Oscar Profile: Katharine Hepburn Revisited

Born in May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, Katharine (Houghton) Hepburn was the daughter of a prominent Connecticut doctor and a noted suffragette. The liberally raised tomboy attended Bryn Mawr College where she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions.

Hepburn had a brief stage career before breaking through in the 1932 Broadway play, A Warrior’s Husband. She made her film debut that same year in A Bill of Divorcement opposite John Barrymore as her mentally ill father. She was in three films in 1933, Christopher Strong, Morning Glory, and Little Women, earning an Oscar for Morning Glory, although it is Little Women that was more popular even then and remaining so to this day.

The mid-1930s found Hepburn in such films as The Little Minister, Alice Adams for which she received her second Oscar nomination, Mary of Scotland, and Stage Door, but she fell out of favor with the movie going public, so much so that not even now revered performances in Bringing Up Baby and Holiday could save her. She returned to Broadway where she was a smash hit in Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story written for her by the Holiday playwright.

The actress bought the screen rights to The Philadelphia Story which she sold to MGM with cast and director approval and never looked back. She was The Great Kat, First Lady of cinema from then on.

Hepburn won a third Oscar nomination for 1940’s The Philadelphia Story and a fourth for 1942’s Woman of the Year, the first of her nine films opposite Spencer Tracy. Their subsequent 1940s films included Without Love, The Sea of Grass, State of the Union, and Adam’s Rib. In 1951, she would play her first spinster role in John Huston’s The African Queen for which she would receive her fifth Oscar nomination. She played her last youthful role in 1952’s Pat and Mike opposite Tracy.

From 1955 through 1973, every film would be a prestige project except for 1956’s The Iron Petticoat in which she ludicrously played a Russian defector opposite Bob Hope. The prestige projects were 1955’s Summertime (her sixth Oscar nod), 1956’s The Rainmaker (her seventh), 1957’s Desk Set, 1959’s Suddenly, Last Summer (her eighth), 1962’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (her ninth), 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (her tenth nomination and second win), 1968’s The Lion in Winter (her eleventh nomination and third win), 1969’sThe Madwoman of Chaillot, 1971’s The Trojan Women, and 1973’s A Delicate Balance. She also found time to star in her first and only Broadway musical as Coco Chanel in 1969’s Coco for which she was nominated for a Tony losing to Lauren Bacall in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve.

Hepburn turned to television in the mid-1970s in a series of celebrated made-for-TV movies, 1973’s The Glass Menagerie (her first Emmy nomination), 1975’s A Delicate Balance (her second Emmy nomination and only win), and 1979’s The Corn Is Green (her third Emmy nomination). With 1981’s On Golden Pond she earned her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win, a record that still stands twenty-two years later.

Subsequent works were not to the level of her previous work, though she still received an Emmy nomination for 1985’s Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry. Her last film would be 1994’s Love Affair, a remake of Leo McCarey’s 1939 film of the same name, previously remade as 1957’s An Affair to Remember. She played Warren Beatty’s aunt, which had been written as his grandmother, a role she refused to play even at 87.

Katharine Hepburn died June 29, 2003 at 96.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

LITTLE WOMEN (1933), directed by George Cukor

Hepburn won her first Oscar playing an aspiring actress in 1933’s Morning Glory, but she should have been nominated and won for Little Women, the first talkie version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic 1868 novel. Based on Alcott’s own family during and immediately following the Civil War, Hepburn’s character was based on Alcott herself. The film features many fine performances including those of Joan Bennett, Frances Dee and Jean Parker as her sisters, Spring Byington as her mother, Edna May Oliver as her aunt, Douglass Montgomery and Paul Lukas as her suitors, but it is Hepburn’s portrayal of Jo that carries the film and makes it special.

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940), directed by George Cukor

By the late 1930s Hepburn had fallen out of favor. Even her best films such as 1938’s Bringing Up Baby and Holiday failed to make money. She returned in triumph to the stage in The Philadelphia Story, buying the film rights, and picking Cary Grant and James Stewart to co-star for MGM. Hepburn won her only New York Film Critics’ award as the headstrong heiress juggling three suitors and James Stewart won his only Oscar as the reporter who falls under her spell. The supporting cast includes Ruth Hussey, John Howard, Roland Young, John Halliday, Mary Nash, and Virginia Weidler.

SUMMERTIME (1955), directed by David Lean

Hepburn glows in the role of a middle-aged American secretary who spends her life savings on a trip to Venice before settling into permanent spinsterhood. Rosano Brazzi co-stars as the married Italian lothario with a teenage son that she falls briefly in love with. The third star of the film is Venice itself, beautifully photographed by Lean and cinematographer Jack Hildyard, but it’s Hepburn’s magnificent acting that you remember – a look here, a glance there and that enigmatic smile as she frantically waves goodbye from a train not too successfully hiding her breaking heart.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962), directed by Sidney Lumet

Hepburn topped herself again as the drug addicted mother in Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night with stalwart assist from Ralph Richardson as her miserly actor husband, Jason Robards as her alcoholic older son and Dean Stockwell as the consumptive younger son based on O’Neill himself. All four were rewarded for their performances at the Cannes Film Festival but only Hepburn received an Oscar nomination, her ninth. She would go on to receive three more, winning on all three occasions for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond.

THE LION IN WINTER (1968), directed by Anthony Harvey

Hepburn’s brilliant Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter is the only one of her four Oscars that most film historians agree she deserved to win. Her Eleanor is a force to be reckoned with as the Queen in Exile reunited with her family for a Christmas of sparring in 1183. Hepburn and Peter O’Toole, reprising his role from Becket as Henry II, spew forth non-stop verbal attacks on one another in their battle of wits to name Henry’s successor. Anthony Hopkins as Richard (the Lionheart), John Castle as the forgotten middle son Geoffrey, and Nigel Terry as the future King John co-starry along with Timothy Dalton as Spain’s young King Philip.