Katharine Hepburn

Entertainment 6 Minutes

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 14th.)

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Published by pat frederick

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88 thoughts on “Katharine Hepburn”

  1. Good morning and Happy Mother’s Day, dear hearts!

    Can’t wait for the brownie recipe – Sally Q loves brownies a la mode with whipped cream on top!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. A bouquet for you,

      for all you do!

      These roses are called Pretty Lady rose – and to me a perfect symbol for a mother’s sweetness, grace and love.

      Liked by 2 people

  3. hubby put out the trap last night and we’ve already got a raccoon. it’s not happy in the trap and knocked over the small tree on the deck already.

    raining here so hubby can’t dispatch it till later.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Happy Mother’s Day, Pat! I never saw any of her movies except On Golden Pond, which I loved. Surprisingly, my back doesn’t hurt a bit today – never did have to take that Naproxen! We’ve got 60 and sunshine this morning; the guy who sprays my yard is coming today and I’m having him add the fertilizer this time. Usually I just have him spray for weeds but I like to give the lawn a jolt every few years. After you signed off yesterday, I posted this at M’s:

      “OMG! That little sneak!!! I’ve had Jake shut in the bedroom, with the patio doors open. I hadn’t seen Wheezer all day and wasn’t watching closely since I’m watching TV and playing solitaire; then I heard a sound like a cat jumping down from the bathroom counter….huh??? Jake is in the bedroom, right? So I got up to look and, as I started around the corner into the hall, here came Wheezer running past me, thru the utility room and out to the patio! That little shit snuck by me and has been wandering around the house, apparently! ROFL”

      Liked by 1 person

        2. He’s such a dark gray, with no white at all, and I never have many lights on anyway so he’s easy to miss!

          Liked by 1 person

        1. Well, you do have to put up with Jane Fonda but it’s a wonderful movie with Henry Fonda as Hepburn’s aging hubby.

          Liked by 1 person

  6. because of the raccoon in the trap, (and it’s raining still) I didn’t take the jelly feeder out yet. there’s 2 hummer feeders on the side deck under the eave, so they’re protected. this morning a grosbeak was sitting on the railing singing eek eek…looking for the jelly. lol…

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I remembered you said that the other day…so if it’s out and raining i leave it out. but if I have to take it out in the rain I’ll wait. I’m delicate you know…lol…rain may hurt me.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. MERYL NASS, MD

    @NassMeryl

    Today 22 US Attorneys General informed President Biden they were not going along with the WHO, noting: “Ultimately, the goal of these instruments isn’t to protect public health. It’s to cede authority to the WHO – specifically its Director General – to restrict our citizens’ rights to freedom of speech, privacy, movement (especially to travel across borders) and informed consent… Accordingly, we will resist any attempt to enable the WHO to directly or indirectly set public policy for our citizens.”

    Liked by 1 person

  9. RealRobert

    @Real_RobN

    And here is, 100% your government was overthrown, Michigan: +100,000 MAIL IN BALLOT application falsified at election headquarters, Arizona: +733,000 MAIL IN BALLOTS cast, just vanished into thin air, uncounted for, Pennsylvania: +766,000 MAIL IN BALLOTS cast, just appears out of nowhere, Georgia: +96,000 MAIL IN BALLOTS cast, but no record of ever being returned, Wisconsin: +64,000 MAIL IN BALLOTS xeroxed at City Hall room 501.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. 2 illegals (including one on the terror watch list) try to storm Quantico in a box truck.

    Biden chose to open up the border to the invaders of the world. And they’re coming. Including Muslims on terror watch lists. A number have been caught, others have gotten through and since Biden insists on releasing virtually every border invader into the country, they’re free to do what they please once they get in.

    And what are they doing?

    Two people inside a box truck tried to force their way onto Quantico Marine Corps Base.

    After being pressed by Potomac Local News, base officials today said that in the early morning hours of Friday, May 3, 2024, the two men drove a truck up to the base’s main gate on Fuller Road, just outside Dumfries, told guards that they were contractors for Amazon and were making a delivery to Quantico Town’s post office. The town is located inside the military base.

