Katharine Hepburn

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I love her in her later films, like "The Lion in WInter" and the film with Sidney Poitier (forget the name) "On Golden Pond".
Her early films make me crazy though with the overacting. She just chews up the scenery. Her acting in "Stage Door" and "Little Women" make me cringe. It's like she finally got it" later in life and became a great actress.

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gibby said:

With the exception of Bringing Up Baby, I can't stand Katharine Hepburn. She just grates. At least with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, you got a big personality to go with the arrogance.

Thank you! I get the feeling it's almost blasphemous with some people to not adore her. One movie I saw her in with Spencer Tracy she over-acted to the point I was almost laughing. She often talked in that clipped voice that I think was meant to sound witty but to me just sounded like she had a big pole up her butt. I dunno. I just never quite got it.

[OnyxRose]

For a while there, I thought I was the only one who just didn't get the Katharine Hepburn love.

I adore Audrey.

[margojata]

I think she's indicitive of a lot of actors of that era ...

She was always Katharine Hepburn to me, no matter who she was suppose to be playing. The same for Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant - were they really anyone else but themselves (but I LOVE Jimmy and Cary - Katharine, eh)? I guess I feel the same way about Jack Nicholson .. he's always crazy Jack. The personalities were just so strong, they just never seemed to be able to portray another person.

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Spencer Tracy, left his wife with a sick child {a little boy} he was deaf and Spencer didn't want to care for him, he had a daughter also. The world knew all about Katherine and Spencer, the children did not know him. I don't know why people would not say Katherine was the other woman? Katherine told his wife, her husband was dead and to come get him.

[jdkwfan4ever]

If the whole world knew about Katharine and Spencer why did people pretty much accept them together? Was it bad back then for a married man to have a mistress or was it not that big of a deal?

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jojo said:

Spencer Tracy, left his wife with a sick child {a little boy} he was deaf and Spencer didn't want to care for him, he had a daughter also. The world knew all about Katherine and Spencer, the children did not know him. I don't know why people would not say Katherine was the other woman? Katherine told his wife, her husband was dead and to come get him.

Tracy never left his wife. He always maintained a home with her and for the most part stayed with her and the kids every weekend. His contemporaries have said that the Hepburn affair has been overblown, even by Hepburn herself (the Tom/Katebot Vanity Fair issue's article on KH deals with this). Apparently, he was involved and attentive with his kids, within the context of old-school Hollywood dads (a uniformly neglectful bunch, it seems). He did admit to friends that he felt guilty and helpless about his son's handicap which, at a time of non-mainstream education and limited opoortunities for deaf people, I can understand.

Hepburn and Tracy's affair was an open secret in Hollywood but it simply wasn't reported on at the time. Outsiders didn't know about it until after his death. They never really lived together and weren't seen in public together.

[abigail]

Hepburn didn't even attend his funeral out of respect for his family .