katharine Hepburn
The African Queen starred Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, and was released wide in 1952. If you don't know what it is, or why you should care about it, nothing I say hereinafter will make one drop of sense to you, and you'd far better use your eyeblinks elsewhere. Remember to shut the screen door not slam it! Papaw's nerves are raggedy at this hour of the day.
Katharine Hepburn was the Meryl Streep of her time. Well regarded, blessed with talent, a bit upper-crusty in her roles. When show more the story of the making of The African Queen begins, she is treading the boards in Shakespearean stuff and, frankly, pretty bored. She needs a challenge to spark her inner V-16 engine. A call comes to her friend's home, where she's staying...there's a script based on a novel...nothing new...but set in Africa! Yes please, Mr. Producer, send it to me and I shall read forthwith. Read she does; part's great, script's so-so, so....
On page 7, Hepburn writes of her initial meeting with Producer Sam Spiegel, wherein a raft of English actors were discussed for the part of Cockney Charlie Alnutt, and finally Spiegel says, "What about Bogart—he could be Canadian." And there it was, decided. Did getting Hepburn mean Spiegel could now stand a chance to get Bogart? Did it occur to him in a divine revelation on that spot? Was he hell-bent on the casting of both these American actors to play uber-British roles so American audiences would turn out en masse? We know that the Brits put up £250,000 (about $60 million in today's dollars) only after their Film Finance Board overcame demands for Brits to be cast in the British author [author:C.S. Forester|932179]'s bestselling 1936 novel about Brits in World War I East Africa.
Such are the things producers must concern themselves with and all at the same time, in the same calculation. The film's budget, in today's dollars, was about $100 million and the box office ended up at around $1 billion. But while Producer Spiegel chatted up the excited and eager Miss Hepburn in the kitchen that first day, he had bubkes except a script, a director (the already almost-legendary John Huston), and now a star. But this star, this force of nature Miss Katharine Hepburn, wanted to film this Technicolor all-outdoors vehicle for some major Hollywood egos on location. In Africa, that is. On big African rivers with real, malaria-sodden African mosquitoes and real, bilharzia-causing schistosoma snails. "We'll see," equivocates a rapidly thinning producer; "we'll see it in Africa," responds Miss Famous Actress with Fans, and guess where they filmed it.
Africa is hot. It's big. People in the Belgian Congo don't speak English, and even French is touch-and-go. Getting to Africa took days on planes, weeks on boats. Getting Technicolor cameras to Arizona was a huge deal! The mind boggles, the spirit quails, to imagine getting these multi-million-1951-dollar monsters to Africa! Not to mention two movie stars. Assorted crew, camera operators, thousands of props, safe drinking water, food...a director whose gun fetish and desire to murder elephants must be coddled...rich Americans all, and not a little high-handed even among themselves.
It's her saving grace that Hepburn, writing this book in the 1980s, realized that she was a Bigfoot stomping all over everyone. Didn't stop her, probably wouldn't if she'd gone again, but really now is any celebrity likely to behave differently? Not often.
The shoot is huge. The crew isn't all in place when they arrive. The advance construction of different things must needs be torn down and rebuilt, the piece supposed to fit here don't fit there, in short the bog-standard common-as-pigtracks problems of doing a complicated thing in a limited amount of time. Miss Hepburn acts as costume lady, invents a solution to wilting-chapeau syndrome (super creative, impressed me a lot), seamstresses, does hair...
"Those jerks" are Bogie and John Huston, Hepburn's costar and director. Her friends. She has little enough to say about Bogart, a good deal more to say about Bacall who came with him but not all of it kind. She's also not kind about Huston's inability to be on time, his indifference to the reality of others' feelings, emotions, existence, his bloodlust. But beginning on page 81 and ending on page 83, Miss Hepburn the journeyman actress recalls Director Huston's performance notes on Rosie Sayer's unsmiling, serious countenance. How hard it is to watch a serious face for so long...how Mrs. Roosevelt, an unhandsome lady, dealt with a similar issue.
And Miss Hepburn the journeyman actress, writing at a distance of thirty-five years, still lights up at the memory of receiving her entire performance in a short, simple, perfectly observed and conveyed image from a genius of image-making. She went on to make the film on a perfect note, sustained throughout by the single conversation and its illuminating insight. It is the most gorgeous moment in the book.
