Post by smith on Jul 1, 2005 18:57:00 GMT -5
Dan Ford's letter implies that Katharine Hepburn and John Ford did not have a love affair in the 1930's. Yet in "Pappy," Mr. Ford writes that Ms. Hepburn and John Ford "fell in love" and that his grandfather "was obsessed by Kate and found with her a degree of happiness and a peace of mind that he had never known before." "Obsessed" is his word, not mine. If I wanted to sensationalize the relationship, why would I have twice pointed out that it remained unconsummated -- something Mr. Ford fails to clarify in "Pappy"?
The letters described in my book speak for themselves. While touring in "Jane Eyre," Kate writes to Ford of speaking to him through the setting sun; she tells him that he is perfection and that his place in her heart is everlasting. She describes going out on stage, imagining Ford's face floating in the air before her. She writes him at the studio or the Hollywood Athletic Club; she dares not contact him at home. When he vacillates, she tells him that in matters of a passionate nature, clarity is essential, either a yes or a no. When she fears that he will decide not to see her, she vows to drive past his house in an open car and think a thousand thoughts. None of this sounds like casual correspondence to me. And Dan Ford knows perfectly well that in the extensive taped conversations I cite on pages 530 and 531, Ms. Hepburn and his grand father tell many of the stories about their encounters that I relate in the book, and that the other cited papers contain further details. He also knows that I am hardly the first writer to have discussed the romance.
On John Ford's drinking, there is abundant material in the papers. I do not depict Ford as "continuously drunk." I write, "He was a periodic alcoholic who exercised control over when he hit the bottle: never during a picture, always after." In Mary Ford's reminiscences, she takes pride in being known as "the lion tamer." In an April 1963 letter, Ford describes her screaming and hysteria. My depiction of Mary is by no means entirely negative. I say of Ford that "in his own peculiar way, he was devoted to Mary." I give her credit for the "power" of her personality. I can sympathize with Dan Ford's desire to view his grandparents' marriage as less troubled than it was, but as a biographer I have to depict that relationship objectively.
Selden West also takes issue with my treatment of Ms. Hepburn's relationship with Ford. But whereas Dan Ford seems to think I treat his grandfather as a villain, Ms. West complains that I make him a hero. She notes that there is no correspondence between Ford and Ms. Hepburn from the 1940's at the Lilly Library. I never said there was. The passage she cites from my book ("In the spring of 1940 . . .") is taken out of context. Pages 384 and 385 sum up changes in the Ford-Hepburn relationship between 1938, when she left Los Angeles, and 1940, when she returned; I refer to events in Ford's life in 1939 and to Ms. Hepburn's year on Broadway. Their letters from 1938 and 1939 show them struggling for a new kind of relationship.
During the war, I make clear, Ford dedicated himself to the role of dutiful husband; I cite correspondence with Mary in which he vows that she is the only woman he ever really loved. Whatever Ms. West implies, I describe no correspondence with Ms. Hepburn between 1940 and 1954. Ms. West minimizes Ford's 1954 letter as a "film offer." I see it as something more. I analyze Ford's motives in making the offer, the psychological implications of Ms. Hepburn's reaction and the impact on Spencer Tracy. Later Ms. Hepburn may have written that only Tracy knew her, but the March 1, 1937, letter and other evidence I reviewed led me to conclude that at one point she did believe that John Ford understood her. The statement in the autobiography is no reason to eliminate earlier evidence. Ms. West seems to believe that every time one disagrees with the official version, that amounts to distortion.
Ms. West's tactic throughout her letter is to remove my statements from their context. She distorts the nature of my work at Lilly by referring to a single part of a long source note that describes my time-consuming research. I clearly indicate that my stay had to be a long one because I was working with a great deal of evidence of many kinds: not just Ford's and Ms. Hepburn's letters to each other, but letters to and from many other sources; hours and hours of taped conversations with Ms. Hepburn, Ford, Mary Ford, their daughter, Barbara, and their circle; transcripts of interviews; and other kinds of documentation. In the case of the taped conversations, I had to listen to -- and analyze -- the tapes themselves, often several times, often typing my own transcriptions and notes to correct the frequently erroneous edited transcripts in the collection.
The letters of Ms. Hepburn to Ford that I describe in the book reveal a unique spirit. Even in later years, the voice in her letters to him was different from the voice in letters to other friends and associates. The gallant, vulnerable woman in these letters was precisely the character I wanted to write about, which is why I studied them so intently. I needed to absorb that remarkable spirit. I also needed to understand those letters in the context of the voluminous other materials in the archive.
