Katharine
Hepburn, 96:
Won a record four Academy Awards
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Career spanned six decades; remembered
for being a role model
Katharine
Hepburn's contemporaries would surely
have been amazed at the longevity of her
career.
From
her debut in 1932's A Bill Of
Divorcement to 1995's Love Affair,
there was a magnificent six-decade run
of stardom that may never be equalled.
Ms.
Hepburn, who won a record four best
actress Oscars, died yesterday at 96 at
her Connecticut home in Old Saybrook
along Long Island Sound, with family and
friends by her side.
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After news of her death had spread,
dozens of people gathered last night at
Saybrook Point near Ms Hepburn's home.
"I
think every actress in the world looked
up to her with a kind of reverence and a
sense of, `Oh boy, if only I could be
like her,'" Elizabeth Taylor said
through her publicist.
"We never looked at her with envy
or jealousy because she worked with such
grace and wit and charm," Taylor
said. "You only wish that one day
you could be like her."
Her
brother-in-law Ellsworth Grant said:
"She's the greatest actress of her
age and with her passing that whole
galaxy of great movie stars has
ended."
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Grant,
who saw the screen legend shortly before
she died, said the cause of death was
"simply complications from old
age."
Ms
Hepburn's executor, Cynthia McFadden,
told reporters the actress died at 2:50
p.m. "surrounded by loved
ones."
"There
will be no memorial service and her
burial at a later date will be private.
She died as she lived, with dignity and
grace," McFadden said.
Ms
Hepburn won her first Academy Award in
1933 for Morning Glory and won
again for Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner, The Lion in Winter and
On Golden Pond in 1981.
She was nominated for the award eight
other times. Ms Hepburn also starred in
film classics like Little Women and
The African Queen.
The
only time she showed up Oscar night was
to present an honorary one to producer
Lawrence Weingarten.
Despite
her success, Ms Hepburn always felt she
could have done more.
"I
could have accomplished three times what
I've accomplished," she once said.
"I haven't realized my full
potential. It's disgusting."
But,
she said: "Life's what's important.
Walking, houses, family. Birth and pain
and joy — and then death. Acting's
just waiting for the custard pie. That's
all."
She
played opposite such leading men as
James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, John
Wayne and Henry Fonda. But it is with
Spencer Tracy that her name will be
forever linked.
Not
only did she make nine films with Tracy,
but for 27 years she was the "other
woman" in his life.
Tracy,
a Roman Catholic, would not divorce his
wife. Ms Hepburn, in a 1991 interview
with ABC television, said she loved
Tracy but did not remember if he had
ever told her he loved her.
"We
lived openly enough together," she
said. "I certainly had no intention
of breaking up his relationship with his
wife."
Irreverent
and feisty, Ms Hepburn always spoke her
mind. Her independent spirit made her a
role model to many women, and she was
voted America's most admired woman in a
1985 Ladies Home Journal survey.
The
actress did not escape criticism,
however.
Her
performances were sometimes called cold,
and Dorothy Parker famously said of Ms
Hepburn that she displayed "the
gamut of emotions from A to B."
In
1935, Time magazine called her
"possibly the least versatile of
all Hollywood's leading stars." And
Ms Hepburn said of her performance in Mary
of Scotland (1936) : "I think I
was terribly bad. I think she was an
absolute ass.''
She
was born Katharine Houghton Hepburn in
1907 in Hartford, Conn. Her father, Dr.
Thomas Norval Hepburn, was a leading
urologist. Her mother, Katharine
Houghton, was a pioneering suffragette
who entertained Emmeline Pankhurst and
later preached the virtues of birth
control.
There
were six children, but the defining
moment of young Kate's life came at the
age of 10 when she discovered older
brother Tom had hanged himself from the
rafters in the attic. She never publicly
spoke of this incident.
In
the summer of 1928, aged 21, she made
her professional acting debut in a
production of The Czarina starring
Mary Boland. She played a maid and the
play lasted a week. "In those days
I was always getting fired," she
once reminisced. "I was what they
called a flash actor. I could read well
at auditions but the sight of people out
there used to terrify me. I would lose
my voice and get red in the face.''
In
1928 she also married, to stockbroker
Ludlow Ogden Smith, whom she forced to
change his name, fearing she'd be called
Kate Smith. She later said "Was I
ever married? I really can't remember.
It certainly wasn't for very long."
It lasted two months. They were divorced
in 1934 and she never remarried.
She
had love affairs with agent Leland
Hayward, producer Howard Hughes,
director John Ford and future co-star
Jimmy Stewart. But in 1938 she was
dubbed "box office poison"
along with Fred Astaire and Marlene
Dietrich. Two wonderful comedies with
Cary Grant, Bringing Up Baby and Holiday,
were both disappointments and she
decided to storm Broadway.
She
had dramatist Philip Barry write a play
for her called The Philadelphia Story
and was cagey enough to buy the
movie rights. She had a great success in
it and when MGM came calling Ms Hepburn
insisted they cast her along side two
dependable names, Grant and Stewart.
She
wasn't home free. MGM balked at a
long-term contract so Ms Hepburn had
screenwriters Michael Kanin and Ring
Lardner Jr. craft a vehicle for her
called Woman Of The Year. She
sold it to MGM on condition George
Stevens direct it and Spencer Tracy be
her co-star.
On
the first day she said, "I may be a
little tall for you, Mr. Tracy."
And producer Joe Mankiewicz shot back:
"Don't worry, he'll cut you down to
size."
Ms
Hepburn was also vain enough to arrange
for a facelift when she found herself
looking too leathery. On stage she acted
in Coco (1969), A Matter
Of Gravity (1976) and West Side
Waltz (1981).
In
Gravity her twitchiness, on which
critics had been commenting since the
movie The Madwoman Of Chaillot (1969),
became more noticeable. Ms Hepburn
denied it was a form of Parkinson's and
said it was inherited. But it gave her
voice an odd quaver. She could control
her head by touching it with her hand.
She
wore out those contemporaries who had
forecast a short career. And she fought
old age with everything she had,
undergoing a plastic hip replacement to
beat arthritis.
She
lived in a fashionable Turtle Bay town
home right behind the Waldorf Astoria
Hotel in New York. At her Connecticut
family home, neighbours could frequently
spot her out jogging or playing tennis
with another living legend: Greta Garbo.
Barbara
Maynard of Old Saybrook, who knew the
actress for more than 30 years, told
Reuters Ms Hepburn aided the town in
many ways.
She
helped the town buy property along the
shore for a waterfront park. She once
donated a fire engine to the local
department. And she made several
anonymous gifts in the community,
Maynard said.
She
was irascible, enchanting, difficult,
strange looking, totally American, chic
in her shirtwaist dresses, a passionate
puritan of a woman, all skin and bones
but with cheekbones containing the
greatest calcium deposits since the
White Cliffs of Dover. In short, her own
great invention.
As
she once said: "Show me an actress
who isn't a personality and I'll show
you a woman who isn't a star."
Katharine
Hepburn was one of the greatest star
personalities.
The
lights will dim on Broadway at 8 p.m.
tomorrow in her honour, said Patricia
Armetta-Haubner, a spokesperson for the
League of American Theatres and
Producers.
Ms Hepburn is survived by a sister,
Margaret Hepburn Perry; a brother, Dr.
Robert Hepburn; and 13 nieces and
nephews.
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