There aren't a lot of anecdotes in the book, the kind you'll whip out at parties to improve the shining hour, but there are lovely and honest observations, a lot of unnoticed privilege behind her quite self-aware self-regard, and photos. Lots of them...forty-five...from a man called Alfred E. Lemon, and some from a Life magazine photographer called Eliot Elisofon. The permissions must've taken forever to clear. The text design is clear and simple, using Garamond type and generous white space around the scattered halftone reproductions, including both endsheets. The binding is smyth-sewn with real cloth on the boards.
The book is as much an artifact of a vanished world as is the film it describes, as is the now-gone writer of this personal and charming memoir. Time pressed on her, those years so clear in memory but so distant in time, still eagerly sought by the Fans:
It's hard to get old and lose people, and places, and memories that meant something are increasingly one's own unshareable treasures. What matters, in the end? Is it something anyone can see or is it something so buried there's never going to be another soul who sees it whole and entire?
Katharine Hepburn was a star, but more, she was a genius because she had an answer to that question, one that most people (I think) can agree with and buy into. It is her last word on the topic of this book.
Now, what do you suppose ever happened to Charlie and Rosie? Where did they live? Did they stay in Africa? I always thought they must have. And lots of little Charlies and Rosies. And lived happily ever after. Because that's what we wanted them to do. And every summer they take a trip in the old Queen--and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.... show less
Katharine Hepburn was the Meryl Streep of her time. Well regarded, blessed with talent, a bit upper-crusty in her roles. When show more the story of the making of The African Queen begins, she is treading the boards in Shakespearean stuff and, frankly, pretty bored. She needs a challenge to spark her inner V-16 engine. A call comes to her friend's home, where she's staying...there's a script based on a novel...nothing new...but set in Africa! Yes please, Mr. Producer, send it to me and I shall read forthwith. Read she does; part's great, script's so-so, so....
On page 7, Hepburn writes of her initial meeting with Producer Sam Spiegel, wherein a raft of English actors were discussed for the part of Cockney Charlie Alnutt, and finally Spiegel says, "What about Bogart—he could be Canadian." And there it was, decided. Did getting Hepburn mean Spiegel could now stand a chance to get Bogart? Did it occur to him in a divine revelation on that spot? Was he hell-bent on the casting of both these American actors to play uber-British roles so American audiences would turn out en masse? We know that the Brits put up £250,000 (about $60 million in today's dollars) only after their Film Finance Board overcame demands for Brits to be cast in the British author [author:C.S. Forester|932179]'s bestselling 1936 novel about Brits in World War I East Africa.
Such are the things producers must concern themselves with and all at the same time, in the same calculation. The film's budget, in today's dollars, was about $100 million and the box office ended up at around $1 billion. But while Producer Spiegel chatted up the excited and eager Miss Hepburn in the kitchen that first day, he had bubkes except a script, a director (the already almost-legendary John Huston), and now a star. But this star, this force of nature Miss Katharine Hepburn, wanted to film this Technicolor all-outdoors vehicle for some major Hollywood egos on location. In Africa, that is. On big African rivers with real, malaria-sodden African mosquitoes and real, bilharzia-causing schistosoma snails. "We'll see," equivocates a rapidly thinning producer; "we'll see it in Africa," responds Miss Famous Actress with Fans, and guess where they filmed it.
Africa is hot. It's big. People in the Belgian Congo don't speak English, and even French is touch-and-go. Getting to Africa took days on planes, weeks on boats. Getting Technicolor cameras to Arizona was a huge deal! The mind boggles, the spirit quails, to imagine getting these multi-million-1951-dollar monsters to Africa! Not to mention two movie stars. Assorted crew, camera operators, thousands of props, safe drinking water, food...a director whose gun fetish and desire to murder elephants must be coddled...rich Americans all, and not a little high-handed even among themselves.
We packed our duds and I found myself moving all my odd stools—spears—arrows—chairs—down into the accountant's room on the first floor for him to send to New York for me. Things almost impossible to pack. A stink of a job to foist off on anyone. You remember him—the accountant—the rightful inhabitant of my third-floor room. ... How could I be so awful? Apparently easily.
