December 21, 2005

Katharine Hepburn Biography

Katharine Houghton Hepburn, American legend in film, was born the daughter of a doctor and a woman’s rights activist on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was raised in a very liberal family and learned to express her opinions, sometimes rather bluntly. Later in her acting career, this would cause ripples with her fans.

Attending Bryn Maur College, she started acting in plays and graduated in 1928 with a degree in history and philosophy. From there, she played small roles with a stock company out of Maryland. Her first leading role was in The Big Pond, however, was fired for too many mistakes and went back to small parts in the stock company. Once she landed the role of Antiope in The Warrior’s Princess she became noticed in Hollywood. This was 1932 and she was asked to do a screen test for A Bill of Divorcement. From there, Hepburn’s acting career took off.

In 1933, Hepburn won her first Oscar for Morning Glory. She went on to win three more in her lifetime, the last being for On Golden Pond in 1981, at the age of seventy-four. She had been nominated eight other times.

Because Hepburn was very outspoken, it sometimes caused fans to be put off by Hepburn. She would refuse to interviews and denied her fans her autograph. Sometimes, she would even feed them lies, just to be left alone. This backfired on her, as there was a time that audiences stayed away from a Hepburn movie. Her lowest point came, though, when she was turned down for the Scarlett O’Hara role in Gone With the Wind.

In 1940, Hepburn purchased the rights to the play The Philadelphia Story with the help of Howard Hughes, and turned it into to a hit movie. She was nominated for an Oscar and from there, her career took off again.

In 1928, she had married Ludlow Ogden Smith, however, they were soon divorced. She and actor Spencer Tracy appeared in Woman of the Year in 1942 and became an off-screen romance until Tracy’s death in 1967.

Toward the end of Hepburn’s career, she mostly starred in movies made for television, the last to be done in 1994, at the age of eighty-seven. In her career, she had starred in over seventy plays and films.

Katharine Hepburn died on June 29, 2003, at ninety-six years old. Her outspokenness and wit lives on through her movies and Katharine Hepburn is a name that will not be forgotten as she is a legend in American Film History.