By Kate Bobby
Four-time Academy Award-winning actress Katharine Hepburn turns 92 this month and the Museum of the Moving Image celebrates her six-decade career with a 13-film retrospective Nov. 6-21.
“She had a very different acting style from that of her contemporaries,” said David Schwartz, AMMI curator of film and video of leading box office actresses of the 1930s, including Ginger Rogers, Norma Shearer and Carol Lombard. “Many of them tended to be demure. Hepburn was her own woman. She was the most dynamic of actresses and the most modern.”
Hepburn was born to a prominent, progressive, well-to-do, New England family. Well educated, she received formal training as an actor and began her career on the New York stage first finding her way to Broadway before concerning herself with Hollywood.
“She looked down on films in a way, at the start,” Schwartz said about the actress who, when invited by RKO to sign a contract in the early 1930s, demanded an absurdly high salary, assuming and half-hoping they would turn her down. Instead, to her chagrin, they met her price and she came to Hollywood, enjoying early success with films such as “Bill of Divorcement” (1932) and “Alice Adams” (1935).
Later that same decade, however, Hepburn's star began to falter for the same reason it had shone: a no-holds-barred, broke-the-mold persona. This was not at all helped by RKO, which didn't seem to appreciate or understand Hepburn.
“Audiences of the time didn't quite know what to make of her,” Schwartz said. “She was incredibly beautiful and always riveting, yet at the same time, she was always somewhat aloof.”
In the mid- to late-'30s, Hepburn was cast by RKO in a series of films which reviewers and/or audiences received with ambivalence. Case in point was the fate that befell Howard Hawks' classic screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby.” Featuring a brilliant comic contrast between a frenetically funny Hepburn and frequent co-star Cary Grant, a master of deadpan quips and wry understatement, it was just a few too many steps ahead of its time in 1938 and its audience. By the end of 1938, she'd suffered a string of flops and was labeled “box office poison.”
Never down for long, a plucky Hepburn soon had a hit on her hands on stage as the lead in a comedy called “The Philadelphia Story.” Seeing the far-reaching potential of this starring vehicle, Hepburn purchased the rights right away, reselling them to Hollywood with a new set of rules. She would choose her male leads (Jimmy Stewart as the love interest, Grant as the sharp-tongued but warm-hearted ex) and the director, George Cukor, an ace at comedy who had just directed Grant and Hepburn in the successful comedy “Holiday” (1938).
“Hepburn is the undisputed star of 'The Philadelphia Story,'” Schwartz said. “It was built around her character which was very unusual for that time. And, 'The Philadelphia Story' saved her career.”
In the 1940s, Hepburn came into her own on an all new level when she was first paired with Spencer Tracy in “Woman of the Year,” marking the start of a decades-long partnership on and off screen. Again, a testament to both Tracy and Hepburn's collective power, the Hollywood press would not report on their affair. Tracy, a staunch Catholic, would not divorce his wife, and for Hepburn, it was the second such compromise she would make. (She had also previously been linked to another married director, John Ford.)
“I think it fit with her image in a way,” Schwartz said. “She was not someone who lived by convention. She made her own rules and the public seemed to accept this from her. It seemed to make sense for her.”
“There was a very American quality to her screen presence,” Schwartz continued. “She was very energetic, strong-willed, individualistic.”
“When you think about it, this was an actress who shared the screen with very virile, very dominating male presences like Spencer Tracy, like Humphrey Bogart. And she held her own. She was their equal. She wasn't the love object like another actress would have to be.”
Films in the Hepburn series include:
Nov. 6, 1 p.m. “A Bill of Divorcement” (1932) directed by George Cukor and starring Hepburn with John Barrymore.
2:30 p.m. “Alice Adams” (1935), directed by George Stevens, co-starring Fred MacMurray.
4:30 p.m. “Sylvia Scarlett” (1935), directed by George Cukor, co-starring Cary Grant.
Nov. 7, 2 p.m. “Stage Door” (1937), directed by Gregory LaCava, co-starring Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou.
4 p.m. “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), directed by Howard Hawks, co-starring Cary Grant.
Nov. 13, 2 p.m. “Holiday” (1938), directed by Cukor, co-starring Grant.
4 p.m. “The Philadelphia Story” (1940), directed by Cukor, co-starring Grant and Stewart.
Nov. 14, 2 p.m. “Woman of the Year (1942), directed by George Stevens, co-starring Spencer Tracy.
4:30 p.m. “Adam's Rib” (1949) directed by Cukor, co-starring Tracy.
Nov. 20, “The African Queen” (1951), directed by John Huston, co-starring Humphrey Bogart.
4:30 p.m. “Summertime” (1955), directed by David Lean, co-starring Rossano Brazzi.
Nov. 21, 1 p.m. “Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), directed by Sidney Lumet, co-starring Sir Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell.
4:30 p.m. “The Glass Menagerie” (1973), directed by Anthony Harvey, co-starring Sam Waterston, Joanna Miles, Michael Moriarty.
The American Museum of the Moving Image is at 35th Avenue and 36th Street, Astoria. For more information, call 784-0077.