Typically taking my remarks out of context, Ms. West completely omits my description of the many other important related materials I searched through each day. She seems unaware that a serious biographer does not analyze a letter in isolation. For example, a 1937 letter from Ms. Hepburn's secretary Emily Perkins to Ford clarified the status of the Ford-Hepburn relationship during the "Jane Eyre" tour. And that permitted me to go back and see underlying tensions in an ostensibly comic letter from Ford to Ms. Hepburn on Jan. 25.
I certainly have not misrepresented Lilly's holdings. Every letter and document described in my book is there, or is referred to in one of the documents in the collection. And those materials were supplemented with papers from other collections, like the Beinecke Library; for instance, in a 1937 letter of the playwright Helen Jerome, I found important information about Kate's state of mind during the "Jane Eyre" tour that I related to tensions with Ford. It is no surprise that in only one visit of a mere eight hours, Ms. West was unable to find some of the papers I worked with at the Beinecke. Even with my assistant, it took me many months of repeated visits to plow through the partly uncatalogued Theater Guild papers and other collections. The Philip Barry papers alone consisted of 50 boxes, which had to be ordered and taken to the researcher's table one at a time.
Ms. West is the "authorized" biographer of Spencer Tracy, with all that that implies. I suppose that my objective portrait of Tracy conflicts and competes with the official account Ms. West has been working on for several years. I give Tracy credit for being a brilliant actor, but I cannot help that he was a troubled man. His earlier biographers have chronicled many of his torments. Orson Welles and others told me about Tracy's obsession that his visits to brothels and the venereal infections he contracted there had caused his son's deafness. Letters of those who knew Tracy testify to his often frantic state of mind. Katharine Hepburn, in a Sept. 7, 1944, letter to Philip Barry's wife, describes him as a wreck who fears he is about to go mad. George Cukor, in an Aug. 16, 1948, letter to his assistant Elsa Schroeder, writes of Tracy's habit of disappearing from film sets for two or three weeks at a time on account of nerves or depression.
Ms. West's statement that I portray Ford, Tracy and Ms. Hepburn in "a romantic triangle" implies that I depict Kate as having had simultaneous affairs with two men; that is certainly not the case. As their tapes at Lilly attest, Ford continued to have strong feelings for Kate. But as I show in the book, during Tracy's life she was resistant whenever Ford came too close emotionally. Her commitment was to Tracy. Ms. Hepburn did see the psychological similarities between Ford and Tracy. At Ford's deathbed, she talked revealingly about the ability to be devastated by the world that characterized Ford and Tracy. As Katharine Hepburn's biographer, I could not help being fascinated by what it was that drew her to both men.
I am appalled by Selden West's total misrepresentation of my book. Ms. West accuses me of distortion, but it is she who repeatedly distorts what I have written.
The letters described in my book speak for themselves. While touring in "Jane Eyre," Kate writes to Ford of speaking to him through the setting sun; she tells him that he is perfection and that his place in her heart is everlasting. She describes going out on stage, imagining Ford's face floating in the air before her. She writes him at the studio or the Hollywood Athletic Club; she dares not contact him at home. When he vacillates, she tells him that in matters of a passionate nature, clarity is essential, either a yes or a no. When she fears that he will decide not to see her, she vows to drive past his house in an open car and think a thousand thoughts. None of this sounds like casual correspondence to me. And Dan Ford knows perfectly well that in the extensive taped conversations I cite on pages 530 and 531, Ms. Hepburn and his grand father tell many of the stories about their encounters that I relate in the book, and that the other cited papers contain further details. He also knows that I am hardly the first writer to have discussed the romance.
On John Ford's drinking, there is abundant material in the papers. I do not depict Ford as "continuously drunk." I write, "He was a periodic alcoholic who exercised control over when he hit the bottle: never during a picture, always after." In Mary Ford's reminiscences, she takes pride in being known as "the lion tamer." In an April 1963 letter, Ford describes her screaming and hysteria. My depiction of Mary is by no means entirely negative. I say of Ford that "in his own peculiar way, he was devoted to Mary." I give her credit for the "power" of her personality. I can sympathize with Dan Ford's desire to view his grandparents' marriage as less troubled than it was, but as a biographer I have to depict that relationship objectively.
Selden West also takes issue with my treatment of Ms. Hepburn's relationship with Ford. But whereas Dan Ford seems to think I treat his grandfather as a villain, Ms. West complains that I make him a hero. She notes that there is no correspondence between Ford and Ms. Hepburn from the 1940's at the Lilly Library. I never said there was. The passage she cites from my book ("In the spring of 1940 . . .") is taken out of context. Pages 384 and 385 sum up changes in the Ford-Hepburn relationship between 1938, when she left Los Angeles, and 1940, when she returned; I refer to events in Ford's life in 1939 and to Ms. Hepburn's year on Broadway. Their letters from 1938 and 1939 show them struggling for a new kind of relationship.
