Al Weisel

 

An Uncommon Woman: Katharine Hepburn

By Al Weisel

Premiere, September 2003, pp. 84-88, 104-106

 

No one worked harder at creating an image and living up to it than Katharine Hepburn. From the moment she made her debut in 1932's A Bill of Divorcement, her intelligence, grace, and architecturally imposing cheekbones made her stand out from her kewpie-doll-cute contemporaries. She won her first Oscar for her third film, Morning Glory, but her strong-willed heroines were not always an easy sell, and her career began to falter. Yet she was canny enough to poke fun at her missteps, taking a speech from her infamous Broadway flop The Lake—"The calla lilies are in bloom…"—and transforming it into one of her signature lines in Stage Door. She staged her own comeback by buying the rights to The Philadelphia Story. From then on, she controlled every aspect of her career and her life. Her next project, Woman of the Year, kicked off a storied 26-year romance with Spencer Tracy, with whom she made nine films. Although Tracy refused to divorce his wife, Hepburn was committed to him unconditionally until his death. As she got older, she refused to fade from the limelight; instead she took on some of her most challenging roles and won three more Oscars, for a record total of four (out of 12 nominations) in acting. If she could have heard all the tributes after her death in June at age 96, she probably would have said, "Oh, shut up!" She didn't need anyone to tell her she was great. After all, she worked damned hard at it.

 

"EVERYBODY REMEMBERS THE FIRST TIME THEY MET KATHARINE HEPBURN"

 

DABNEY COLEMAN, costar, On Golden Pond (1981) At the first reading, everyone was calling her Kate, and I was calling her Katharine or nothing. After it was over I said, "What would you like me to call you?" and she said, "I'd prefer Miss Garbo." That was my first encounter with Kate. I think everybody probably remembers the first time they met Katharine Hepburn.

 

CHRISTOPHER REEVE, costar, Broadway's A Matter of Gravity (1976) I said, "Before I begin, Miss Hepburn, I'm sure that my grandmother, Beatrice Lamb, who was your classmate at Bryn Mawr, would like to be remembered to you." And there was a brief pause, and then a voice came back from the darkness: "Oh, Bea. I never could stand her." And then I had to begin the audition.

 

SAM WATERSTON, costar, TV's The Glass Menagerie (1973) My fiancée was on the set and had never met her, and Kate came charging up to her and said, "He won't listen to me! You talk to him! It's going to be a disaster! You've got to get him to cover his Adam's apple with his turtleneck!" She was saying that nobody would be able to look at anything else, it was much too obtrusive. Of course, it was fine. She made everything important, and in doing that she got everybody revved up and excited by what we were doing so we all were just as engaged as she was. Being around her was like being in a movie all the time. Walker Percy in The Moviegoer talks about how places that have been in the movies have an extra level of reality. That was absolutely true with her. Everything was brighter and more interesting and more intense when she was around.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY, director, The Lion in Winter (1968), The Glass Menagerie, Grace  Quigley (1984), and TV's This Can't Be Love (1994) I took her a bunch of roses, which she immediately threw on the floor and said they were terrible. "They've got wires in them." I thought, This is very difficult.

 

EARL HOLLIMAN, costar, The Rainmaker (1956) Little Women came up and I said, "What did you play in that?" She said, "My dear young man, you never ask a star what she played in a film for which she's famous."

 

BETSY BLAIR, costar, A Delicate Balance, and author, The Memory of All That  The first morning we were all there and somebody came bounding up the steps with three little bouquets of violets. It was Katharine Hepburn with one for each of the other actresses. It was that kind of energy and attention that was striking right off.

 

MARK RYDELL, director, On Golden Pond I had the privilege of introducing her to Henry Fonda. Henry was very taciturn, in direct contrast to her effusiveness. He was a miniaturist, a detail-oriented man. She, on the other hand, was extremely generous with her feelings, with no impediment to expressing them. She embraced him and he slightly stiffened and softened and put his hands on her. She kept telling stories about her relationship with Spencer Tracy. And they were all extremely entertaining but I sensed after some days' rehearsal that Henry was withdrawing a bit. I took her aside and told her she should make some gesture to transfer her affections to Fonda. And the following day she brought in and gave to Henry in front of everybody Spencer's fishing hat, which he wore throughout the picture. He wept. He was very touched by that.

