Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, television and stage.
Acclaimed throughout her 73-year career, Hepburn holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins with four, from 12 nominations. Hepburn won an Emmy Award in 1976 for her lead role in Love Among the Ruins, and was nominated for four other Emmys and two Tony Awards. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Hepburn as the greatest female star in the history of American cinema.
Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of suffragist Katharine Martha Houghton (1878 – 1951) (an heiress to the Corning Glass fortune and cofounder of Planned Parenthood) and Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn (1879 – 1962), who was a successful urologist from Virginia with Maryland roots. She is of English ancestry from both sides of her family. Her siblings are Thomas Houghton Hepburn (1905 – 1921), Richard Houghton Hepburn (born 1911), Robert Houghton Hepburn (1913 – 2007), Marion Houghton Hepburn Grant (1918 – 1986), and Margaret Houghton Hepburn Perry (1920 – 2006).
Hepburn's father insisted the girls do swimming, riding, golf and tennis. Hepburn, eager to please her father, won a bronze medal for figure skating from the Madison Square Garden skating club, shot golf in the low eighties and reached the semifinal of the Connecticut Young Women's Golf Championship. Hepburn especially enjoyed swimming, and regularly took dips in the frigid waters that fronted her bayfront Connecticut home, generally believing that "the bitterer the medicine, the better it was for you." She continued her brisk swims well into her 80s. Hepburn would come to be recognized for her athletic physicality—she fearlessly performed her own pratfalls in films such as Bringing Up Baby (1938), which is now held up as an exemplar of screwball comedy.
On April 3, 1921, while visiting friends in Greenwich Village, Hepburn found her older brother Tom (born November 8, 1905), whom she idolized, hanging from the rafters of the attic by a rope, dead of an apparent suicide. Her family denied it was self-inflicted, arguing he had been a happy boy. They insisted it must have been an experimentation gone awry. It has been speculated he was trying to carry out a trick he saw in a play with Katharine. Hepburn was devastated and sank into a depression. She shied away from other children and was mostly home-schooled. For many years she used Tom's birthday (November 8) as her own. It was not until she wrote her autobiography, Me: Stories of my Life, that Hepburn revealed her true birth date.
Hepburn was educated at the Kingswood-Oxford Day School in West Hartford, Connecticut, before going on to Bryn Mawr College. While at Bryn Mawr, Hepburn was suspended for breaking curfew and smoking, which at that time was particularly not encouraged for women. Decades later, Hepburn also confirmed that after dark, she would go swimming naked in the college's "Cloisters" fountain. She received a degree in history and philosophy in 1928 , the same year she had her debut on Broadway after landing a bit part in Night Hostess.
A banner year for Hepburn, 1928 also marked her marriage to socialite businessman Ludlow ("Luddy") Ogden Smith, whom she met while attending Bryn Mawr and married after a short engagement. Hepburn and Smith's marriage was rocky from the start—she insisted he change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow so she would not be confused with well-known rotund singer Kate Smith. They were divorced in Mexico in 1934. Fearing that the Mexican divorce was not legal, Ludlow got a second divorce in the United States in 1942 and a few days later he remarried. Katharine Hepburn often expressed her gratitude toward Ludlow for his financial and moral support in the early days of her career. "Luddy" continued to be a lifelong friend to her and the Hepburn family.
On September 21, 1938, Hepburn was staying in her Old Saybrook, Connecticut beach home when the 1938 New England Hurricane struck and destroyed her house. Hepburn narrowly escaped death before the home was washed away over the cliffs. She stated in her 1991 book entitled 'Me' that she lost 95% of her belongings in the storm, including her 1932 best actress Oscar, which was later found intact.
Stage... Hepburn developed her acting skills in plays at Bryn Mawr and later in revues staged by stock companies. During her last years at Bryn Mawr, Hepburn met a young producer with a stock company in Baltimore, Maryland, who cast her in several small roles, including a production of The Czarina and The Cradle Snatchers.
Hepburn's first leading role was in a production of The Big Pond, which opened in Great Neck, New York. The producer had fired the play's original leading lady at the last minute, and asked Hepburn to assume the role. Terror stricken at the unexpected change, Hepburn arrived late and, once on stage, flubbed her lines, tripped over her feet and spoke so rapidly she was almost incomprehensible. She was fired, but continued to work in small stock company roles and as an understudy.
