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Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 –
June 29, 2003) was an iconic star of United
States|American film, television and
theatre|stage, widely recognized for her sharp
wit, New England gentility and fierce
independence.  A screen legend, Hepburn holds the
record for the most Academy Award|Oscars for
Academy Award for Best Actress|best actress, of
which she won four.  She was nominated for twelve
Best Actress Academy Awards, the record for
nominations until 2003, when Meryl Streep earned
her 13th nomination for Adaptation
(movie)|Adaptation.  Hepburn won an Emmy Award in
1975 for her lead role in Love Among the Ruins (TV
movie)|Love Among the Ruins, and was nominated for
four other Emmys and two Tony Awards during the
course of her more than 70-year acting career. In
1999, the American Film Institute ranked Hepburn
the greatest actress of all time. Hepburn had a
famous and long-time romance with Spencer Tracy,
both on- and off-screen.

==Hepburn's early years==
Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Dr.
Thomas Norval Hepburn, a successful urologist, and
Katharine Houghton, a suffragette and birth
control advocate who, along with Margaret Sanger,
helped to found the organization that became
Planned Parenthood.  Hepburn's father was a
staunch proponent of publicizing the dangers of
venereal disease in a time when such things were
not discussed, and her mother campaigned for birth
control and equal rights for women.  The Hepburns
demanded frequent familial discussions on these
topics and more, and as a result the Hepburn
children were well-versed in social and political
issues.  Once a very young Katharine Hepburn even
accompanied her mother to a suffrage rally.  The
Hepburn children, at their parents' encouragement,
were unafraid of expressing frank views on various
topics, including sex.  "We were snubbed by
everyone, but we grew quite to enjoy that,"
Hepburn later said of her unabashedly liberal
family, who she credited with giving her a sense
of adventure and independence.

Her father insisted that his children be athletic,
and encouraged swimming, horse|riding, golf and
tennis.  Hepburn, eager to please her father,
emerged as a fine athlete in her late teens,
winning a bronze medal for figure skating from the
Madison Square Garden skating club, shooting golf
in the low eighties, and reaching the semi-final
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 80's. 
Hepburn would come to be recognized for her
athletic physicality — she fearlessly
performed her own pratfalls in films such as
Bringing Up Baby, which is now held up as an
exemplar of screwball comedy.

When Hepburn was young, she found her older
brother, whom she idolized, hanging from the
rafters by a rope, dead of an apparent suicide. 
Her family denied that it was self-inflicted,
arguing that he had been a happy boy; rather, they
insisted that it must have been an experimentation
gone awry.  Hepburn was devastated by his death,
and for years used his birthday as her own.  It
was not until she wrote her autobiography, Me:
Stories of my Life, that Hepburn revealed her true
birth date.

She was educated at Bryn Mawr College, receiving a
academic degree|degree in  1928, the same year she debuted on
Broadway theatre|Broadway after landing a bit part
in Night Hostess.  

A banner year for Hepburn, 1928 also marked her
nuptials to socialite businessman Ludlow Ogden
Smith|Ludlow ("Luddy") Ogden Smith, whom she had
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 have to adopt the "too ordinary" name of "Mrs.
Smith." Hepburn realized quickly that marriage was
incompatible with her need for freedom; three
weeks after they were married, the couple
separated.  They decided to continue their
marriage in a platonic fashion for several years,
divorcing in 1934 after Hepburn was established as
a film star. They remained lifelong friends.

==Hepburn's acting career begins==
===Theater===

Hepburn cut her acting teeth in plays at Bryn Mawr
and later in revues staged by stock companies. 
During her last years at Bryn Mawr, Hepburn had
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 suddenly fired the play's
original leading lady 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 that she was almost incomprehensible.
She was fired from the play, 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 re-hired 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 Amazons|Amazon princess in The
Warrior's Husband (an update of Lysistrata), which
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 leaping
down 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.

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, launching her film
career aside legendary actor John Barrymore and
director George Cukor, who would become a lifetime
friend and colleague.

===Film===

RKO was delighted by audience reaction to A Bill
of Divorcement and signed Hepburn to a new
contract after it wrapped.  But her nonconformist,
anti-Hollywood behavior offscreen, which would
make her one of the silver screen's most beloved
stars and a feminist icon, at the time made studio
executives fret that she would never become a
superstar.  Off-set, Hepburn, who had begun to
attract significant press attention, would wear
overalls and ratty tennis shoes instead of
glamorous clothing fit for a starlet, prompting
RKO executives to confiscate her overalls when she
refused to change her wardrobe. After RKO refused
to return her clothing, Hepburn followed through
with her threat to walk across the studio lot in
her underwear in full view of several cameras. 
Embarrassed, the RKO executives confiscated all
the photographs and gave her back her overalls.