 

A MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS

 

MICHAEL MORIARTY, costar, The Glass Menagerie Here's what's most important about Katharine Hepburn: not her career and not her brilliance and not her talent—it was her profound, unconditional love for Spencer Tracy. That was her greatest achievement. She and Spencer were one of the greatest love affairs in the history of America.

 

ANGELA LANSBURY, costar, State of the Union (1948) We all knew but nobody ever said anything. In those days it wasn't discussed. They were totally hand in glove, totally comfortable and unself-conscious about their relationship. She wasn't the sort of woman that many men would be attracted to—the snuggly, cuddly woman in the movies at that time. And yet because of her enormous affection and love for Spencer, she had the ability to subjugate this almost manly quality she had at times and became this wonderfully warm, irresistible woman.

 

LAUREN BACALL, actress She just adored him. It was the only time that Katie stopped talking, because she was always hanging on his every word. She was like a 12-year-old girl sitting at his feet looking at him in wonder. Katie girlish was just ... never seen anything quite like it.

 

MARK RYDELL She used to go away to Santa Barbara with [Tracy] for the weekend. And she was always the one who carried the luggage. One day after the weekend he told her to put the luggage in the car. She looked outside and it was full of people loading luggage from the cabin next door, and she said, "I can't do this, Spencer. I'm embarrassed that I'm carrying the luggage." He said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it." So she carried the luggage and then he came out limping like a cripple.

 

BETSY BLAIR They always went to Claridge's [in London]. She said that Spencer wasn't one for spending money. She would have a suite and Spence would have the equivalent of a maid's room, and then he'd be sneaking around the corridors at night. But they then moved hotels because she couldn't wear trousers in the dining room. I think she said to the headwaiter, "Would you like me to take them off?" When I was young and foolish I remember thinking, "What is she wasting her life for on this man who won't get a divorce?" But you can't judge people from the outside. If that's what she wanted to do, it was brave of her to do it.

 

DINA MERRILL, costar, Desk Set (1957) I remember seeing her in a line for airline tickets one time, and I said, "Kate, what are you doing here?" And she said, "Well, you know, Spencer is going to do The Devil at 4 O'Clock in Martinique. I'm going down to get him a house, see that he's comfortable." She really looked after him.

 

MARVIN KAPLAN, actor, Adam's Rib (1949) They worked very well together. They would do what the Lunts did. They would interrupt each other—they'd never finish a sentence and then they'd start the other sentence. It's very hard to do.

 

DINA MERRILL She and Tracy had obviously done the day's work that was coming up, and staged it in their own place where they lived. The director [Walter Lang] had hardly anything to do. She would say, "Spence and I talked this over. We thought that this might be good for the scene." And they did the whole thing. And he'd say, "Well, looks good to me."

 

MICHAEL MORIARTY At the end of his career, a director and assistant director went over and tried to present a script to Spencer Tracy. The AD tells me that [Hepburn] walked him out to the car and said, "You know, for me, acting has been so hard and life has been so easy. But for Spencer, acting has been so easy and life has been so hard."

 

MARVIN KAPLAN She told me that she wasn't going to go to [Tracy's] funeral. I figured out why: She didn't want any kind of talk, any kind of scandal. There were children and so on.

 

ON THE SET

 

MARVIN KAPLAN George Cukor [who directed Hepburn in Little Women, The Philadelphia Story, and Adam's Rib, among other films] would kid her if she got too la-di-da about a line reading or too precious. "This isn't the theater, you know."

 

WILLIAM SELF, actor, Adam's Rib, Pat and Mike (1952) She said, "Oh George, don't read me the line, I'll never say it right after you read it tome." She didn't want that kind of direction.

 

MARVIN KAPLAN There was a scene [in Adam's Rib] with Judy Holliday and the angle mainly featured Holliday. They were going to give Hepburn more coverage. And she said, "No, that scene belongs to that girl. You want to do close-ups, do them on her."

