Post by guesttoo on Jul 23, 2005 10:26:43 GMT -5
To the Editor:
Because I am writing the authorized biography of Spencer Tracy, I was eagerly anticipating Barbara Leaming's biography of Katharine Hepburn – hoping not only to read it for pleasure but to learn from it. And I found the early part of the book as interesting as your reviewer, Janet Maslin, did – that is, those portions that preceded Ms. Hepburn's birth and therefore fall outside my area of research. But as I followed Ms. Leaming into familiar territory. I grew first confused, then distressed and then angry. Ms. Leaming having done her research thoroughly, has consistently perverted it – no doubt to promote the psychological romantic drama she is clearly determined to make of Ms. Hepburn's story.
It is never hard to tell with whom Ms. Leaming's sympathies lie. She cues us to cheer and hiss.
John Ford, "a brilliant romantic rebel" with a "strong, sweet melodious voice" is our hero. His wife, Mary Ford, with her "harsh roughneck's voice" and "shrieking fits" is less lucky. At one point she is described as "cackling with malicious delight."
But Ms. Leaming is only sharpening her steel for her real villain, Spencer Tracy. Tracy is, we discover "deeply suspicious", "very manipulative", "devious", "neurotic" and "constantly frantic." He beats up prostitutes and believes his son's deafness is due to his own "venereal infections". He is "a drunk . . . . and a malefactor" who is obsessed with "his own loathsomeness". He deliberately degrades Ms. Hepburn, visiting her in the evening and leaving "when he was finished." "The arrangement", says Ms. Leaming "seemed to turn him on." According to Ms. Leaming, it is a "fact" that Spencer Tracy saw Katharine Hepburn as a "whore." "Full of self loathing as he was", she declares, "he seemed to enjoy humiliating Kate by bringing her down to his level; turning a woman of her caliber into his mistress. Tracy reminded himself and others of the moral depth to which he had sunk."
No wonder Janet Maslin found Tracy to be a "cruel erratic figure." Faced with 17 pages of source notes, Ms. Maslin may also be forgiven her references to Ms. Leaming's "prodigious" and "enterprising" research.
However I have been immersed in the same resources as Ms. Leaming. In four years of reading Tracy's diaries, interviewing surviving friends and conducting research in memoirs, studio papers and oral histories in almost two dozen libraries across the United States and England, I have not found any evidence that Tracy suffered from venereal disease. Certainly his medical records fail to note any such condition.
Moreover, these same sources show that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn spent days together playing tennis with friends, flying kites, reading, painting and walking the beaches, so Ms. Leaming's tale of his visiting only in the evenings – and leaving when "finished" – is an utter falsehood. And Ms. Leaming's only source for the "fact" that Tracy saw Ms. Hepburn as a "whore" is the story that he once envisioned her as cast as the prostitute in his film "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Finally, Ms. Leaming's statement that Tracy's living arrangement "seemed to turn him on" contradicts the impression of all his closest friends who thought it tore him apart.
In this book Tracy is not allowed a single redeeming quality. Ms. Leaming never mentions his humor – by all accounts one of his defining characteristics – much less his kindness and integrity. Ms. Leaming warps Tracy into a figures so unrelievedly loathsome that Katharine Hepburn, by her devotion, appears to be staggering under a crippling psychological burden.
Ideally a biographer's notes allows an interested reader to follow in the author's footsteps, to find and read the same sources and to see how he reached his conclusions. By this standard, Ms. Leaming's notes are, at the very least, grossly inadequate.
Eight hours of uninterrupted research at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, with the help of two reference librarians, failed to turn up many of the letters and documents Ms. Leaming implies she found there. Even more troubling, when one does find a source, to look at it side by side with Ms. Leaming's use of it is to see that in almost every case aspects of the truth have been extracted -- and distorted.
Here are only two of countless examples:
1. Ms. Leaming states repeatedly (at least five times) that Ms. Hepburn wrote to John Ford that no one else had understood her as he had. Actually the letter that comes closest to expressing this sentiment dated March 1, 1937, says simply "I know that you understand me – please do always." (Tellingly, while exaggerating the Ford relationship, Ms. Leaming fails to report that in her autobiography Katharine Hepburn describes Spencer Tracy as "the only one who ever really knew me.")
