Kate
The Woman Who Was Hepburn
by William J. Mann
Henry Holt and Company
2006
ISBN 13:978-0-80507625-7
621 PP
$35.00
She was legendarily feisty, self assured, a trailblazer, and above all, an actress whose career took her to new heights and established her as an American icon. She was Hepburn.
For most of her life however, Kate was an enigma. Those who tried to figure her out, even those closest to her through out her life were left puzzled and wondering. Even her exact date of birth was a secret.
Perhaps the two greatest mysteries about Hepburn were of course, was she really and truly a Lesbian, or perhaps bi-sexual, and what was the true nature of her almost thirty year love affair with Spencer Tracy? Mann attempts, and successfully shows us through amazing detail what it was like for Kathryn to be Kathryn to the public, and also just plain Kath to herself and to her closest friends. We are given an inside glimpse of the wild and decadent world of Gay Hollywood in the 30's, 40's and 50's and taken to the heights of her fame in films such as "Little Women" "The Philadelphia Story", "Woman of the Year", "The African Queen", and her lowest points of her early career, the plays and movies that flopped, that made her Box Office Poison by 1942, and her series of films with her co-star and the greatest love she ever knew Spencer Tracy that cemented both in the consciousness of America.
It's the behind the scenes Kate however that comes through the most in this book, and it let's us understand the reality of her life and career and the fabricated, mythological and mysterious Kate that the public thought they knew. From her early days in Hartford, Connecticut, her relationship with her father and how it shaped her life and outlook, to her arrival in Hollywood in 1932 and her first big break, to her early marriage to Ludlow Ogden Smith, her close friendships with women, and her relationship with directors John Ford and George Cukor who brought her her greatest fame, we see Kate in a whole new light, and most of all, as human as the rest of us.
Available at the History Wolf Store on Amazon.com
Friday, May 15, 2009
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