Catherine Shoard
Catherine Shoard ratings Kate: The Girl Who Was Simply Katharine Hepburn by William J. Mann
That Katharine Hepburn swung both means isn’t, on representation, too large a bombshell. She called herself ‘Jimmy’. She won her first tennis competition aged 16. She invested three years with somebody called Phyllis. ‘we place jeans on 50 years back and declared sort of center road, ‘ she stated, aged 70.
There were other tips, too – ‘I would personallyn’t offer you 10 guys for almost any one girl, ‘ she once insisted. ‘All guys are poops. ‘
No, the surprise of William J. Mann’s jumbo revisionist biography is merely just just how people that are many her had been similarly inclined. First from the cabinet is Katharine’s sibling, Tom, simply 15 as he killed himself, most likely as a total results of their intimate confusion. Save from Kate’s short-lived industrialist spouse, Ludlow Ogden Smith, all her boyfriends had been bisexual, including Howard Hughes, John Ford as well as Spencer Tracey.
Her platonic pals, too – Binkie Beaumont, Bobby Helpmann, Noel Taylor – were, like Hepburn’s longest-standing male chum, George Cukor, energetically homosexual. Likewise her biographers: A. Scott Berg, Garson Kanin and Mann himself (whose past publications add a biography of John Schlesinger and Behind the Screen: just exactly just How Gays and Lesbians Hollywood that is shaped).
Even though it isn’t therefore astonishing that Hepburn really liked ladies, it really is a surprise exactly how many of those hot sexy babes she clocked up. Her very first event is at university with a girl that is devoted Alice Palache. She quickly managed to move on – via a couple of guys – to Laura Harding, with who she possessed a long-lasting relationship topped up over time with Brokeback Mountain-style nation jaunts.
There is Nancy Hamilton and Frances deep, Constance Collier and Elissa Landi, plus countless other people. Just exactly exactly How in the world did she keep all of this through the press? Semantic hopscotch, apparently: ‘lesbian’ was, for Hepburn, a certain term to explain an extremely butch girl, maybe maybe not her type after all (though by the appearance associated with pictures, several of her fans had been from the tough part).
Hepburn was aided, too, because of the reality she did often fell for males, and also by her dislike that is general of – the chasteness of just about all her relationships intended she did not need to lie a lot of about them. She hadn’t had a fling with John Ford, she was – technically at least – telling the truth when she protested.
Mann believes this prizing of companionship over passion is vital to Hepburn’s psychology. But he is additionally keen never to be too prurient, to not ever cheapen the tone, so we never learn the origin of Hepburn’s erotic horror, simply get plenty of verification so it existed. ‘She attempted sex once and simply did not enjoy it, ‘ claims a college friend that is old. Nonetheless it appears to run much much deeper than simple distaste – evidently if she is at the flicks and a scene that is nude up, Hepburn would leave in a huff.
Nevertheless, uncommon because it might appear, Hepburn’s love life struggled to obtain her. The ladies she sought out with in general felt likewise unexcited about going to sleep with somebody. The guys could have was in fact keener, not always with Hepburn.
Also her relationship with Tracey jogged along. She ended up being fond an adequate amount of him to relax and play nursing assistant through their last 5 years, time for their side after an almost equal stretch of total separation. They never shared the house that is same Hepburn lived with a succession of girls, Tracey together with his spouse, Louise, or alone and checked out by other people, in specific a chap called Scotty – nonetheless they enjoyed one another’s business.
Though they hardly ever really holidayed together, they would be just too very happy to be sure their paths crossed: ‘They’d all have actually dinner together, then Kate would set off with Fran for a motorboat. ‘ Amicable, then, dedicated with its way that is own a million kilometers through the epic 25-year love of Hollywood legend.
Mann brilliantly traces exactly exactly how Hepburn by by by herself slowly purchased in to the Hepburn/Tracey brand name – initially livid concerning the romantic fictions prepared up by her old buddy Kanin in a novel in 1971, she changed her mind to this kind of level that two decades later on she collaborated with him on a rewrite that is souped-up.
By the end, Mann indicates, she peddled with misconception not merely for PR purposes but individual solace – her final years, despite Phyllis’s ministrations, had been lonely and boozy, emotionally volatile and faintly hopeless.
Mann keeps the main focus of their biography remorselessly individual. He cannot, he states into the introduction, desire to rehash plot outlines from her movies, nor weigh in along with his views on it, as well as first the center leaps to hear therefore. But after 200 pages of unrelieved soap it’s not hard to feel only a little swamped.
Mann may successfully debunk the different urban myths of Katharine the dedicated wife, Katharine the man-eater, and, specially, Katharine the dignified senior reclusive. However in their spot he just produces a brand new one – Katharine the diva that is coy the publicity-hungry tease, forever goading reporters to attempt to figure her away. ‘You’ll never ever obtain it appropriate! No body ever does! ‘ Can Mann? Perhaps – all of it seems plausible sufficient. The issue is that after 600 pages you are simply past caring.
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