Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn IV

 We've reached the end of the road! 

via manderley

For Katharine Hepburn's part of this project, anyway. It feels as much like a real ending as it'll actually be when I get to [insert newest Best Actress winner, who'll likely be Jessie Buckley for Hamnet here].

While Katharine is perfect as the sensitive elderly wife of Henry Fonda, worrying about his health and longevity and the strained relationship between him and their daughter (played by Jane Fonda, in a role that must've felt very cathartic to perform), there isn't much for her to do in this film aside from react and cause reactions for the other characters to bounce off of. In a way, it's similar to her turn in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? where she subtly guides some of the action but is never the main star. 

She and Henry Fonda had somehow never made a film together before this, and they're a perfect pair. If only we'd gotten to compare them in this alongside a jaunty comedy of the 1940s. And when I read that she lent him Spencer Tracy's lucky hat for the shoot? My god, so many wonderful touches made behind the scenes that elevates On Golden Pond. 

I'm sure there are viewers out there who view this film as a 'last chance' for Henry and Katharine, and in the case of Henry, who died less than a year after it came out, it was, but it would be a shame to reduce their wins and their performances here to some misguided attempt to give them lifetime achievement awards*. These are two wonderful performances and while On Golden Pond is more sentimental than other films, it's no less deserved. 

Plus, I think there's something beautiful about the bookends of Katharine's Oscar wins: from the young ingenue of Morning Glory who vowed she'd be a star to becoming the grand dame of film with a still-unbroken win total in one of her swansong performances in On Golden Pond, and all of the great performances in between. 

Bravo.

Katharine was nominated against Diane Keaton (Reds), Marsha Mason (Only When I Laugh), Susan Sarandon (Atlantic City), and Meryl Streep (The French Lieutenant's Woman). I love The French Lieutenant's Woman for personal reasons, and Atlantic City is great, but I have to give it to Katharine.

DID I LIKE ON GOLDEN POND? Sure!
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Did you like On Golden Pond? What are your thoughts on Katharine Hepburn's fourth and final Oscar win?

Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here!

*We can debate how James Stewart not winning for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939 f*cked up Henry's shot at the trophy for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 if I ever do a Best Actor Project, which is not bloody likely anytime soon, so save your whining.