 

SAM WATERSTON She didn't like doing close-ups because she was absolutely certain there wasn't an actor on the planet she couldn't stand toe-to-toe with. But also she was enormously generous. She wanted the performance to be a performance that you made together.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY In the mirror scene [in The Lion in Winter] I thought that it was quite important for her to be enormously vulnerable. She wanted to play it very strong. I stuck to my guns and some days passed and we shot other scenes. Finally Kate said, "I'll compromise," and I said, "I don't think that will work either." Four more days passed, and she finally said, "All right. We'll try it." She was of course quite ravishing, and that night she put a piece of Kleenex under my hotel door that said, "I hope the sun and the moon and the stars are with you forever. I trust you. Kate."

 

TIMOTHY DALTON, costar, The Lion in Winter My first shooting in the movie was virtually my first scene, in which I'm introduced to the entire family. The camera was pointing towards them over my shoulder. I was standing off-camera playing the scene for them. That took most of the day. We never got to me; they said they would do that tomorrow morning. They dismissed Katharine and said she didn't need to come in. And she said, "But you're turning around on Timothy. I'm coming in." So she came in to give one line off-camera.

 

MARK RYDELL Dorothy Jeakins, our costume designer, came to me and said, "You'd better go see what she's wearing." As opposed to the wardrobe we'd selected, she was standing there in kind of a buttery Eisenhower suede jacket and suede fedora. I said to her, "Listen, we're going to shoot in a few minutes, I think you better get into your wardrobe." And she said, "Oh, no, this will be fine." She kind of pooh-poohed me. I knew that this was a moment of challenge. I was trembling inside with anxiety—after all, it was the first shot of the picture. I said, "We're all going to take a 15-minute break while Miss Hepburn gets into her wardrobe." It was as if I had thrown a bucket of water in her face. She rose imperiously and stared at me and tears came to her eyes and she walked off toward her trailer. Henry [Fonda] said, "There goes the picture." But she came back dutifully in 15 minutes dressed in the wardrobe we had selected.

 

LAUREN BACALL I think her major concern when she started [The African Queen] was that [Humphrey Bogart and John Huston] would both be drinking all of the time, which, of course, they were not. We would all sit at the table, and she was studying them. For a woman to go out to Africa with these two crazy men; who the hell knows. All through the making of The African Queen, we were buddies. We came back from shooting one day and went into our huts. Both of us came screaming out because the floors of our cabins were just covered with ants. She had a stomach problem; she never complained. She just kept on going. She had nobody there with her, no assistants, no entourage, nothing. She was just Katie. Bogie had enough of Africa by the end of the shoot. Katie would be riding a bicycle, picking wildflowers. She could have stayed there for a year.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY Kate called [Peter] O'Toole "Pig," and O'Toole called Kate "Nags." Whenever there was some disagreement she would say, "Oh, listen to Tony and shut up." It was a great love-hate relationship. One day, O'Toole went off to makeup to play some blackjack, and Kate said, "Where in the hell is he?" She searched all of the set, found him in a trailer. She had a bag over her shoulder and gave him an enormous whack. Some hours later, O'Toole arrived, covered in bandages. Overplayed it. Of course, everybody laughed.

 

THE HEPBURN METHOD

 

TIMOTHY DALTON That was at a time when for every young actor the influence had been the Method and Brando. You didn't give a performance, you gently eased your way into a role, you mumbled and muttered as you were discovering. Well, forget that, I mean, bam fizz crackle spark! She knew every word and came out swinging. It was one of the most shocking and exciting moments I think I've had.

 

SAM WATERSTON In those days it was pretty much taken as sacred writ that you didn't learn your lines before rehearsal, so that you wouldn't come with premeditated choices and prejudices. This was flabbergasting to her. We ran the whole argument by her about being prepared to receive ideas from the director and the other actors, and she said, "What if they don't have any ideas?"

 

BETSY BLAIR She got up at four in the morning and did all these things before she got on the set. A hot bath when she first woke up and then exercises, then a shower and washing her hair and putting her hair in rollers. And she would get into bed with the script for the day and go over it again, and then she had this enormous breakfast of bacon and eggs and cereal and orange juice and toast, and then she would do her makeup.