Though she was headstrong, her work ethic and
talent were undeniable, and the following year
(1933), Hepburn won her first Oscar for best
actress in Morning Glory.   
That same year, Hepburn played Jo in the screen
adaptation of Little Women, which broke box-office
records.  

Intoxicated with her success — an Oscar
followed by a smash hit at the box office —
Hepburn felt it time to make her 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 movie Spitfire
in 1933.  Having satisfied RKO, Hepburn went
immediately back to Manhattan to begin the play,
in which she played an Britain|English girl
unhappy with her overbearing mother and wimpy
father. Generally considered a flop, Hepburn's
acting in The Lake resulted in Dorothy Parker’s
famous quip that the actress "ran the gamut of
emotions from A to B."

It was around this time that Hepburn and her
husband divorced. Hepburn sailed for Mexico, where
she obtained a divorce that released she and her
husband from their marriage without the usual
30-day restriction on remarriage; he married his
girlfriend a few days later.

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
foray into comedy with the films Bringing Up Baby
and Stage Door was well-received critically. But
audience response to the two films was tepid, and
the good reviews from 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). Her career began to decline.

===Box office poison===

Some of what has made Hepburn greatly beloved
today — her unconventional, straightforward,
anti-Hollywood attitude — at the time began
to turn audiences sour.  Outspoken and
intellectual with an acerbic tongue, she defied
the era's "blonde bombshell" stereotypes,
preferring to wear pantsuits and disdaining
makeup. She also had a famously difficult
relationship with the press, turning down most
interviews, which did not help her exposure to the
public. When she did speak with the press,
occasionally she fed them whoppers to amuse
herself. On her first outing with the Hollywood
press corps after the success of A Bill of
Divorcement, Hepburn talked with reporters who had
invaded her and her husband's cabin aboard the
ship City of Paris. A reporter asked if they were
really married; Hepburn responded, "I don't
remember."  Following up, another reporter asked
if they had any children; Hepburn's answer:  "Two
white and three colored."  Hepburn's aversion to
media attention did not thaw until 1973, when she
appeared on The Dick Cavett Show for an extended,
two-day interview.

She could also be prickly with fans — though
she relented as she aged, in her early career
Hepburn often denied requests for autographs,
feeling it an invasion of her privacy.  On the set
she was saddled with the label "difficult to work
with", an attitude that earned her the nickname
"Katharine of Arrogance" among directors and crew.
 Soon audiences began staying away from her
movies.

Hepburn was already reeling from a devastating
series of earlier flops when in 1938 she (along
with Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford and others) was
voted "box office poison" in a poll taken by
motion picture exhibitors. Hepburn's retort was
quick and telling:  "Not everyone is lucky enough
to understand how delicious it is to suffer."  In
1939, Hepburn's career came to what was perhaps
its lowest point when she lost out on the role of
Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. 

Smarting, Hepburn returned to her roots on
Broadway, appearing in The Philadelphia Story, a
play which Philip Barry, the screenwriter for an
earlier Hepburn film Holiday (movie)|Holiday,
wrote especially for her. She played spoiled
socialite Tracy Lord to rave reviews. On the
advice of millionaire Howard Hughes, who at the
time was her lover, she purchased the rights to
the play and turned it into a hit movie. She was
nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her work in
the movie, in which she appeared with Cary Grant
and James Stewart (actor)|James Stewart. Her
career was revived almost overnight.

===Hepburn and Spencer Tracy===

In 1942, Hepburn made her first appearance
opposite Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year.
Behind the scenes the pair fell in love, beginning
what would be one of Hollywood's most famous
romances.

They are one of Hollywood's most recognizable
pairs both on screen and off, and have in large
part become the standard by which other film
romances are judged.  Hepburn, with her agile mind
and New England brogue, complemented Tracy's easy
working-class machismo.  Tracy seemed to be the
only one Hepburn would allow to tame her. When
Joseph Mankiewicz introduced them, Hepburn, who
was wearing special heels that added several
inches to her lanky frame, said, "I'm afraid I'm
too tall for you, Mr. Tracy." Mankiewicz retorted,
"Don't worry, he'll soon cut you down to size."

As the London Telegraph observed in Hepburn's
obituary, "Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were at their
most seductive when their verbal fencing was
sharpest: it was hard to say whether they
delighted more in the battle or in each other."