It's her saving grace that Hepburn, writing this book in the 1980s, realized that she was a Bigfoot stomping all over everyone. Didn't stop her, probably wouldn't if she'd gone again, but really now is any celebrity likely to behave differently? Not often.
The shoot is huge. The crew isn't all in place when they arrive. The advance construction of different things must needs be torn down and rebuilt, the piece supposed to fit here don't fit there, in short the bog-standard common-as-pigtracks problems of doing a complicated thing in a limited amount of time. Miss Hepburn acts as costume lady, invents a solution to wilting-chapeau syndrome (super creative, impressed me a lot), seamstresses, does hair...
I never have a permanent, for it makes {hair} feel funny, it makes it smell, and I'm a sort of impractical character. Love the feeling of soft, clean hair. Can't remember that anyone ever made a comment, certainly not either of those jerks. But please yourself and at least someone is pleased.
"Those jerks" are Bogie and John Huston, Hepburn's costar and director. Her friends. She has little enough to say about Bogart, a good deal more to say about Bacall who came with him but not all of it kind. She's also not kind about Huston's inability to be on time, his indifference to the reality of others' feelings, emotions, existence, his bloodlust. But beginning on page 81 and ending on page 83, Miss Hepburn the journeyman actress recalls Director Huston's performance notes on Rosie Sayer's unsmiling, serious countenance. How hard it is to watch a serious face for so long...how Mrs. Roosevelt, an unhandsome lady, dealt with a similar issue.
And Miss Hepburn the journeyman actress, writing at a distance of thirty-five years, still lights up at the memory of receiving her entire performance in a short, simple, perfectly observed and conveyed image from a genius of image-making. She went on to make the film on a perfect note, sustained throughout by the single conversation and its illuminating insight. It is the most gorgeous moment in the book.
There aren't a lot of anecdotes in the book, the kind you'll whip out at parties to improve the shining hour, but there are lovely and honest observations, a lot of unnoticed privilege behind her quite self-aware self-regard, and photos. Lots of them...forty-five...from a man called Alfred E. Lemon, and some from a Life magazine photographer called Eliot Elisofon. The permissions must've taken forever to clear. The text design is clear and simple, using Garamond type and generous white space around the scattered halftone reproductions, including both endsheets. The binding is smyth-sewn with real cloth on the boards.
The book is as much an artifact of a vanished world as is the film it describes, as is the now-gone writer of this personal and charming memoir. Time pressed on her, those years so clear in memory but so distant in time, still eagerly sought by the Fans:
It's strange being a movie actor. The product goes out—it's popular—it's unpopular—or it's somewhere in between. And it's always to me a real part of myself. I mean it represents my own decision to do it: Was I wise? Was I dumb? I've tried never to do anything just for the money. I do it because I love it—the idea and the characters. And, my oh my, it is great when you—when the people like it too and make it theirs—that is the real reward.
So, suddenly, thirty-five years have rushed by. Bogie has gone. {Sam} Spiegel {the producer} has gone. The Queen herself is still alive--so are John {Huston} and Betty {Bacall} and Peter {Viertel, the German boat captain} and I.
It's hard to get old and lose people, and places, and memories that meant something are increasingly one's own unshareable treasures. What matters, in the end? Is it something anyone can see or is it something so buried there's never going to be another soul who sees it whole and entire?
Katharine Hepburn was a star, but more, she was a genius because she had an answer to that question, one that most people (I think) can agree with and buy into. It is her last word on the topic of this book.
The tone of this memoir is very conversational, reading like the transcript of one side of an interview. Most of the time this works very well. Occasionally, it feels like pointless rambling. The addition of an unproduced script by Hepburn about an actress picking up a car based on experience she had with writer William Rose feels like padding. Much better are here memories of and opinions on specific films she was in, even if they are often very brief. For instance, this opinion of Toyah show more Willcox who took a film role opposite Katharine Hepburn in the made-for-television film The Corn Is Green, directed by George Cukor:
...and this portrait of John Wayne:
The shorter recollections are more focused. The longer ones tend to drift off into inane trivialities, IMO. These drifts seems to be concentrated in the last quarter of the book which makes me feel the manuscript missed the care and attention of a good editor. The resulting hodge-podge is a potpourri of pithy to charming observations soaked with discursive maundering.