During the war, I make clear, Ford dedicated himself to the role of dutiful husband; I cite correspondence with Mary in which he vows that she is the only woman he ever really loved. Whatever Ms. West implies, I describe no correspondence with Ms. Hepburn between 1940 and 1954. Ms. West minimizes Ford's 1954 letter as a "film offer." I see it as something more. I analyze Ford's motives in making the offer, the psychological implications of Ms. Hepburn's reaction and the impact on Spencer Tracy. Later Ms. Hepburn may have written that only Tracy knew her, but the March 1, 1937, letter and other evidence I reviewed led me to conclude that at one point she did believe that John Ford understood her. The statement in the autobiography is no reason to eliminate earlier evidence. Ms. West seems to believe that every time one disagrees with the official version, that amounts to distortion.
Ms. West's tactic throughout her letter is to remove my statements from their context. She distorts the nature of my work at Lilly by referring to a single part of a long source note that describes my time-consuming research. I clearly indicate that my stay had to be a long one because I was working with a great deal of evidence of many kinds: not just Ford's and Ms. Hepburn's letters to each other, but letters to and from many other sources; hours and hours of taped conversations with Ms. Hepburn, Ford, Mary Ford, their daughter, Barbara, and their circle; transcripts of interviews; and other kinds of documentation. In the case of the taped conversations, I had to listen to -- and analyze -- the tapes themselves, often several times, often typing my own transcriptions and notes to correct the frequently erroneous edited transcripts in the collection.
The letters of Ms. Hepburn to Ford that I describe in the book reveal a unique spirit. Even in later years, the voice in her letters to him was different from the voice in letters to other friends and associates. The gallant, vulnerable woman in these letters was precisely the character I wanted to write about, which is why I studied them so intently. I needed to absorb that remarkable spirit. I also needed to understand those letters in the context of the voluminous other materials in the archive.
Typically taking my remarks out of context, Ms. West completely omits my description of the many other important related materials I searched through each day. She seems unaware that a serious biographer does not analyze a letter in isolation. For example, a 1937 letter from Ms. Hepburn's secretary Emily Perkins to Ford clarified the status of the Ford-Hepburn relationship during the "Jane Eyre" tour. And that permitted me to go back and see underlying tensions in an ostensibly comic letter from Ford to Ms. Hepburn on Jan. 25.
I certainly have not misrepresented Lilly's holdings. Every letter and document described in my book is there, or is referred to in one of the documents in the collection. And those materials were supplemented with papers from other collections, like the Beinecke Library; for instance, in a 1937 letter of the playwright Helen Jerome, I found important information about Kate's state of mind during the "Jane Eyre" tour that I related to tensions with Ford. It is no surprise that in only one visit of a mere eight hours, Ms. West was unable to find some of the papers I worked with at the Beinecke. Even with my assistant, it took me many months of repeated visits to plow through the partly uncatalogued Theater Guild papers and other collections. The Philip Barry papers alone consisted of 50 boxes, which had to be ordered and taken to the researcher's table one at a time.
Ms. West is the "authorized" biographer of Spencer Tracy, with all that that implies. I suppose that my objective portrait of Tracy conflicts and competes with the official account Ms. West has been working on for several years. I give Tracy credit for being a brilliant actor, but I cannot help that he was a troubled man. His earlier biographers have chronicled many of his torments. Orson Welles and others told me about Tracy's obsession that his visits to brothels and the venereal infections he contracted there had caused his son's deafness. Letters of those who knew Tracy testify to his often frantic state of mind. Katharine Hepburn, in a Sept. 7, 1944, letter to Philip Barry's wife, describes him as a wreck who fears he is about to go mad. George Cukor, in an Aug. 16, 1948, letter to his assistant Elsa Schroeder, writes of Tracy's habit of disappearing from film sets for two or three weeks at a time on account of nerves or depression.
Ms. West's statement that I portray Ford, Tracy and Ms. Hepburn in "a romantic triangle" implies that I depict Kate as having had simultaneous affairs with two men; that is certainly not the case. As their tapes at Lilly attest, Ford continued to have strong feelings for Kate. But as I show in the book, during Tracy's life she was resistant whenever Ford came too close emotionally. Her commitment was to Tracy. Ms. Hepburn did see the psychological similarities between Ford and Tracy. At Ford's deathbed, she talked revealingly about the ability to be devastated by the world that characterized Ford and Tracy. As Katharine Hepburn's biographer, I could not help being fascinated by what it was that drew her to both men.
I am appalled by Selden West's total misrepresentation of my book. Ms. West accuses me of distortion, but it is she who repeatedly distorts what I have written.