The pair carefully hid their love from the public,
using back entrances to studios and hotels and
assiduously avoiding the press. They were
undeniably a couple for decades, but never
married. Though Hepburn and Tracy were virtually
inseparable and essentially lived together when
they were in the same city, they maintained
separate homes to keep up appearances.  Tracy, a
devout Catholic, had been married to another woman
since 1928 and remained so until his death. 
Friends and biographers have speculated that
Tracy's Catholicism was not the main reason why he
never sought a divorce — rather, he would
have felt too guilty about abandoning his deaf
son, John. Hepburn, out of respect for Tracy's
family, did not attend his funeral.

Hepburn in all filmed nine movies with Tracy,
including Adam's Rib and Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner, for which Hepburn won her second Best
Actress Oscar. 

Before Tracy, Hepburn had relationships with
several Hollywood directors, including Leland
Hayward. Hepburn also had a famous affair with
billionaire aviator Howard Hughes. At one point,
Hepburn and Hughes were engaged to be married, but
at the last minute Hepburn called off their
engagement.  

Hepburn figures in Martin Scorsese's 2004
biographical film|biopic of Hughes, The Aviator,
portrayed by actress Cate Blanchett, who won an
Academy Award|Oscar for Best Supporting Actress
for the role. Blanchett, who thanked Hepburn
during her acceptance speech, carried one of
Hepburn's silk gloves in her purse during the
Oscars for luck. As noted in the film, Hepburn did
not leave Hughes for Tracy (Hepburn and Hughes
split up years before, in 1938).

===The African Queen===

Hepburn is perhaps best remembered for her role in
The African Queen (1951), for which she received
her fifth Best Actress nomination, although she
did not win (losing to Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar
Named Desire). She played a prim spinster
missionary in Africa who convinces Humphrey
Bogart's character, a hard-drinking riverboat
captain, to use his boat to attack a
Germany|German ship. 

Filmed mostly on location in Africa, almost all
the cast and crew suffered from malaria and
dysentery — except director John Huston and
Bogart, neither of whom ever drank any water. 
Hepburn, ever the urologist's daughter,
disapproved of the two men's boozing and piously
drank gallons of water each day to spite them. She
wound up so sick with dysentery that even months
after she returned home the famously vigorous
actress was still ill. The trip and the movie made
such an impact on her that later in life she wrote
a book about filming the movie:  The Making of The
African Queen: Or, How I Went to Africa With
Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind,
which made her a best-selling author at the age of
77.

===Later Film Career===

Following The African Queen Hepburn often played
spinsters, most notably in her Oscar-nominated
performances for Summertime (film)|Summertime
(1955) and The Rainmaker (1956), although at 49
she was considered by some to be too old for the
role. She also received nominations for her
performances in films adapted from stage dramas,
namely as Mrs. Venable in Tennessee Williams'
Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and as Mary Tyrone in
the 1962 version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's
Journey Into Night.    

Hepburn received her second Best Actress Oscar for
what some said was essentially a pedestrian role
in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. She always said
she believed the award was meant to honor Spencer
Tracy, who died shortly after filming of the movie
was completed.  The following year she won a
record-breaking third Oscar for her role as
Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, an
award shared that year with Barbra Streisand for
her performance in Funny Girl.  

Hepburn continued to do filmed stage dramas,
including The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), The
Trojan Women (1971) by Euripides, and Edward
Albee's A Delicate Balance (1973). In 1973 she
first appeared in an original television
production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass
Menagerie.  

Two years later Hepburn received an Emmy Award for
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Special Program
(Drama or Comedy) for Love Among the Ruins, which
co-starred Laurence Olivier and was directed by
George Cukor.  Hepburn also appeared opposite John
Wayne in Rooster Cogburn, which was essentially
The African Queen done as a Western
movies|western. Hepburn won her fourth Oscar for
On Golden Pond (1981) opposite Henry Fonda. In
1994, Hepburn gave her final two movie
performances — as Ginny in the remake of
Love Affair and in One Christmas, which was based
on a short story by Truman Capote.


== Hepburn's legacy ==
Hepburn died on June 29, 2003, at 2:50 p.m., at
Fenwick, the Hepburn family home, in Old Saybrook,
Connecticut|Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96.
 In honor of her extensive theater work, the
bright lights of Broadway were dimmed for an hour.

Her autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life, was
published in 1991 in literature|1991.  The book
Kate Remembered, by A. Scott Berg, was published
just 13 days after her death; it documents the
friendship between the actress and Berg, whom she
had chosen to be her biographer. The book had been
completed some time before its publication, but
Hepburn had stipulated that she did not want it
released until after her death.  

