100 years of Katharine Hepburn
Interviewer recalls rare conversation with iconic actressBy Hap Erstein
Cox News Service
Katharine Hepburn, who would have turned 100 last weekend, is arguably the finest actress this nation ever produced. But she had little patience for interviews.
Associated PressKatharine Hepburn with Cary Grant in "The Philadelphia Story," tailored for her by Philip Barry. When she was about to receive the Kennedy Center's honor for lifetime achievement in the arts in 1990, however, she agreed to see me in her New York townhouse.
The four-time Oscar winner was still in good health at 83, but as friends kept reminding me, the elderly luminaries I had already interviewed for the award — such legends as Lucille Ball, Sammy Davis Jr., Bette Davis, Mary Martin and Danny Kaye — had all died soon afterward. So when I told them of my coup, being granted an audience with Hepburn, the usual reaction was, "Oh, no, please don't."
In addition to the usual exhaustive research, I consulted a friend from the National Portrait Gallery, who had met with Hepburn in the hope of acquiring some of the actress's paintings. What hints did she have for getting on the good side of the famously curmudgeonly Hepburn?
"Well," I was told, "she likes chocolate a great deal."
So on my way to Hepburn's Turtle Bay home from Penn Station, I stopped off at Macy's and bought a small box of Godiva truffles, a bribe to soften her up.
It was mid-November and all my reading indicated she had just had a birthday the week before. So when I met her, having been led up the steep stairs into her second-floor den by Hepburn's longtime housekeeper-companion Phyllis Wilbourn, I offered her the truffles with a "Happy belated birthday, Miss Hepburn."
They were accepted with a distracted, "Hmm, so they say," which I took to be merely her avoidance of the pesky milestone. In fact, it was the first of many highly truthful responses.
A year later, when she published her memoirs — titled simply and bluntly "Me" — she revealed that ever since her brother Tom committed suicide in his teens, she had adopted his birthday as her own. The November date was really his birthday, she was indicating to me, however cryptically.
Everett Collection, Associated PressHumphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in "The African Queen." The late actress's 100th birthday was last weekend. It was a chilly day, and Hepburn had a fire going in the den fireplace.
But everything she did, I realized, had multiple purposes. Yes, the fire helped warm the room, but whenever I asked a question she preferred not to answer, she would rise from her chair, cross the room to the fire, kneel and stoke it vigorously. It was her way of hinting that I should have a different question ready for her by the time she returned to our conversation.
Hepburn sat in a low-back upholstered chair, leaning an elbow on an end table, her chin resting in her palm, a pose that suggested extreme concentration. Perhaps, but its main purpose was to steady her head from the "familial tremors" that had long afflicted her and would continue until her death 13 years later.
On the end table was a small clock that she could discreetly keep an eye on without too obvious a turn away from her visitor.
Her once-freckled complexion had turned a ruddy red, but those famous cheekbones remained regally high. A 1982 car accident that required two leg operations had forced changes to her avid tennis game — "I can only play with people who can place it where I can hit it," she told me — yet she moved about with energy and Yankee determination.
She was nothing if not practical, and she dressed for utility. That day, she wore a dark turtleneck sweater, white slacks and deck shoes, her virtual uniform for much of her life.
Hepburn was to receive the Kennedy Center Honor 12 years after the award — the closest thing this nation has to arts knighthood — was first presented, accepting it after long turning it down.
Associated PressKatharine Hepburn is seen in a promotional photo during heyday. The subject of her earlier rejections brought a furrow to her brow and a tone of parental admonishment to her voice. "I wouldn't mention that," she advised me. "I think that's just tactless, and it's bad for the Kennedy Center." She then added, "I'm not really a deep believer in awards. But I think after a certain point, which this is, if they say you've been good, you should salute and say, 'Thank you, sir."'
With so many achievements in her career, Hepburn had grown more open about discussing her failures. She was perfectly willing to discuss such public embarrassments as "The Lake," the 1933 play that prompted acid-penned Dorothy Parker to pronounce in print that this rising stage star "runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."