 

CHRISTOPHER REEVE She never does the obvious. Often she'll laugh when you'd expect her to cry, cry when you'd expect her to laugh. My entrance in the first act, I came in through double doors, and Kate was down stage left and leaning on her cane, which at the curtain call she tossed away to prove she didn't need it. The staging called for me to come over to her and embrace. Sometimes the embrace would happen; other times she would take her cane and stick it out as though she was fencing. Suddenly, I would have to avoid being hit in the solar plexus. She did it so I wouldn't know what was going to happen next.

 

SIDNEY LUMET, director, Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) We had the read-through and at the end of it, Kate just looked at me and said, "Sidney, help." She had used up her instinct, which was superb, and now all of a sudden she needed help because you can't keep going on instinct. She needed help and she was bright enough to ask for it.

 

SAM WATERSTON Once she gave me a piece of observation that I've thought about ever since. She said, "Oh, thank God your inner clock was ticking, because when it's ticking you're interesting to watch, and when it's not ticking, it's a disaster!" I think it means, she just wanted everybody wide awake.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY I think it was particularly difficult for her to play a very southern woman [in The Glass Menagerie]. She's very Yankee. She was insistent on finding that funny old worn-out dress that she'd worn in The Philadelphia Story. She brought it to London, and it worked so wonderfully because it gave her character a sort of desperation.

 

SIDNEY LUMET There was a moment when Edmund [Dean Stockwell] stops her from ranting and says, "Mama, listen, I've got consumption," and he grabbed her and shook her, trying to get through to her. I said, "Kate, I want you to haul off and whack him across the face as hard as you can." She said, "Sidney, I don't think I could do that because I'm not a physical person. Can I try it?" I said, "Let's go," and she whacked him. I think the poor bastard still feels it. It was just brilliant. What it released in her emotionally—it was the breakthrough that she made in the part. I never rehearsed it again until we shot it because I didn't think Dean would be able to take it.

 

CHRISTOPHER REEVE At the end of the first act my character decides to marry and move to Jamaica, probably never to return. She says, "You are my last piece of magic. I have so loved my portrait in you." Nine actresses out of ten would say that looking at the grandson. She played it looking out front. I would leave, and then she would break down. You want that final embrace and good-bye so there's a clean ending, but she didn't like neatly packaged moments like that. She did something much more original—the audience got to see how devastated she was by my choice to leave.

 

"A LITTLE TOUCH OF DREAD"

 

DINA MERRILL I was looking at a magazine. She came over to me and said, "Don't ever let me see you doing that again on the set. You are a beginner, you should watch us and learn your business."

 

SAM WATERSTON I think if there hadn't been a little touch of dread [working with her], it wouldn't have been anywhere near as exciting or memorable. She was on fire.

 

TIMOTHY DALTON Katharine was unbelievably professional. She was always on time. In fact she was always early. And I asked her about this, and she said, "I hate to be kept waiting myself and I don't see why I should impose that on anybody else."

 

EDWARD ALBEE, playwright, A Delicate Balance I heard that [Kim] Stanley was working away on her Actors Studio Method, which meant that she was improvising and not doing the lines as written. Hepburn finally said very quietly, "Either she goes or I do." [Ed. note: Stanley was fired.]

 

CHRISTOPHER REEVE I felt as if I'd been temporarily adopted by her. For that period of time she treated me as I imagine she would have treated her grandson. There was a responsibility to be a relative of hers, both on stage and off. Whenever we went to a new city, the first thing she did was post a list of the best museums and things that we should do and see. And she expected us to do them, particularly me. Even though it was only a role on stage, she demanded that I live up to the standard of actually being related to her.

 

ANGELA LANSBURY She gave me a lot of the discipline that I never regretted. That's the reason that even at my advanced age there are a lot of us who are still going strong—it's largely because of women like Katharine. Betty Bacall is one, and I'm one.

 

AN AMERICAN ECCENTRIC

 

ANGELA LANSBURY  I think there are very few great American eccentrics; she was very European in that sense. What made her eccentric was her absolutely indomitable style of living life as she chose to live it.

