Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)

Cafe Society
61

Today’s NY Post—not usually my favorite paper!—has a wonderful wrap-around special on her today, lacking only newsboys on the corner shouting, “Extry, extry—Kate Hepburn dies!”

I have to agree about Lion in Winter; I think that’s my all-round favorite performance of hers. I did the play in college once, and a friend said, “It was like watching Sandra Dee play Lady Macbeth.” A dramatic actress I was not.

As far as her and Spence: well, obviously, they met some need in one another. If they had married, maybe it wouldn’t have lasted. But it’s the one thing in her private life that brings her down to the level of us poor mortals . . .

62

“Its the 13th Century and we’re barbarians. Of course we’ve got knives.”

Also, the wordless scene where Cary Grant (as C. K. Dexterhaven) comes back to the front door ready to punch her lights out, but instead just puts his hand across her face and pushes her backward through the door. How many times have you wanted to do that?

She also thought that it made more sense to live next door to someone you were married to so you could visit from time to time. Makes perfect sense to me.

63

And so I find out about Katharine Hepburn’s death in a Pit thread (wondering why someone would possibly pit Eve); I should have come to Cafe Society first this morning. sigh

Given Hepburn’s age and general health, I knew that this would have to happen sometime soon, but am still surprised and deeply saddened now that it actually has. She’s been my favorite actress for most of my life.

Favorite early Kate: Bringing up Baby.

Favorite with-Spencer Kate: Pat and Mike. I love watching her beat up Charles Bronson.

Favorite later Kate: Lion in Winter. Her Eleanor of Aquitaine is my role model for how I want to be at 60.

64

One of my favourite actors from the days of the silver screen. :frowning:

Sad news, but at least now she rests.

Farewell, gracious, gifted lady.

65

I was sad when I heard the news this morning that Katharine Hepburn had passed away. Desk Set and The Philadelphia Story are two of my favorite old movies.

RIP, Katharine.

66

Someone interviewed her once (some big magazine, but I forget which one…you’ll have to trust me) and said she was a bitch. A rude bitch. If I remember correctly, there was something about her being three minutes late due to NY traffic, and Kate read her the riot act.

Great actress, though. She’ll be remembered.

67

She admitted herself that “I’m a madly irritating person, and I irritated them for years.” When you read memoirs of her costars, she was more “admired” than “liked.”

I’m glad to see she admitted this, though, from one of the obits: “At the beginning I had money; I wasn’t a poor little thing. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had to come to New York and get a job as a waiter or something like that. I think I’m a success, but I had every advantage—I should have been.”

68

Wow. I honestly thought Katharine Hepburn would live forever.

A fine actress and a fascinating person. She was one of a kind.

RIP.

69

I trust TCM will do a Kate Hepburn marathon this week, as they did for Gregory Peck.

She was a grand old gal, and her Yankee patrician persona will still live on in her body of work.

70

Although certainly not a shock, it is sad all the same.

She was a great actress, but to me it was the whole package; she simply epitomized “class” and Yankee spirit.

I think she would have made the perfect Aunt Kate - someone who wouldn’t have been afraid to stick her arm in a bucket of worms and show you how to bait a hook, and yet the same person who could throw together a dinner party for eight in minutes.

She was the original non-nonsense woman in a time when women simply didn’t behave “that way.”

Odd. I never had got chance to meet her, but I really do feel like a personal family patriarch has passed on.

71

Today I’m thinking Kate’s face in her scene in The Lion In Winter when she is trying on her old crown and jewels before a mirror, and you can see the memories of triumphs past and love given up for ambition play across her features. I wish Mrs. Parker had gotten a gander at that scene.

72

Such a rare combination of beauty, strength and talent.

73

Well, personally speaking, I can think of few actresses with such high reputations who made so few great films. Bringing Up Baby & The Philadelphia Story are both classics and Holiday’s a forgotten gem (and all, not-so-coincidentally, co-star Cary Grant), but there were a lot of tedious and overrated films from the 40s on.

African Queen suffers from the embarrassingly excessive cutesy-poos, Lion in Winter plays like a 12th century Noises Off! (though there are some rip-snortingly fun performances), and all the Spencer Tracy films are mild and innocuous–he was never a genuine on-screen threat to her the way that Grant was. And GWC2Dinner and OGPond are simply unbearable. That she netted 4 competitive Oscars while Stanwyck never won one is yet another Academy injustice (though one rarely mentioned).

However, as Alice Adams & Summertime demonstrate, she did have the chops. Too bad too few films are worth the effort (though CStrong and SScarlett have to bee seen to be believed).

