Katharine Hepburn(1907-2003)

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was very close to her brother Tom; at 14 she was devastated to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years afterward, she used his November 8 birth date as her own. She became shy around girls her age and was largely schooled at home. She did attend Bryn Mawr College, where she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions.

After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere. She always attracted attention, especially for her role in "Art and Mrs. Bottle" (1931). She finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Antiope in "A Warrior's Husband" (1932). The inevitable film offers followed; after making a few screen tests, she was cast in Héritage (1932), opposite John Barrymore. The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract. She made five films between 1932 and 1934. For her third, Gloire éphémère (1933), she won her first Academy Award. Her fourth, Les Quatre Filles du docteur March (1933), was the most successful picture of its day.

But stories were beginning to leak out, of her haughty behavior off- screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood Game, always wearing slacks and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews. Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in "The Lake", the critics panned her, and the audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better. From 1935-1938, she had only two hits: Désirs secrets (1935), which brought her her second Oscar nomination, and Pension d'artistes (1937); the many flops included Coeurs brisés (1935), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Marie Stuart (1936), Pour un baiser (1937), and the now-classic L'impossible Monsieur Bébé (1938).

With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison". She decided to go back to Broadway to star in "The Philadelphia Story" (1938) and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. Indiscrétions (1940) was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again. For her next film, La femme de l'année (1942), she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. (She received her fourth Oscar nomination for the film.) Their films included the very successful Madame porte la culotte (1949), Mademoiselle Gagne-Tout (1952), and Une femme de tête (1957).

With La Reine africaine (1951), Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film. She played more of these types of roles throughout the 1950s, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Vacances à Venise (1955), Le Faiseur de pluie (1956), and Soudain l'été dernier (1959). Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the 1960s, as she devoted her time to the ailing Tracy. For one of her film appearances in this decade, in Long voyage vers la nuit (1962), she received her ninth Oscar nomination. After a five-year absence from films, she then made Devine qui vient dîner... (1967), her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. It garnered Hepburn her tenth Oscar nomination and her second win. The next year, she did Le Lion en hiver (1968), which brought her her eleventh Oscar nomination and third win.

In the 1970s, she turned to making made-for-TV films, with The Glass Menagerie (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975), and Le blé est encore vert (1979). She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Une bible et un fusil (1975) with John Wayne and La maison du lac (1981) with Henry Fonda. This last brought her her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win - the latter still the record.

She made more TV-films in the 1980s and wrote her autobiography, 'Me', in 1991. Her last feature film was Rendez-vous avec le destin (1994), with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and her last TV- film was One Christmas (1994). With her health declining, she retired from public life in the mid-1990s. She died at 96 at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.