Sincere love recalling here about her Spencer Tracy. 'Tis a bit sad how one-sided it may have been:
We got the girl too. A girl walked in by the name of Toyah Wilcox. Five feet tall. Tiny waist. Big bosom. Skin like the inside of a shell. Eyes...
Oh-did I tell you about the boy's teeth? They are TEETH. He should pull them all out and sell them to the Arabs. Gorgeous! Anyway, Toyah's eyes are wide apart. And full of thoughts. Wicked thoughts. Suggesting so much. And so much fun too. Loves life and ... well, she read the part with me. George and I howled.
...and this portrait of John Wayne:
Rooster Cogburn
John Wayne is the hero of the thirties and forties and most of the fifties. Before the creeps came creeping in. Before, in the sixties, the male hero slid right down into the valley of the weak and the misunderstood. Before the women began drop- ping any pretense to virginity into the gutter. With a dis- regard for truth which is indeed pathetic. And unisex was born. The hair grew long and the pride grew short. And we were off to the anti-hero and -heroine.
John Wayne has survived all this. Even into the seventies. He is so tall a tree that the sun must shine on him whatever the tangle in the jungle below.
From head to toe he is all of a piece. Big head. Wide blue eyes. Sandy hair. Rugged skin-lined by living and fun and character. Not by just rotting away. A nose not too big, not too small. Good teeth. A face alive with humor. Good humor I should say, and a sharp wit. Dangerous when roused. His shoulders are broad-very. His chest massive- very. When I leaned against him (which I did as often as possible, I must confess I am reduced to such innocent pleasures), thrilling. It was like leaning against a great tree. His hands so big. Mine, which are big too, seemed to disappear. Good legs. No seat. A real man's body.
And the base of this incredible creation. A pair of small sensitive feet. Carrying his huge frame as though it were a feather. Light of tread. Springy. Dancing. Pretty feet.
Very observing. Very aware. Listens. Concentrates. Witty slant. Ready to laugh. To be laughed at. To answer. To stick his neck out. Funny. Outrageous. Spoiled. Self-indulgent. Tough. Full of charm. Knows it. Uses it. Disregards it. With an alarming accuracy. Not much gets past him.
...
Politically he is a reactionary. He suffers from a point of view based entirely on his own experience. He was sur- rounded in his early years in the motion picture business by people like himself. Self-made. Hard-working. Independent. Of the style of man who blazed the trails across our country. Reached out into the unknown. People who were willing to live or die entirely on their own independent judgment. Jack Ford, the man who first brought Wayne into the movies, was cut from the same block of wood. Fiercely independent.
They seem to have no patience and no understanding of the more timid and dependent type of person. Pull your own freight. This is their slogan. Sometimes I don't think that they realize that their own load was attached to a very powerful engine. They don't need or want protection. Total personal responsibility. They dish it out. They take it. Life has dealt Wayne some severe blows. He can take them. He has shown it. He doesn't lack self-discipline. He dares to walk by himself. Run. Dance. Skip. Walk. Crawl through life. He has done it all. Don't pity me, please.
The shorter recollections are more focused. The longer ones tend to drift off into inane trivialities, IMO. These drifts seems to be concentrated in the last quarter of the book which makes me feel the manuscript missed the care and attention of a good editor. The resulting hodge-podge is a potpourri of pithy to charming observations soaked with discursive maundering.
Sincere love recalling here about her Spencer Tracy. 'Tis a bit sad how one-sided it may have been:
I loved Spencer Tracy. He and his interests and his demands came first.show less
This was not easy for me because I was definitely a me me me person.
It was a unique feeling that I had for S.T. I would have done anything for him. My feelings-how can you describe them?-the door between us was always open. There were no reservations of any kind.
...
I have no idea how Spence felt about me. I can only say I think that if he hadn't liked me he wouldn't have hung around. As simple as that. He wouldn't talk about it and I didn't talk about it. We just passed twenty-seven years together in what was to me absolute bliss.
It is called LOVE.
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