RIP

74

Ah, well, you see, I find her unbearably fey and twee in Alice Adams. When Fred MacMurray asks her about herself, she flutters and goes, “Oh, I don’t know; I’m just—me, I guess,” and you hope he knocks her off the porch with a right to the jaw.

Gobear, I hope if TCM does a tribute, they don’t do what they did with Gregory Peck: show unscheduled films so you don’t know what’s on when and can’t tape them!

75

This is an obscure one, but all day I’ve been flashing on Rooster Cogburn and the immortal combination of John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn as a preacher’s daughter. “Is your name written in the Book of Life?”

Carol Burnett parodied this wonderfully, by the way.

76

There’s Archive Guy, the heretic!

Get 'im Quasi, get 'im!

To the Pit with him. Burn him like Eve. Burn him!

[Grinny]

77

Ha! You should just be glad I didn’t interrupt the lovefest at the Gregory Peck thread. :wink:

78

I always knew that when she died, I would be bummed, but I shocked the hell outta myself…I sat and sobbed like she was my favorite aunt or something. I’m not kidding. I cried nonstop for a good 45 minutes. I was totally trashed. The thought that her wonderful, smart, strong, brilliant spirit is no longer with us just breaks my heart.

She was the greatest.

79

As long as Spencer is there, that’s enough…

80

From the Turner Classic Movie website:

TCM revises its schedule on Thursday, July 10th to pay tribute to Katharine Hepburn, 1907-2003

Schedule for July 10th:
6:00 AM Mary of Scotland ('36)
8:15 AM Holiday ('38)
10:00 AM Woman of the Year ('42)
12:00 PM Adam’s Rib ('49)
2:00 PM Pat and Mike ('52)
4:00 PM The Lion in Winter ('68)
6:30 PM Katharine Hepburn: All About Me
8:00 PM Bringing Up Baby ('38)
10:00 PM The Philadelphia Story ('40)
12:00 AM Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? ('67)
2:00 AM Little Women ('33)
4:00 AM Undercurrent ('46)

A Fond Memory by Robert Osborne

Call it a schoolboy whim, call it madness, but I once had the nerve to ask Katharine Hepburn to dinner. I’d never met her, mind you, but does a reason like that ever stop a cheeky college boy, filled with the flush of being 18? At the time, I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, and Hepburn was in Seattle on tour in a play. Hepburn! Live! In my town! It was too good to be true. It also seemed to be my mission to entertain her. She was, after all, a visitor in my domain, probably didn’t know a soul in Seattle and wouldn’t have a clue on how to fill those empty hours when she wouldn’t be on stage. It was clearly up to me to rescue her. (Oh, the way the brain works when one is 18!). I tried to do it in an MGManner. I took some flowers to the front desk at her hotel (the local papers had mentioned where she was staying), and enclosed a note with an invitation to dinner at a spiffy restaurant (one I could ill afford but, well, I’d worry about that later). And I waited.

And waited. Silence. Hmmm, there must have been a breakdown in communication. So I bought a second bouquet, though a smaller one, out of financial necessity, again enclosing a note to my pal Kate. (By now, in my mind, we were old, old friends or, at least, about to be.) Still no reply . A third bouquet didn’t bring any better results. Then, soon after, the play ended, and Miss Hepburn and her fellow actors left town and moved on to the next engagement. I was crushed, then chagrined, then disappointed, then disenchanted. Never once did wisdom become a part of the equation. My only relief was the fact there’d been no restaurant bill to pay. But, as often happens with 18 year olds, I soon forgot about the episode, and moved on to some other pursuit. And then one day a letter arrived, with the logo of a prestigious Seattle hotel in the left hand corner. And inside were some words I’ve treasured ever since.

The note read, “You are certainly very enthusiastic, and one quality I have enormous regard for is enthusiasm but, alas, in this instance I cannot respond - except to thank you for your beautiful red roses - they are particularly lovely ones - and to tell you that I never go out anywhere - but thank you for asking me. I have dinner before the play and I have to go home and go to bed afterward - otherwise I should die of exhaustion. I am sorry to disappoint you. But I’m not too sure it’s a good idea for a young man to go about asking strange actresses to supper. Yours faithfully, Katharine Hepburn.” Has anyone had their knuckles rapped with more class and style? I doubt it. Style and class have always been synonymous with Miss Hepburn. In honor of her memory, TCM will show 11 of her films and one documentary on Thursday, July 10th beginning at 6:00 am ET. (see schedule above).

by Robert Osborne

The Arthur Freed Unit Horrors of the Black Museum Jubilee on DVD Bend of the River on DVD The Blue Kite Before Hollywood There was Fort Lee, N. J.

Here’s your chance to try and win a free copy of producer-director Ismail Merchant’s memoir of his film careers in both India and America.