Later, Hepburn was cast in a speaking part in the Broadway play Art and Mrs. Bottle. Hepburn was fired from this role as well, though she was eventually rehired when the director could not find anyone to replace her. After another summer of stock companies, in 1932, Hepburn landed the role of Antiope the Amazon princess in The Warrior's Husband, which required her to wear a very short costume and debuted to excellent reviews. Hepburn became the talk of New York City, and began getting noticed by Hollywood.
In the play, Hepburn entered the stage by jumping over a flight of steps while carrying a large stag on her shoulders—an RKO scout ( Leland Hayward, whom she would later romance ) was so impressed by this display of physicality that he asked her to do a screen test for the studio's next vehicle, A Bill of Divorcement, which starred John Barrymore and Billie Burke.
In true Hepburn fashion, she demanded an outlandish $1,500 per week for film work (at the time she was earning between $80 and $100 per week). After seeing her screen test, RKO agreed to her demands and cast her. At 5 feet, 7 inches (1.71 m), Hepburn was one of the tallest leading ladies of her time. Her film career was launched alongside legendary actor John Barrymore and director George Cukor, who would become a lifetime friend and colleague. Barrymore pinched Kate's behind on the set in one of his many attempts to seduce her. She said, " If you do that again I'm going to stop acting." Barrymore replied, "I wasn't aware that you'd started, my dear."
Film... After the audience reaction to A Bill of Divorcement, RKO signed Hepburn to a new contract. But her nonconformist, anti - Hollywood behaviour offscreen made studio executives fret she would never become a superstar. The following year (1933), Hepburn won her first Oscar for best actress in Morning Glory, playing a young actress who rejects romance in favor of her career. That same year, Hepburn played Jo in the screen adaptation of Little Women, which broke box-office records.
Intoxicated by her success, Hepburn felt it was time to return to the theater. She chose The Lake, but was unable to obtain a release from RKO and instead went back to Hollywood to film the forgettable Spitfire. Having satisfied RKO, Hepburn went immediately back to Manhattan to begin the play, in which she played an English girl unhappy with her overbearing mother and wimpy father. The play was generally considered a flop, and Hepburn's performance elicited Dorothy Parker's famous quip that the actress "ran the gamut of emotions from A to B."
In 1935, in the title role of the film Alice Adams, Hepburn earned her second Oscar nomination. By 1938, Hepburn was a bona fide star, and her forays into comedy with the films Bringing Up Baby and Stage Door were well-received critically. But audience response to the two films was tepid, and the good reviews from the critics were not enough to rescue her from an earlier string of flops (The Little Minister, Spitfire, Break of Hearts, Sylvia Scarlett, A Woman Rebels, Mary of Scotland, Quality Street). As a result, Hepburn's movie career began to decline.
Katharine Hepburn would often come to interviews dressed in men's suits, saying that it was comfortable. Without meaning to, she made a fashion statement, and women who admired her started wearing trousers, which wasn't encouraged at the time.
On June 29, 2003, Hepburn died of natural causes at Fenwick, the Hepburn family home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96 years old, and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut. In honor of her extensive theater work, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for an hour.
The book Kate Remembered, by award winning biographer A. Scott Berg, was published just 13 days after Hepburn's death. It documents the friendship between the actress and Berg. He makes one passing reference to her possible bisexuality, referencing a comment made by Irene Mayer Selznick. Later writers treat this reputed bisexuality in more detail. linking her with some of that period's biggest female celebrities, including Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, Judy Holliday and Judy Garland.
Constance Collier was a drama coach for many famous actors, including Hepburn (whom she met when they were both acting in Stage Door) during her world tour performing Shakespeare in the 50s. Upon Collier's death in 1955, Hepburn "inherited" Collier's secretary Phyllis Wilbourn, who remained with Hepburn as her secretary for 40 years.
In 2004, in accordance with Hepburn's wishes, her personal effects were put up for auction with Sotheby's in New York. Hepburn had meticulously collected an extraordinary amount of material relating to her career and place in Hollywood over the years, as well as personal items such as a bust of Spencer Tracy she sculpted herself (used as a prop in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on the desk where Sidney Poitier makes his phone call) and her own oil paintings. The auction netted several million dollars, which Hepburn willed mostly to her family and close friends, including television journalist Cynthia McFadden.
Family... Hepburn's genealogy has been researched through the Whittier line back to King Louis IX of France. She is listed as one of the descendants of the Mayflower compact author William Brewster (her family tree). Her paternal grandfather, Sewell Hepburn, was an Episcopal clergyman, but on the subject of religion, she told another member of the journalism community she loved so much to shock (this time a Ladies Home Journal reporter) in October 1991, "I'm an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people."