The phrase was said to sting the then 26-year-old, but by the time I met Hepburn, she greeted the quote with equanimity.
"Oh, but Dorothy Parker was a wit," she said, explaining away the slight. "And I was suddenly famous. If you're a wit, you have to take care of all the ... people who are approaching fame. That opening, I was the joke of the town. I don't read notices, but I didn't need to read those. Everyone told me about it."
Still, Hepburn was soon off to Hollywood, winning her first Academy Award for her third feature, "Morning Glory," playing a stagestruck tomboy. How did she create the character? "I copied Ruth Gordon to the best of my abilities," she told me, referring to the actress-writer who would later work on such Hepburn-Spencer Tracy gems as "Adam's Rib" and "Pat and Mike."
But before long Hepburn was considered "box-office poison," a label she also dismissed. "It had nothing to do with my character," she said. "It was just that people didn't go to the theaters to see me. (When) I did 'Holiday,' Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, thought maybe he should take an ad out saying, 'What's wrong with Katharine Hepburn?' And I said, 'Look out, they might tell you."'
That "poison" period lasted through what she conceded were "four or five dogs" — forgettable films such as "Spitfire" and "Little Minister" — before Hepburn returned to the winner's circle with 1940's "The Philadelphia Story," a vehicle tailored for her by playwright Philip Barry. Soon afterward, she was teamed with Tracy in "Woman of the Year," and the public could not get enough of them.
She made a point of showing me a drawing she had made of Tracy, the love of her life, but would only speak of their professional life together.
"Spencer and I never went over a scene together, never worked on a thing," she said of her frequent co-star. "I loved to fiddle around with the script. If Spencer said, yes, he'd do it, then he'd just go on the set and do it. He wasn't interested in the scriptwriting at all."
Perhaps it was the imminent award that put Hepburn in such an upbeat mood about filmmaking. "It's a great business, any way you want to look at it," she said. "I think movies are fun to do; they're fun to see, and they're easy. I mean, the theater's tough. To have to go and be fascinating at 8 'til 10:15. Not easy."
Still, Hepburn never shrank from the challenge of the stage, including her unlikely casting in the 1969 Broadway musical "Coco," playing fashion designer Coco Chanel. I had to ask about it.
"I don't know how I ever dared do it," she shook her head, "how I was silly enough. Because I obviously can't sing." The lesson she look from the experience, she told me, was "that you can survive anything."
She recalled the way audiences would sense her bravery and would radiate their admiration for her. "All of a sudden, in the middle of a song I thought, 'They like me.' They were trying to say, 'You're OK, Kate.' That was very moving to me."
We spoke for about an hour and, afterward she ushered me down the stairs. "Now do you need to use the bathroom?" she asked with a touch of that Yankee practicality. I assured her I did not, a decision my friends later chastised me for, turning down the opportunity to get a look in her medicine cabinet.
"Well, then, would you like some ice cream?" Hepburn continued, a great non-sequitur.
This was not to be turned down. I pictured cut-crystal dessert bowls at the very least. Wrong.
She pushed the swinging door into the kitchen, went to the refrigerator, pulled out a half gallon of Sedutto's Coffee Ripple, plopped it on the counter and retrieved two spoons from a drawer.
It dawned on me that the real purpose of this gracious offer was that she wanted some ice cream, and I was mere justification for her.
So we stood over the container and had a spoonful of the frozen treat together. When I went for a second spoonful — an unhygienic double dip — she stopped me and, instead, gathered a generous scoop between two cookies. An ice cream sandwich for the road.
If I could have found someplace to bronze it for posterity, I would have.
Among the many things Hepburn was outspoken about was her disdain of autographs. "I think it's moronic," she said to me during our interview. "Why in the hell would you want someone's signature? And why would you want a picture of somebody you don't know?"
Still. I made a point of sending her a copy of the article I wrote for The Washington Times, a friendly gesture that I hoped would elicit an autographed acknowledgment.
A couple of weeks later, an envelope arrived from her, thanking me for what I had written about her. "Good for you," Hepburn's note said. "And good for me, too."
Happy birthday, Kate.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660221491,00.html