2. Of the many instances of Ms. Leaming's distortions and omissions, perhaps the most egregious relates to the cache of love letters to Ford that forms the back bone of this book. As Ms. Leaming tells us "it was during the several weeks I spent in Bloomington studying the Ford papers that Katharine Hepburn first came alive for me in a way that made this book possible to write. Day after day, I would arrive at the library as the doors opened and begin to read Kate's letters to Ford -- letters unlike any others of hers I was to see. I read at breakneck speed all the while marking pages to be photocopied, pages I was later to read countless times until the words and phrases were carved in my memory."
These are the facts. The Lily library in Bloomington owns five letters from Ford to Ms. Hepburn and sixteen communications from Ms. Hepburn to Ford. Of these sixteen several are postcards and telegrams and half are dated after 1960 (Their serious involvement was in 1936-37, long before Ms. Hepburn met Tracy.) At most there are two love letters. The day after day regimen that Ms. Leaming describes is only possible if she is the slowest reader alive, she is reading the same letters over and over again or she is misrepresenting the Lily holdings.
The last seems clear when one re-examines Ms. Leaming's story. "In the spring of 1940 when Kate returned to Los Angeles . . . . her relationship with Ford was still somehow unresolved. Their correspondence shows that they never stopped caring for each other. Gradually the lovers became loving friends. Yet there was no demarcation, no definite unambiguous yes or no. To read their letters from that time is to watch them struggle, sometimes uncomfortably to forge a new kind of relationship."
There is no correspondence between Katharine Hepburn and John Ford from the spring of 1940 -- indeed from the entire 1940s – at the Lily library, or to my knowledge, anywhere else. In the Lily library there is no correspondence between Ford and Ms Hepburn at all dated between 1939 and 1954 – both those years are represented by single letters; the first a thank you note, the second a film offer. The next contact is a postcard in 1960. Ms. Leaming has bent the fact to establish a romantic triangle that simple never existed.
In light of her questionable methods, even the early section of Ms. Leaming's book, on the family history, become suspect. What is certain, finally, is that she misrepresents her sources so pervasively that her book is useless as biography.
Selden West
Alexandra, VA
Because I am writing the authorized biography of Spencer Tracy, I was eagerly anticipating Barbara Leaming's biography of Katharine Hepburn – hoping not only to read it for pleasure but to learn from it. And I found the early part of the book as interesting as your reviewer, Janet Maslin, did – that is, those portions that preceded Ms. Hepburn's birth and therefore fall outside my area of research. But as I followed Ms. Leaming into familiar territory. I grew first confused, then distressed and then angry. Ms. Leaming having done her research thoroughly, has consistently perverted it – no doubt to promote the psychological romantic drama she is clearly determined to make of Ms. Hepburn's story.
It is never hard to tell with whom Ms. Leaming's sympathies lie. She cues us to cheer and hiss.
John Ford, "a brilliant romantic rebel" with a "strong, sweet melodious voice" is our hero. His wife, Mary Ford, with her "harsh roughneck's voice" and "shrieking fits" is less lucky. At one point she is described as "cackling with malicious delight."
But Ms. Leaming is only sharpening her steel for her real villain, Spencer Tracy. Tracy is, we discover "deeply suspicious", "very manipulative", "devious", "neurotic" and "constantly frantic." He beats up prostitutes and believes his son's deafness is due to his own "venereal infections". He is "a drunk . . . . and a malefactor" who is obsessed with "his own loathsomeness". He deliberately degrades Ms. Hepburn, visiting her in the evening and leaving "when he was finished." "The arrangement", says Ms. Leaming "seemed to turn him on." According to Ms. Leaming, it is a "fact" that Spencer Tracy saw Katharine Hepburn as a "whore." "Full of self loathing as he was", she declares, "he seemed to enjoy humiliating Kate by bringing her down to his level; turning a woman of her caliber into his mistress. Tracy reminded himself and others of the moral depth to which he had sunk."
No wonder Janet Maslin found Tracy to be a "cruel erratic figure." Faced with 17 pages of source notes, Ms. Maslin may also be forgiven her references to Ms. Leaming's "prodigious" and "enterprising" research.
