Today is one of my favorite actress’s birthday—Katharine Hepburn.  She was born May 12, 1907 and passed away on June 29, 2003 at the age of 96.  I’ve enjoyed (and have on dvds) many of her films: Desk Set, The Philadelphia Story, and The Lion in Winter to name just a few.  I found an article on Mental Floss listing 11 things we may not have known about this wonderful actress.

From Mental Floss:

1. Katharine Hepburn was a tomboy from an early age.

Aside from her acting career, Katharine Houghton Hepburn—who was born on May 12, 1907—was also famous for her commitment to wearing pants at a time when the rest of Hollywood’s female stars virtually never strayed from skirts and dresses. In 1986, the Council of Fashion Designers of America even honored Hepburn with a lifetime achievement award.

Hepburn, whose mother was a suffragette and early advocate of birth control, was raised to be confident, independent, and individualistic, and her aversion to forced femininity began at a young age. For one memorable summer during her childhood in Connecticut, she sported a short haircut and started going by “Jimmy.” “I thought being a girl was really the bunk,” Hepburn later explained in an interview. “But there’s no bunk about Jimmy.”

Though she stuck with her birth name after that, she never warmed to the idea of long, flowy clothing. “I realized long ago that skirts are hopeless,” Hepburn said in 1993. “Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a skirt, I say: ‘Try one. Try a skirt.’”

2. Hepburn found her brother dead when she was 13 years old.

While Hepburn’s upbringing was privileged in some ways, it wasn’t without tragedy. In 1921, when she was 13 years old, she found her 15-year-old brother Tom hanging from the rafters, having strangled himself to death. Her family maintained that it was the result of a magic trick gone awry, since Tom had tried a mock-hanging stunt at least once before, but it cast a dark shadow over the rest of Hepburn’s childhood and added to an already-established legacy of suicide in the family: Two uncles, a great-uncle, and her grandfather all took their own lives.

3. She bought out her contract for The Lake rather than finish the run.

Hepburn made her Broadway debut in 1930’s Art and Mrs. Bottle and graced the stage again in 1932’s The Warrior’s Husband. Her third play, 1933’s The Lake, garnered abysmal reviews, including Dorothy Parker’s alleged observation that Hepburn “ran the gamut of emotion from A to B.” Not long into the run, 26-year-old Hepburn was so miserable—and treated so poorly by director Jed Harris—that she bought out her contract and simply walked away.

4. The Lake was the original source of one of her most memorable lines.

One line from the ill-fated play, however, followed Hepburn out that stage door and right into another one. In 1937’s Stage Door, Hepburn portrayed an aspiring actress competing with other boarding house tenants for parts in a play, and director Gregory La Cava gave her the line “The calla lilies are in bloom again,” which he had borrowed from The Lake. Delivered several times throughout the film in Hepburn’s trademark Mid-Atlantic drawl, the line became one of her most iconic, and it’s been referenced in various programs over the years, including an episode of I Love Lucy and the 1988 comedy Big Top Pee-Wee.

5. She once dumped a cup of water on co-star Ginger Rogers.

On the set of Stage Door, Ginger Rogers was flaunting a new mink coat when Hepburn appeared and poured her cup of water on it, explaining that if the coat was, in fact, real mink, it wouldn’t shrink. The media speculated that the behavior was brought on by jealousy, since Hepburn’s then-beau Howard Hughes had reportedly shown interest in Fred Astaire’s legendary dancing partner. But Rogers herself wouldn’t play into the rumors. “Don’t ask me, I haven’t the foggiest notion why [she did it],” Rogers later said in an interview.

6. For a while, Hepburn was considered “box office poison.”

Hepburn followed her film debut in 1932’s A Bill of Divorcement with an Oscar-winning performance in 1933’s Morning Glory and another acclaimed appearance in Little Women that same year. But she also had enough commercial flops—including Spitfire (1934), Mary of Scotland (1936), and the now-beloved screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938)—in the mid-to-late 1930s that she landed on a 1938 list of actors labeled “box office poison” by the Independent Theater Owners’ Association of New York.

