Katharine Hepburn

[Meg]

yes such a stunning woman. I Just cannot stress enough how much i love her style and her attitude towards life. Really someone to revere. I was just thinking the other day how her style is so perfect. i really just want to walk around dressed like her

[Jadee]

simply classics

[softgrey]

this saturday would have been the 100th birthday of the late great kate!...



her very first film...a bill of divorcement-1932

[manzana]

"Afraid of death? Not at all. Be a great relief. Then I wouldn't have to talk to you."

God, I just love her.

[Quintorigo]

pic from stellaerrans.blogspot.com

[kissmesweet]

"Afraid of death? Not at all. Be a great relief. Then I wouldn't have to talk to you."

Oh Kath how much I love thee...? Let me count the ways!

[keroppi]

Aw kissmesweet, you're quoting Browning! (See my sig )

Katherine is my icon, really. She was truly timeless

[OMIFAN9]

"I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to and I've made enough money to support myself and I ain't afraid of being alone."-Katherine Hepburn
^For things like that above,I personally think Kate the Great is still so cool. They're few actresses that I quite like as far as technique and ability...you know acting. I feel thats what sets her apart from most of the other actors especially the actress. Thats how she got all those damn Oscars...strong willed/difficult behavior,unconventional looks and all,she got the job done!
Photo Credit:Alfred Eisenstaedt(1938),scanned by me.

[SomethingElse]

Let's not forget her precious golden years!


qwest.net

[Retro]

I just saw her in The Lion in Winter and she was just brilliant and no doubt well deserving of her fourth best lead actress academy award which she won for this role!

Interesting fact: Allegedly she is a direct descendant of King John of England, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, who KH played in TLIW!

[cuppycakes]

She is my favorite actress.

[Jadee]

A collection of letters and journals and scrapbooks from the estate of Katharine Hepburn has been donated to the NY Public Library.Here's an article from the NYT about this.

The Theatrical Katharine Hepburn, in Journals and Letters



The letter to George C. Tyler, a theatrical producer in New York, suggests a young actress that he “might keep in mind” for a part. “She has had a variety of experience,” it says, and “she comes from a good family.”

The well-bred lady was Katharine Hepburn, and the undated letter, from a family friend, is part of a cache of theater-related photographs, scrapbooks, journals, scripts and more. Four years after Hepburn’s death, the material forms a gift from her estate to the New York Public Library that is to be announced today. The documents, all related to Hepburn’s stage career, offer a revealing glance at her personality, profession and obsessions.


There are fan notes from Henry Fonda, Laurence Olivier and Judy Garland. “I’ve always said you were our leading actress,” Garland wrote during the 1952 run of “The Millionairess,” before complaining, “I am getting fat and pregnant and mean.” After seeing “The West Side Waltz” in 1981, Charlton Heston wrote, “You have made all our hearts tremble, one time or another.”
Yet as her niece Katharine Houghton explained, Hepburn’s “relationship with the theater was really very problematic.”


She was fired from her first role, in “The Big Pond” in 1928, after one performance. Dorothy Parker memorably wrote in her review of “The Lake” in 1933 that “Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
The trouble was her voice, which Tallulah Bankhead once likened to “nickels dropping in a slot machine.” Hepburn was unable to control it and often lost the ability to speak during performances, Ms. Houghton said.


It made the theater a terrifying place. “‘The Lake’ was such a horrible experience for her,” Ms. Houghton said, “She was sure that the audience was her enemy.”


“She was basically a very, very shy person,” Ms. Houghton continued, “terrified of coming into a room even at family get-togethers.”
In a journal from a 1950-51 road tour of “As You Like It,” Hepburn wrote that she kept her fears of a cold and laryngitis to herself: “I find that people are always ready to bury you and that the only thing that keeps you out of your grave is your own determination to stay out.”


After losing her voice during the run of George Bernard Shaw’s “Millionairess,” she went to a speech coach, Alfred Dixon. Her detailed notes are in the collection, inside a leather-bound folder with the gold-embossed initials “S.T.”


“We’re assuming it belonged to Spencer Tracy,” the great love of her life, Bob Taylor, the collection’s curator, said. (He said the collection should be available to the public in February at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.)


Not until the outpouring of acclaim for her portrayal of Coco Chanel in the 1969 musical “Coco” did Hepburn, then 62, begin to enjoy performing live, Ms. Houghton said.


Among the finds in the collection is the handwritten text of a short speech that Hepburn gave at the end of a performance of “Coco” on May 8, 1970, at the request of the actor Keir Dullea, who wanted to commemorate the four students shot earlier that week at Kent State University by National Guardsmen.


“Now, you may call them rebels or rabble rousers or anything you please,” Hepburn wrote. “Nevertheless, they were our kids and our responsibility. Our generation are responsible, and we must take time to pause and reflect and do something.” After asking for a moment of silence, she added, “If any of you wish to leave, you are free to do so, for if you do, I know you will still think about it.”


The speech was a surprise, Ms. Houghton said. Hepburn was “very careful not to mix politics with the theater,” she said, adding that her aunt often quoted Tracy’s comment that “actors who got involved in politics can suffer the fate of the man who shot Lincoln.”


In her journal from the “As You Like It” tour, Hepburn meticulously recorded the daily expenses for advertising, the box office receipts, theater descriptions (from the electrical current, “A.C. 110-220,” to which tap had scalding water, “the center”); hotel details (when room service quit for the night); and where to have sweaters professionally washed and blocked.
One episode she recounted was when, driving from Tulsa, Okla., to Wichita, Kan., she and her driver were arrested for speeding. Taken by the police to a lawyer’s office in Blackwell, Okla., Hepburn declared, “I have been arrested by this moron.” Hepburn’s fury grew as they were unable to find a judge. “I said that I was sorry I did not have a week to take off,” she wrote, “and if I ever found an Oklahoma car in Connecticut, I would flatten all the tires.”


She ended up singeing her coat (probably a mink, Ms. Houghton said) on a gas stove. “You must have paid $700 for it,” the lawyer commented.
Hepburn wrote, “I am ashamed to say that I was cheap enough to answer: ‘Certainly not. $5,500.’ And he just looked pathetic, and I must say I felt awfully moronic.”


As Hepburn prepared for the “As You Like It” tour, Lawrence Langner of the Theater Guild was trying to get George Bernard Shaw to sign off on a production of “The Millionairess.” He wrote Hepburn about the meeting he and his wife, Armina, had in London with Shaw, referred to as G.B.S. in his letter:


“G.B.S.: What sort of an athlete is Kate? She has to do judo. That’s what you call jiu-jitsu.
“Armina: She’s a very good athlete.
“G.B.S.: (not hearing correctly) I know she’s a good actress. I mean is she strong?
“Armina: Is she strong? Why, she gets up and plays tennis every morning. She’s one of the most athletic girls I know. She’s terrific.
“G.B.S.: Then I think it’s dangerous for her to play the part.
“L.L. (getting a word in edgeways): Why?
“G.B.S.: Dangerous for the actor she’s doing the judo with. She’ll probably kill him.
“L.L.: Oh, no, G.B.S. She’s a very tender-hearted girl. She wouldn’t kill another actor.”

[Jadee]

I recommend watching the NYT slideshow to see pictures of her scrapbooks.

source NYT

[the Aesthetics]

"Her daring personal style during the "lady-like" era e.g. of making men's pant paired with shirt look truly chic, in addition at ease. Such effortlessly elegance regarded her as bona fide icon"

[the Aesthetics]