 

ANN MILLER, costar, Stage Door (1937) She loved swimming and walking, and she kept her body strong. She thought exercise was the secret to good health, and I guess there is something to it because look how long she lived. She was always rarin' to go.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY In Connecticut, when she swam, she would break the ice. She'd say, "Why aren't you going in?"

 

WILLIAM SELF She was a very good tennis player. She and I used to play doubles with [Wimbledon champion] Bill Tilden up at Charlie Chaplin's house. She would be my partner and we'd play Tilden and Chaplin.

 

MARK RYDELL About a month before shooting began she hurt her shoulder serving tennis. She showed up in New Hampshire against the wishes of her surgeons, refusing to acknowledge her injury. It was written that she and Henry would carry a canoe down to the dock. She said, "I can carry it myself." The canoe weighed 100 pounds. She walked over and lifted it over her head with pins in her shoulder and I shot her carrying this canoe a distance of 25 yards. As happens often in editing, you look and you see you don't need this. I don't think she ever forgave me [for cutting the scene].

 

EARL HOLLIMAN Spencer said once they were out in the countryside on a picnic. Beautiful lawn, rolling hills, but there was a wire fence. So Kate got some wire cutters and cut the wire. Somebody said it was Winston Churchill's property.

 

ANGELA LANSBURY After one of the first previews of Sweeney Todd, she couldn't get backstage fast enough so she jumped into the orchestra pit and came up through the basement of the theater. I couldn't figure out how she got there so fast. She got there before I did. Those were the sorts of things she did that endeared her to you.

 

JAMES PRIDEAUX, screenwriter, TV's Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986), Laura Lansing Slept Here (1988), and The Man Upstairs (1992) I would go up there for dinner every Wednesday night. She'd be there with Phyllis [Wilbourn, her secretary and friend] and they'd do the cooking and you'd have a drink and then you'd sit down to a lovely meal of the freshest vegetables. And then you were to leave because Kate said you've said everything you have to say by that time. It wasn't this business of eat dinner at 8 and then you have to sit around and chat until 11 or they'll think it's rude. She thought that was nonsense. You've said it all—go home.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY She was in London staying at a small apartment off Grosvenor Square. She was very concerned about noise because she was shooting with George Cukor, The Corn is Green, and having an early night. She heard this sort of plop, plop, plop, and went out on the roof in her dressing gown at two in the morning to look for the source of the noise. She climbed over several rooftops and finally found it was the flag on the American embassy. So she got out her kitchen knife and cut it down. She then staggered back to her flat, over several rooftops, and with great relief, sat down on her bed. There was a terrible scream. She had gone back into the wrong place.

 

RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, costar, The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), and author, Shattered Love: A Memoir In this vast expanse of empty chairs and tables [at Venice's Valdor hotel] were Danny Kaye, Federico Fellini, and Kate Hepburn with a bottle of champagne. They invited me to join them, and they were in the middle of this conversation about Juliet of the Spirits. [Imitating Hepburn talking to Fellini]: "I mean, please, what was that all about? You and Picasso were just alike. You started out great and then you got really off-track." And then it was time for her to go home. Fellini watched her walk off, and with a kind of sadness, he said, "She's afraid of the night. She's afraid of her dreams." And it seemed terribly accurate.

 

EDWARD ALBEE She and I got along very well. She kept telling me to get my hair cut and I kept telling her to learn her lines accurately. That was our exchange: "Learn your lines," "Get your hair cut." One was the answer to the other.

 

LAUREN BACALL She always had a big straw hat keeping the sun off her face and a torn shirt. George Cukor used to always say, You think that Katie has no clothes. You don't understand that she has a closet full of khaki pants and shirts all custom-made." You know, she was never a fashion maven; she was just a natural. She believed in comfort.

 

ANGELA LANSBURY I remember her saying, "I can't stand having to wear high heels but I have to wear them with these skirts." She wore space shoes when nobody else did. You went to a special man and he took a cast of your feet. A lot of rather strange long-haired intellectuals wore them, but Katharine wore them, too.