Hepburn was unabashed. “Look, they say I’m a has-been,” she told the Daily News with a chuckle, “Yet Bringing Up Baby already has clicked to the tune of $2 million gross, while Stage Door has grossed better than $2,500,000. If I weren’t laughing so hard, I might cry, but why should I?”

7. The Philadelphia Story was a turning point in her career.

As it turns out, Hepburn was right not to dwell on the poisonous criticism. In 1938, she accepted a starring role—which playwright Philip Barry had actually written for her—in the Broadway comedy The Philadelphia Story, and Howard Hughes bought her the rights so that she could reprise her role in a film adaptation. The MGM-produced 1940 film, which co-starred Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, was a box office smash, and it planted Hepburn right back on her path to greatness.

8. She had a decades-long affair with Spencer Tracy.

Hepburn wed Philadelphia businessman Ludlow Ogden Smith soon after graduating from Bryn Mawr in 1928, but they divorced after six years. Much more significant was her affair with fellow actor Spencer Tracy, with whom she lived for 27 years (though Tracy, who was Catholic, never actually divorced his wife). Over the course of their relationship, Hepburn and Tracy starred in nine films together, including 1942’s Woman of the Year, 1949’s Adam’s Rib, and 1952’s Pat and Mike. They wrapped production on their last one, 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, just a few weeks before Tracy died of a heart attack at age 67.

9. Whisky was Hepburn’s drink of choice.

Though Hepburn didn’t drink much during her years with Tracy (who was an alcoholic), she was known to regularly indulge in a glass of whisky in later life, which she said helped with the head tremor she had inherited from her grandfather. “I discovered that whisky helps stop the shaking,” she said in the 1993 documentary All About Me. “Problem is, if you’re not careful, it stops the rest of you, too.”

But based on what she told fellow cast member Brian Blessed while filming 1971’s The Trojan Women, it seems like she also just really loved whisky, all favorable side effects aside. “When I smell whisky, I go absolutely out of my mind. Whisky is beauuuuuutiful. I smell whisky in a glass and I want it,” she said, according to Blessed’s autobiography. “I’d drink whisky morning, noon, and night until it killed me.”

10. Her brownie recipe broke up a marriage.

Hepburn may have balked at certain societal restrictions on women, but that didn’t mean she had anything against spending time in the kitchen. She was especially particular about brownies, which, in her opinion, should be moist. After The New York Times published her signature recipe online in 2015, a woman named Sydne Newberry revealed in the comments section that Hepburn’s deliciously fudgy dessert had inadvertently ended her marriage. As Newberry told The Cut, she had brought the brownies on a trip to visit her husband while he was stationed at an Air Force base in Germany in the 1980s. While there, she shared the dessert with his friend and his friend’s wife, “a gorgeous Italian woman who was very proud of her cooking and was a real food snob.”

Her new baking buddy loved the brownies, and the two kept up correspondence over the next few years while the woman tried to get the recipe right. After repeated failures, she implied that Newberry had intentionally omitted something. Then, while visiting Newberry in the states, the woman began an affair with Newberry’s husband, who eventually left his wife for her, apparently undeterred by her lack of success on the brownie front. “If you want to steal somebody’s husband,” Newberry told NPR, “You should screw up a brownie recipe.”

11. Hepburn held the record for most Academy Award nominations … until Meryl Streep came along.

With her Best Actress nomination for On Golden Pond in 1981, Hepburn set a new record for most nominations ever earned by an actor: 12. The record went unchallenged until 2002, when Meryl Streep clinched her 13th for a supporting role in Adaptation (since then, Streep’s nomination count has risen to a staggering 21). When it comes to actual wins, however, Hepburn comes out on top: Streep has three, while Hepburn has four.

SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS

(I have Hepburn’s brownie recipe in a post on the 14^th.)

1) Where did the American custom of Mother’s Day begin?

2) What flower is associated with Mother’s Day?

3) Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year for _____.

4) What is the average age for first-time moms in the United States?

5) What percentage of moms in the U.S. are single parents?

6) How do children in Serbia celebrate Mother’s Day?

7) What ancient Roman festival is considered a forerunner of Mother’s Day?

8) What year was the first Mother’s Day celebrated in the United States?

9) Which U.S. president made Mother’s Day a national holiday?

10) How many diapers does the average mom change during the first three months of motherhood?

ANSWERS:

1. West Virginia: While some countries have a multi-century history of celebrating mothers, the modern American version of the holiday didn’t begin until the early 20th century when Anna Jarvis organized the first Mother’s Day service of worship and celebration at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, which serves as the International Mother’s Day Shrine today.

2. Carnations: Everyone knows that giving flowers on Mother’s Day is a time-honored tradition, but did you know that carnations are the official Mother’s Day flower? Pink carnations represent gratitude and love. Dark red carnations signify love and affection. And white carnations are traditional flowers to wear in remembrance of a mother who is no longer living.

3. Restaurants: According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother’s Day is the most popular day of the year to eat in a restaurant. In a survey conducted by the association, 51 percent of mothers said they prefer to eat out on the holiday because they do most of the cooking at home and dining out gives them a much-needed break.

4. 27 years old: The average age of first-time mothers has risen dramatically since 1972, when it was 21. Today, the average first-time mother is 27 years old.

5. 24%: According to Pew Research Center data, about one in four, or roughly 24 percent of mothers in the U.S. are raising kids without a spouse or partner.

6. Tying Mother up: Serbia has what is probably one of the most unusual Mother’s Day customs. Children creep into their mother’s bedroom first thing in the morning and tie her up! In order to be released, it is customary for mothers to bribe their children with treats. However, it should be noted that mothers aren’t the only ones tied up on their special day. A week earlier, on Children’s Day, children are tied up and must agree to behave before they are released.

7. Hilaria: The Romans celebrated Hilaria on March 25 in honor of Cybele, an Anatolian mother goddess known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”). The manner of celebration during the time of the republic is unknown, except that Valerius Maximus mentions games in honor of the mother of the gods. At the time of the empire, there was a solemn procession, followed by all kinds of games and amusements, including a masquerade.

8. 1907: Ann Reeves Jarvis was a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War. She and Julia Ward Howe (author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) spent years campaigning for the creation of a “Mother’s Day For Peace” where mothers would ask that their husbands and sons were no longer killed in wars. After Ann’s death in 1905, her daughter took up the fight, and the first American Mother’s Day was celebrated in 1907 at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church.

9. Woodrow Wilson: In 1908, the U.S. Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother’s Day an official holiday, joking that they would also have to proclaim a “Mother-in-law’s Day”. But just six years later, in 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating that Mother’s Day be held on the second Sunday in May as a national holiday to honor mothers.

10. 700: In the first month of life, newborns average up to 8 to 10 diaper changes per day. And over the first three months (the newborn stage), babies go through about 700 diapers.

So…how did you do?

SOURCE: usefultrivia.com

REMEMBER: Moms are cool…but GRANDMAS RULE!

Today is George’s birthday—born May 6, 1961—and I had a whole post about him with some interesting facts about his life, because I respected George’s attitude on aging as a movie star.  He didn’t want to dye his hair or get plastic surgery, because people always look a little off when they try to recapture their youth, he said. 

Then just recently I read this article where George makes the comment that it might be time to FORCE JAB people with the vaccine.  Suddenly an individual making their own choices was not a good option for George.  Sad.

The time has come to force-jab every unvaccinated person in the United States, according to Hollywood actor George Clooney who declared his support for “mandatory vaccines, period” during a red carpet interview.