Audrey Hepburn A-Z: K is for...
K is for...Katharine Hepburn!
They weren't related nor did they star in any films together, but they shared a last name, and for some, that's enough to conflate them forever.
My introduction to classic movies is largely because of the Hepburn women. Breakfast at Tiffany's was the film that first started my journey into classic movies. After Katharine Hepburn died in 2003, I borrowed one of her biographies from the library and admired her independence and sense of self.
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907, in Hartford, Connecticut, to highly educated parents. She was the second of six children, and grew up with a strong sense of self and social justice. Her mother, Katharine Houghton, was a suffragette who campaigned for many feminist issues and later helped found the organization that would become Planned Parenthood.
When Katharine decided that she wanted to be an actress, she threw herself into her craft, and it wasn't long after she landed in Hollywood that she earned the first of four Academy Awards, for Morning Glory in 1933. Her career continued throughout the 1930s, but when she was branded 'box office poison' she left Hollywood briefly to re-evaluate her career.
A successful, and secretly romantic, partnership with Spencer Tracy kept her working throughout the '40s and '50s, and in the '60s she earned two Oscars back-to-back: for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967 and The Lion in Winter in 1968. Her fourth Oscar, still a record in the Best Actress category, came in 1981 for On Golden Pond.
Katharine and Spencer, two Hollywood titans, wrote to Audrey and George Cukor after they'd seen My Fair Lady in 1964, saying, "To Audrey + George- You two certainly hit the nail on the head + you took such a chance you scared all your friends to death- A million congratulations. It's a real triumph- Kate+ Spence."
And that wasn't all: when Audrey was 'snubbed' in the Oscar nominations for her leading performance in My Fair Lady, Katharine arranged for a telegram to get to the other Hepburn via Cukor.
On February 26, 1965, Cukor wrote to Audrey: "Enclosed you will find a letter written by the other actress of the Clan Hepburn. She asked me to read it. I was to decide whether to send it to you or not. Here it is.
"It's bound to tickle you. (Lest her handwriting drive you up the wall, Irene has deciphered it.) Here is the Voice of Experience. She's been through this kind of thing. It touched me because it's shot through with such warmth of feeling for you, and such high regard."
via giphy, source unknown
Katharine's note to Audrey basically read 'don't worry about the snub, you'll get another nomination for a part that wasn't as good as this one.' She was sort of right: Audrey's last Oscar nomination came in 1967 for Wait Until Dark. How she was passed over in Two for the Road that year, I'll never know. At any rate, that was the same year Katharine won for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
Audrey would write to Katharine following Spencer Tracy's death in 1967, expressing her condolences. A return letter, put up for auction in 2017 by Christie's, read, "...what can one say - the beauty of life - the sureness of death - & the everlasting strength of friendship - I have had them all - & I must simply know that I have been truly lucky - & get back on my horse..."
They never made a movie together, and they weren't related, but it's easy to see the mutual respect between them.
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Are you a Katharine Hepburn fan as well? What's your favourite Kate movie? I'd probably pick... Bringing Up Baby or Desk Set.
Come back soon for the letter L!
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