However I have been immersed in the same resources as Ms. Leaming. In four years of reading Tracy's diaries, interviewing surviving friends and conducting research in memoirs, studio papers and oral histories in almost two dozen libraries across the United States and England, I have not found any evidence that Tracy suffered from venereal disease. Certainly his medical records fail to note any such condition.
Moreover, these same sources show that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn spent days together playing tennis with friends, flying kites, reading, painting and walking the beaches, so Ms. Leaming's tale of his visiting only in the evenings – and leaving when "finished" – is an utter falsehood. And Ms. Leaming's only source for the "fact" that Tracy saw Ms. Hepburn as a "whore" is the story that he once envisioned her as cast as the prostitute in his film "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Finally, Ms. Leaming's statement that Tracy's living arrangement "seemed to turn him on" contradicts the impression of all his closest friends who thought it tore him apart.
In this book Tracy is not allowed a single redeeming quality. Ms. Leaming never mentions his humor – by all accounts one of his defining characteristics – much less his kindness and integrity. Ms. Leaming warps Tracy into a figures so unrelievedly loathsome that Katharine Hepburn, by her devotion, appears to be staggering under a crippling psychological burden.
Ideally a biographer's notes allows an interested reader to follow in the author's footsteps, to find and read the same sources and to see how he reached his conclusions. By this standard, Ms. Leaming's notes are, at the very least, grossly inadequate.
Eight hours of uninterrupted research at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, with the help of two reference librarians, failed to turn up many of the letters and documents Ms. Leaming implies she found there. Even more troubling, when one does find a source, to look at it side by side with Ms. Leaming's use of it is to see that in almost every case aspects of the truth have been extracted -- and distorted.
Here are only two of countless examples:
1. Ms. Leaming states repeatedly (at least five times) that Ms. Hepburn wrote to John Ford that no one else had understood her as he had. Actually the letter that comes closest to expressing this sentiment dated March 1, 1937, says simply "I know that you understand me – please do always." (Tellingly, while exaggerating the Ford relationship, Ms. Leaming fails to report that in her autobiography Katharine Hepburn describes Spencer Tracy as "the only one who ever really knew me.")
2. Of the many instances of Ms. Leaming's distortions and omissions, perhaps the most egregious relates to the cache of love letters to Ford that forms the back bone of this book. As Ms. Leaming tells us "it was during the several weeks I spent in Bloomington studying the Ford papers that Katharine Hepburn first came alive for me in a way that made this book possible to write. Day after day, I would arrive at the library as the doors opened and begin to read Kate's letters to Ford -- letters unlike any others of hers I was to see. I read at breakneck speed all the while marking pages to be photocopied, pages I was later to read countless times until the words and phrases were carved in my memory."
These are the facts. The Lily library in Bloomington owns five letters from Ford to Ms. Hepburn and sixteen communications from Ms. Hepburn to Ford. Of these sixteen several are postcards and telegrams and half are dated after 1960 (Their serious involvement was in 1936-37, long before Ms. Hepburn met Tracy.) At most there are two love letters. The day after day regimen that Ms. Leaming describes is only possible if she is the slowest reader alive, she is reading the same letters over and over again or she is misrepresenting the Lily holdings.
The last seems clear when one re-examines Ms. Leaming's story. "In the spring of 1940 when Kate returned to Los Angeles . . . . her relationship with Ford was still somehow unresolved. Their correspondence shows that they never stopped caring for each other. Gradually the lovers became loving friends. Yet there was no demarcation, no definite unambiguous yes or no. To read their letters from that time is to watch them struggle, sometimes uncomfortably to forge a new kind of relationship."
There is no correspondence between Katharine Hepburn and John Ford from the spring of 1940 -- indeed from the entire 1940s – at the Lily library, or to my knowledge, anywhere else. In the Lily library there is no correspondence between Ford and Ms Hepburn at all dated between 1939 and 1954 – both those years are represented by single letters; the first a thank you note, the second a film offer. The next contact is a postcard in 1960. Ms. Leaming has bent the fact to establish a romantic triangle that simple never existed.
In light of her questionable methods, even the early section of Ms. Leaming's book, on the family history, become suspect. What is certain, finally, is that she misrepresents her sources so pervasively that her book is useless as biography.
Selden West
Alexandra, VA