Katharine Hepburn: All About Me

I remember my first film with Katharine Hepburn. I saw her in Ernest Thompson's "The Golden Pond" which won her fourth Academy Award with Henry Fonda and his daughter Jane Fonda. I believed for a long time that she was Henry's wife and Jane's mother in real life. That was how good she was. I didn't know much about her personal life or her secret longtime affair with Spencer Tracy. Watching this documentary following the Philadelphia Story is a treat. It recaptures her life and legacy. She will be best remembered as one of America's most treasured actresses on film, television or stage. Yet, she didn't have an ounce of vanity. When she talks about Arzner or those lesbian rumors, she jokes them off when it could have destroyed her career. She talks about her only marriage, her New York City townhouse which I used to visit across from my doctor's office. Sadly in 1997, I believe she was living full time in her beloved Connecticut home but yet she still managed to live an amazing life. She manages to garden, bike, and be quite active. She is an inspiration for us all.

This documentary gives an excellent overview of everything she did on-screen. It is a true star-actress with a great number of famous movies on her credit. I myself have a lot of pleasure looking to her movies with Spencer Tracy, but also love her playing as Ethel Thayer in "On golden Pond"

People love Katharine Hepburn, she is an icon of a century of Women. Sweet, entertaining, silly, happy, sad, uncooth, sultry, cool, aloof, enduring, abrupt and amazing, only a few words that could be used to describe her or the charachters she portrays.

For so many years she has shyed away from attention, from the public, so why now break that silence? At eighty-five years Miss Hepburn is still, a "show-off" and wants to show off her work once again. She tells us the story of her life, her family, her films, her loves and her hates. She really is an extraordinary woman, and this film proves that, again.

When you see it you feel a great deal of warmth towards this woman, and you begin to know her, although you come away with the sensation that you don't really know her at all. I for one am very interested in this lady, her life enthralls me, her films entertain me and her personality bewitches me. She is the greatest actress that has ever appeared on film. I, like many would give anything to meet this woman, and although it is unlikely that I will ever have that pleasure I am happy to say this film, put me one step nearer, it elaborates on half stories you may have heard and when she tells you something you believe her.

Katharine Hepburn was one of those players who put her indefinable stamp on everything she ever did. As she points out even after becoming a personality she deliberately went after roles that stretched her talents. This was one woman not afraid of any of the challenges life brought her.

This is one fine documentary mixing some of Kate's home movies with her film roles and some other candid home movie and newsreel features from her long career. When this documentary came out in 1993 the candle was almost run down, but she had a few good things left in her.

Playing roles like Tracy Lord, or Linda Seton, even Pat Pemberton they were parts that were tailored to the Hepburn image. But as she said taking on Shakespeare, O'Neill, and Greek tragedies are proved parts that dare the player to do them as good as the many who came before. Katharine Hepburn did Shakespeare on stage so we have no record, but you can't tell me that when you watch O'Neill's Long Days Journey Into Night or The Trojan Women you can't see a bit of Kate in her performances.

Of course Spencer Tracy took up a great deal of the documentary. One of the great screen teams of all time, every one of their films, nine of them, rates being called a classic. And the respect that the film community had for both of them. They could never live as they did with today's tabloid press and the internet.

Katharine Hepburn one American original. We'll not see her like again.

"Katharine Hepburn: All About Me" (1993) Is The Best Movie Star Biography Documentary Ever Made...She Was 85 And Hosted It!

Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003) lived past her 96th birthday, and won more "Best Actress" Academy Awards than any performer in movie history.

She won four "Best Actress" Academy Awards, 3 of them after she was 60 years old. Her Academy Award movies included "Morning Glory" (1933), "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" (1967)....her intimate friend of 27 years, Spencer Tracy died 17 days after "Dinner" was completed....., "The Lion In Winter" (1968), and "On Golden Pond" (1981).

She was and is a legend.

Anyone who cares for movies and movie history must see this remarkable autobiography documentary made when Hepburn was 85 years old in 1992, which she narrates and hosts with a lot of on-screen time at her famous beach home in Connecticut.

This documentary movie is a treasure.

Expensive used VHS copies are available from Amazon.Com and so is the same movie available inexpensively with the "Philadelphia Story" (1940) "Special Edition" VHS and also 2 disc DVD presentations.

I own a copy of the VHS version of "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), screened it (as I have many times before), and accidentally discovered this wonderful biography documentary about Hepburn added after the final credits of "Philadelphia Story" ended.

I couldn't believe how good the documentary was, or how electric Katharine Hepburn was, still, at age 85 when she participated in making it.

The attention to relevant details is especially notable. We see her two houses, one in Manhattan and one on the beach of the Connecticut coast, both of which she lived in and visited from the early 30's, and still occupied when the documentary was prepared 60 years later in the early 1990's.

Titles of her many stage plays between her 1928 college graduation from Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, PA (also her mother's alma mater...her father was a physician) and her Hollywood movie star years starting in the middle 1930's. Titles of her Shakespeare stage plays performed all over the world in the 1950's and 1960's are also given, all with supporting still photos.

Her first (and only legal) husband, "Luddy" Smith, is shown in 1928 still photos and others during their 5 year marriage and lifelong friendship which lasted well after their divorce.

Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon are shown in still photos during the late 1940's and early 1950's period when the famous writer couple wrote successful movie scripts tailor-made for Hepburn and Tracey ("Pat and Mike," "Adam's Rib," etc.).

Members of Hepburn's long employed personal home staff are shown working and playing as part of Hepburn's household and de-facto old age family.

Hepburn's wonderful and unexpectedly candid and revealing comments about important people, events, and even money amounts part of her career make the wonderful visuals and writing even better. She talks directly to the camera, and to those watching this incredible story of her incredible life.

In an age when many in America and elsewhere in the world aspired to higher education and an interesting, independent very long adventurous romantic life, Katharine Hepburn provided a marvelous role model and example of how all of that is done when it's done well.

The omission of Philip Barry's "Holiday" (1938) movie starring Hepburn and Cary Grant is the only serious flaw (Barry went on to write "The Philadelphia Story" expressly for Hepburn...it was a hit stage show in NYC first, then a hit movie now justifiably considered a classic. "Philadelphia Story" would not have happened unless "Holiday" (1938) happened before it...."Holiday" is a critical movie in the Katharine Hepburn story.)

This documentary is so complete and so touching, tears came to my eyes as I watched it.

It is one of the very great legacies to come out of Hollywood, and the often tried (and mostly failed) effort people make to explain Hollywood and "the movies," and what they mean.

This is an important documentary movie about one of movie history's most important people. Get it, screen it often, tell people about it, treasure it.

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Written by Tex Allen, SAG Actor.

Email Tex Allen at TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for movie credits and biography facts about Tex Allen's movie career and life.