Acclaimed throughout her 73-year career, Hepburn holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins with four, from 12 nominations. Hepburn won an Emmy Award in 1976 for her lead role in Love Among the Ruins, and was nominated for four other Emmys and two Tony Awards. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Hepburn as the greatest female star in the history of American cinema.
Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of suffragist Katharine Martha Houghton (1878 – 1951) (an heiress to the Corning Glass fortune and cofounder of Planned Parenthood) and Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn (1879 – 1962), who was a successful urologist from Virginia with Maryland roots. She is of English ancestry from both sides of her family. Her siblings are Thomas Houghton Hepburn (1905 – 1921), Richard Houghton Hepburn (born 1911), Robert Houghton Hepburn (1913 – 2007), Marion Houghton Hepburn Grant (1918 – 1986), and Margaret Houghton Hepburn Perry (1920 – 2006).
Hepburn's father insisted the girls do swimming, riding, golf and tennis. Hepburn, eager to please her father, won a bronze medal for figure skating from the Madison Square Garden skating club, shot golf in the low eighties and reached the semifinal of the Connecticut Young Women's Golf Championship. Hepburn especially enjoyed swimming, and regularly took dips in the frigid waters that fronted her bayfront Connecticut home, generally believing that "the bitterer the medicine, the better it was for you." She continued her brisk swims well into her 80s. Hepburn would come to be recognized for her athletic physicality—she fearlessly performed her own pratfalls in films such as Bringing Up Baby (1938), which is now held up as an exemplar of screwball comedy.
On April 3, 1921, while visiting friends in Greenwich Village, Hepburn found her older brother Tom (born November 8, 1905), whom she idolized, hanging from the rafters of the attic by a rope, dead of an apparent suicide. Her family denied it was self-inflicted, arguing he had been a happy boy. They insisted it must have been an experimentation gone awry. It has been speculated he was trying to carry out a trick he saw in a play with Katharine. Hepburn was devastated and sank into a depression. She shied away from other children and was mostly home-schooled. For many years she used Tom's birthday (November 8) as her own. It was not until she wrote her autobiography, Me: Stories of my Life, that Hepburn revealed her true birth date.
Hepburn was educated at the Kingswood-Oxford Day School in West Hartford, Connecticut, before going on to Bryn Mawr College. While at Bryn Mawr, Hepburn was suspended for breaking curfew and smoking, which at that time was particularly not encouraged for women. Decades later, Hepburn also confirmed that after dark, she would go swimming naked in the college's "Cloisters" fountain. She received a degree in history and philosophy in 1928 , the same year she had her debut on Broadway after landing a bit part in Night Hostess.
A banner year for Hepburn, 1928 also marked her marriage to socialite businessman Ludlow ("Luddy") Ogden Smith, whom she met while attending Bryn Mawr and married after a short engagement. Hepburn and Smith's marriage was rocky from the start—she insisted he change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow so she would not be confused with well-known rotund singer Kate Smith. They were divorced in Mexico in 1934. Fearing that the Mexican divorce was not legal, Ludlow got a second divorce in the United States in 1942 and a few days later he remarried. Katharine Hepburn often expressed her gratitude toward Ludlow for his financial and moral support in the early days of her career. "Luddy" continued to be a lifelong friend to her and the Hepburn family.
On September 21, 1938, Hepburn was staying in her Old Saybrook, Connecticut beach home when the 1938 New England Hurricane struck and destroyed her house. Hepburn narrowly escaped death before the home was washed away over the cliffs. She stated in her 1991 book entitled 'Me' that she lost 95% of her belongings in the storm, including her 1932 best actress Oscar, which was later found intact.
Stage... Hepburn developed her acting skills in plays at Bryn Mawr and later in revues staged by stock companies. During her last years at Bryn Mawr, Hepburn met a young producer with a stock company in Baltimore, Maryland, who cast her in several small roles, including a production of The Czarina and The Cradle Snatchers.
Hepburn's first leading role was in a production of The Big Pond, which opened in Great Neck, New York. The producer had fired the play's original leading lady at the last minute, and asked Hepburn to assume the role. Terror stricken at the unexpected change, Hepburn arrived late and, once on stage, flubbed her lines, tripped over her feet and spoke so rapidly she was almost incomprehensible. She was fired, but continued to work in small stock company roles and as an understudy.