 

RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN We were filming during the student riots in France and she was adamantly against all this student uproar. She thought they were just terrible for disturbing the peace. One day they filmed this riot scene [for the movie] from a very high crane. She was up in the crane, watching, and when Bryan [Forbes, the director] said "Cut," the kids were caught up in this incredible power of a mob and they kept throwing the rocks. Finally we got them all calmed down and the crane descended slowly and Kate stepped off and said, "You know what? Riots can be fun!"

 

CHRISTOPHER REEVE She used to say to me, "Be fascinating, Christopher," and I'd say, "Well, that's easy for you. The rest of us have to work at it."

 

KATE THE LION-HEARTED

 

MARVIN KAPLAN She adopted Phyllis Wilbourn, who was Constance Collier's secretary for years. After Miss Collier died, Wilbourn  had no job. And Miss Hepburn just took over her life. Had her for about 30 years.

 

MARK RYDELL Jane [Fonda] has a scene with Henry near the end of the picture about wanting to have a relationship like a father and a daughter. It was a big moment for both. Kate was hiding in the trees watching them, encouraging Jane between takes. She would look at Jane and Jane would look up into her eyes and Kate would give her a thumbs-up, go on, you can do it. Henry never saw her. She was so sensitive to what was going on between them. Jane was practically ill every time she had to work with Henry, it was so emotionally powerful.

 

ANGELA LANSBURY She did wonderful things for chorus people. For Coco she bought the entire chorus new shoes because the company couldn't afford to buy them.

 

LAUREN BACALL While I was having problems with my second marriage, she was always there for me. When I gave birth to Sam, my last child, I wanted her to be the godmother. She said, "Why on earth me? I don't even like children." She always put on this act of not caring, but she cared deeply about everyone. The day I came home from the hospital with my son, the door­bell rang and it was Katie, standing in the hallway with a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY O'Toole cut the top of his finger off, and she immediately rushed to the hospital and took care of him. Years later, I practically killed myself on the San Diego freeway. I didn't think I would make it at all. Kate found out about it and called the surgeon, saying, "I'm Katharine Hepburn." They were absolutely overwhelmed in the hospital. I was moved to a lovely quiet room where I did begin to recover. She rang every day I was there. I think she wrote me 70 letters. They were mostly, "Pull yourself together; don't take painkillers." Years later I had another operation, and when I came to, sitting at the end of my bed was Kate.

 

CHRISTOPHER REEVE When I was injured, the highlight of my day was going down the hall to the day room in the hospital and family members would read the mail to me. And one of the first days there was a note from Kate, and it just was one line: "Dear Christopher, By golly, what a mess. Love, Kate." And, I mean, that about summed it up.

 

THE LAST GREAT STAR

 

MARK RYDELL Harold Clurman asked her to be a member of the original Group Theatre. She said to him, "I don't want to be a member of the Group Theatre, I want to be a star. I want no part of the group dynamic. The group is by nature weak."

 

EARL HOLLIMAN If there was a photographer wandering around the set, it's like she had eyes in the back of her head. She knew exactly where he was. She could be carrying on a very deep conversation with the director and if there was a photographer snapping pictures from some place, her hand was right up under the chin.

 

ANTHONY HARVEY I called Kate in New York about four in the morning, because I thought she'd be thrilled to know that she had won [the Oscar for The Lion in Winter]. "What time is it? Oh, for God's sake, I am asleep. Just put it in a bag or something," she said. I put it in a brown paper bag and ten years later, we were sitting around one evening, and she was looking for some chocolates, and there was this bag, with the Academy Award still there.

 

EDWARD ALBEE I've watched Hepburn over many years, from the early films when she was a Bryn Mawr girl with that slightly supercilious intelligence. When I got to know her, I realized she always plays, not in any derogatory sense at all, some version of herself. This isn't a limitation on her part. I'm sure she could have played Beckett if she'd had to, but she was so good at playing Hepburn, why would you want to have anything else?

 

LAUREN BACALL Time with her was more than time well spent. A little bit with her was worth days and weeks and months with somebody else.■

 

Al Weisel is the co-author, with Larry Frascella, of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause.

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