Katharine Hepburn: An Independent Woman

This biography charts the career of Katherine Hepburn, one of the most respected and successful female figures of cinema. It describes her rise to fame, her different film roles and her personal relationships, revealing a talented, headstrong and independent woman. When Katherine Hepb urn arrived in Hollywood in 1932, RKO studio executives described her as looking like a cross between a horse and a monkey. But she soon confounded everyone by emerging, with her high cheekbones and natural looks, as a rare beauty. She also displayed both an imperturbable sense of humour and an intelligent sensibility Her career which straddles seven decades, follows no conventional pattern. Her screen personae have ranged from the headstrong girl of her early performances to the vaguely authoritative spinster of later films; her performances have won a string of accolades, from her first Oscar for Morning Glory in 1933 to her fourth for On Golden Pond in 1981 - with which she became the first (and to date only) winner of four Best Actress Oscars, from a record 12 nominations. Along the way, she co-starred with Cary Grant , Humphrey Bogart, Montgomery Clift, Spencer Tracy, , and Peter O'Toole, while her off-screen partnerships included romances with director John Ford, dashing young millionaire Howard Hughes, her agent Leland Hayward and, most enduringly, Spencer Tracy, from whom she was seldom apart for 27 years. But she was never anyone else's but her own woman, insisting on and retaining the respect of all who worked with her. She refused to give in to the studio's publicity demands, avoiding interviews and always wearing trousers off the set. With her fierce no-nonsense beauty - to which the photographs in this book testify - her strong-minded outspokenness and her controlled yet sparkling performances, she will always be one of the cinema's most seductive illustrations of the advantages of independence. In the preparation of this biography, the author met talked to the now extremely reclusive Katherine Hepburn in person. The book contains personal anecdotes, and sets out to dispel some of the myths about this famous actress.

Hardback. English. Bloomsbury. 1996. Used.