Later, Hepburn was cast in a speaking part in the Broadway play Art and Mrs. Bottle. Hepburn was fired from this role as well, though she was eventually rehired when the director could not find anyone to replace her. After another summer of stock companies, in 1932, Hepburn landed the role of Antiope the Amazon princess in The Warrior's Husband, which required her to wear a very short costume and debuted to excellent reviews. Hepburn became the talk of New York City, and began getting noticed by Hollywood.
In the play, Hepburn entered the stage by jumping over a flight of steps while carrying a large stag on her shoulders—an RKO scout ( Leland Hayward, whom she would later romance ) was so impressed by this display of physicality that he asked her to do a screen test for the studio's next vehicle, A Bill of Divorcement, which starred John Barrymore and Billie Burke.
In true Hepburn fashion, she demanded an outlandish $1,500 per week for film work (at the time she was earning between $80 and $100 per week). After seeing her screen test, RKO agreed to her demands and cast her. At 5 feet, 7 inches (1.71 m), Hepburn was one of the tallest leading ladies of her time. Her film career was launched alongside legendary actor John Barrymore and director George Cukor, who would become a lifetime friend and colleague. Barrymore pinched Kate's behind on the set in one of his many attempts to seduce her. She said, " If you do that again I'm going to stop acting." Barrymore replied, "I wasn't aware that you'd started, my dear."
Film... After the audience reaction to A Bill of Divorcement, RKO signed Hepburn to a new contract. But her nonconformist, anti - Hollywood behaviour offscreen made studio executives fret she would never become a superstar. The following year (1933), Hepburn won her first Oscar for best actress in Morning Glory, playing a young actress who rejects romance in favor of her career. That same year, Hepburn played Jo in the screen adaptation of Little Women, which broke box-office records.
Intoxicated by her success, Hepburn felt it was time to return to the theater. She chose The Lake, but was unable to obtain a release from RKO and instead went back to Hollywood to film the forgettable Spitfire. Having satisfied RKO, Hepburn went immediately back to Manhattan to begin the play, in which she played an English girl unhappy with her overbearing mother and wimpy father. The play was generally considered a flop, and Hepburn's performance elicited Dorothy Parker's famous quip that the actress "ran the gamut of emotions from A to B."
In 1935, in the title role of the film Alice Adams, Hepburn earned her second Oscar nomination. By 1938, Hepburn was a bona fide star, and her forays into comedy with the films Bringing Up Baby and Stage Door were well-received critically. But audience response to the two films was tepid, and the good reviews from the critics were not enough to rescue her from an earlier string of flops (The Little Minister, Spitfire, Break of Hearts, Sylvia Scarlett, A Woman Rebels, Mary of Scotland, Quality Street). As a result, Hepburn's movie career began to decline.
Katharine Hepburn would often come to interviews dressed in men's suits, saying that it was comfortable. Without meaning to, she made a fashion statement, and women who admired her started wearing trousers, which wasn't encouraged at the time.
On June 29, 2003, Hepburn died of natural causes at Fenwick, the Hepburn family home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96 years old, and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut. In honor of her extensive theater work, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for an hour.
The book Kate Remembered, by award winning biographer A. Scott Berg, was published just 13 days after Hepburn's death. It documents the friendship between the actress and Berg. He makes one passing reference to her possible bisexuality, referencing a comment made by Irene Mayer Selznick. Later writers treat this reputed bisexuality in more detail. linking her with some of that period's biggest female celebrities, including Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, Judy Holliday and Judy Garland.
Constance Collier was a drama coach for many famous actors, including Hepburn (whom she met when they were both acting in Stage Door) during her world tour performing Shakespeare in the 50s. Upon Collier's death in 1955, Hepburn "inherited" Collier's secretary Phyllis Wilbourn, who remained with Hepburn as her secretary for 40 years.
In 2004, in accordance with Hepburn's wishes, her personal effects were put up for auction with Sotheby's in New York. Hepburn had meticulously collected an extraordinary amount of material relating to her career and place in Hollywood over the years, as well as personal items such as a bust of Spencer Tracy she sculpted herself (used as a prop in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on the desk where Sidney Poitier makes his phone call) and her own oil paintings. The auction netted several million dollars, which Hepburn willed mostly to her family and close friends, including television journalist Cynthia McFadden.
Family... Hepburn's genealogy has been researched through the Whittier line back to King Louis IX of France. She is listed as one of the descendants of the Mayflower compact author William Brewster (her family tree). Her paternal grandfather, Sewell Hepburn, was an Episcopal clergyman, but on the subject of religion, she told another member of the journalism community she loved so much to shock (this time a Ladies Home Journal reporter) in October 1991, "I'm an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people."