Hepburn's professional legacy is today carried on
within her family. Hepburn's niece is actress
Katharine Houghton, who appeared with her in Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). Hepburn's
grandniece is actress Schuyler Grant; the two
appeared together in the 1988 television movie
Laura Lansing Slept Here. 

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 and her
own oil paintings. The auction netted several
million dollars, which Hepburn willed mostly to
her family and close friends.


==Stage work==
*Night Hostess (1928)
*These Days (1928)
*Art and Mrs. Bottle (1930)
*The Warrior's Husband (1932)
*The Lake (1933)
*Jane Eyre (1937)
*The Philadelphia Story (1939)
*Without Love (1942)
*As You Like It (1950)
*The Millionairess (1952)
*The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and
The Taming of the Shrew (1955)—On tour in
Australia with the Old Vic
*The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing
(1957)—Stratford, Connecticut|Stratford,
Connecticut Shakespeare Theatre
*Antony and Cleopatra and Twelfth Night
(play)|Twelfth Night (1960)—Stratford,
Connecticut|Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare
Theatre
*Coco (1969) (Tony Award nomination for Leading
Actress in a Musical)
*A Matter of Gravity (1976)
*The West Side Waltz (1981) (Tony Award nomination
for Leading Actress in a Play)

==Filmography==
===1930s===
* A Bill of Divorcement (1932)
* Christopher Strong (1933)
* Morning Glory (1933)—Academy Award for
Best Actress
* Little Women (1933)
* Spitfire (1934 movie)|Spitfire (1934)
* The Little Minister (1934)
* Break of Hearts (1935)
* Alice Adams (1935)—Academy Award for Best
Actress|Best Actress nomination
* Sylvia Scarlett (1936)
* Mary of Scotland (1936)
* A Woman Rebels (1936)
* Quality Street (1937)
* Stage Door (1937)
* Bringing Up Baby (1938)
* Holiday (movie)|Holiday (1938)

===1940s===
* The Philadelphia Story (1940)—Academy
Award for Best Actress|Best Actress nomination
* Woman of the Year (1942)—Academy Award for
Best Actress|Best Actress nomination
* Keeper of the Flame (1942)
* Stage Door Canteen (1943)
* Dragon Seed (1944)
* Without Love (1945)
* Undercurrent (1946)
* The Sea of Grass (1947)
* Song of Love (1947)
* State of the Union (movie)|State of the Union
(1948)
* Adam's Rib (1949)

===1950s===
* The African Queen (1951)—Academy Award for
Best Actress|Best Actress nomination
* Pat and Mike (1952)
* Summertime (1955)—Academy Award for Best
Actress|Best Actress nomination
* The Rainmaker (1956)—Academy Award for
Best Actress|Best Actress nomination
* The Iron Petticoat (1956)
* Desk Set (also known as His Other Woman) (1957)
* Suddenly Last Summer (1959)—Academy Award
for Best Actress|Best Actress nomination

===1960s===
* Long Day's Journey into Night
(1962)—Academy Award for Best Actress|Best
Actress nomination
* Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
(1967)—Academy Award for Best Actress
* The Lion in Winter (1968)—Academy Award
for Best Actress
* The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969)

===1970s===
* The Trojan Women (1971)
* The Glass Menagerie (1973)
* A Delicate Balance (1974)
* Rooster Cogburn (1975)
* Love Among the Ruins (TV movie)|Love Among the
Ruins (1975)
* Olly Olly Oxen Free (also known as The Great
Balloon Adventure and The Great Balloon Race)
(1978)
* The Corn is Green (1979)

===1980s===
* On Golden Pond (1981)—Academy Award for
Best Actress
* George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984)
* The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley (1985)
* Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986)
* Laura Lansing Slept Here (also known as
Penthouse Paradise) (1988)

===1990s===
* The Man Upstairs (1992)
* This Can't be Love (1994)
* Love Affair (1994)
* One Christmas (1994)

==Further reading and reference list ==

* Kate (book)|Kate, Charles Higham,
Norton, 1975
* Me, Stories of My Life, Katharine
Hepburn, Knopf, 1991
* The Making of the African Queen
Katharine Hepburn, Knopf, 1987
* Kate Remembered, A. Scott Berg,
Putnam, 2003

== External links==
* http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000031/ IMDb
filmography
*
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3030
792.stm BBC Obituary
*
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_displ
ay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1924514 Hollywood Reporter
obituary
* http://katharinehepburn.net Katharine Hepburn:
Woman of the Year (fansite)
*
http://home.nyc.rr.com/alweisel/premierekatharineh
epburn.htm An Uncommon Woman: Katharine Hepburn
(article from Premiere magazine)