    The men did not provide any approved access credentials, and police determined the vehicle had no affiliation with the base, so officers directed the truck to a holding area for standard vetting procedures. “One of the military police officers noticed the driver, ignoring the direct instructions of the officers, continued to move the vehicle past the holding area and attempted to access…Quantico,” said base spokesman Capt. Micheal Curtis.

    Officers then used vehicle denial barriers, or roadblocks that were used to keep out cars, which prevented the two men from traveling further onto the base. The occupants were detained and eventually turned over to ICE, and no one was injured, said Curtis.

    Multiple sources report one of the individuals inside the truck is a Jordanian foreign national who recently crossed the southern border into the U.S., and that one of the occupants is on the U.S. terrorist watch list. Quantico did not confirm this information.

    No one will be in any hurry to confirm something that makes the administration look terrible.

    Would a normal Amazon delivery driver be willing to risk his life by ignoring instructions from military officers just to make that delivery?

    No Amazon driver is that dedicated.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/muslim-border-invader-on-terror-watchlist-tried-to-break-into-quantico/

    Liked by 1 person

            1. Nope – would have taken her in to be weighed just for shits & giggles, then turned her loose again. We always did catch & release – not big fish-eating fans.

              Liked by 1 person

  13. I can’t stand this whiny jackwad – that voice sends shivers up my spine and NOT in a good way so I’m not posting the Tweet of him speaking.

    National Pulse: “WATCH: Ben Shapiro Lauds Anti-British Terrorist.”

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “Neoconservative commentator Ben Shapiro has praised the murderous, anti-British terrorist Menachem Begin — who eventually became the sixth Prime Minister of Israel — while slamming Joe Biden for suspending certain arms shipments to the Jewish state. Shapiro’s comments came while describing an exchange between then-Senator Biden and Begin from 1982.

    “In June 1982, Joe Biden was on the foreign relations committee… he got into a clash with the Prime Minister of Israel at the time, Menachem Begin. At the time, Israel was going into Lebanon in order to attempt to extirpate terrorism that was coming from southern Lebanon,” Shapiro explained. 

    “Joe Biden was very angry at Menachem Begin,” Shapiro notes before offering a brief biography of Begin. Begin’s “entire family was effectively murdered in the Holocaust, and then he ended up moving to Israel and becoming an underground fighter against the British in an attempt to establish the state of Israel.”

    But the “underground fighter” was an overt terrorist. During the Second World War, Begin left the British Army in Palestine and eventually became the leader of the Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group, in 1943.BEGIN’S CAMPAIGN OF TERROR. 

    Begin was inspired by another terrorist group — the Irish Republican Army — and the Irgun waged a bloody campaign against the British. In February 1944, it declared a revolt, which began with the bombing of the offices of the Immigration Department in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Then it bombed the Income Tax Offices in those three cities, followed by a number of attacks against police stations, killing six British policemen.

    In 1946, Begin ordered the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British Mandatory Palestine. Nearly 100 people were killed and over 40 injured, including Britons, Jews, and Arabs. It remains the single bloodiest act of terrorism against the British in history, killing more people than the 7/7 bus attacks and the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing combined.

    One of the most despicable acts committed by Begin’s Irgun was in July 1947, when the terrorist group kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps NCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice. The two were executed by hanging in an Eucalyptus grove, their bodies boobytrapped.

    Shapiro and other Israel advocates are quick to condemn the terrorism perpetrated by Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups, and rightly so. But Shapiro’s comments serve as a stark reminder that modern Israel is also a nation founded using terror tactics that murdered soldiers and civilians.”

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Just The News: “Former NFL star Lawrence Taylor declared Saturday that Donald Trump changed his politics as he joined the former president at a massive rally in New Jersey.

    “I grew up a Democrat, and I’ve always been a Democrat until I met this man right here,” Taylor told the rally while standing alongside Trump. Taylor said his family will never again vote for Democrats.

    Taylor is widely viewed as one of the NFL‘s greatest defensive players, starring for the New York Giants who played their home games in New Jersey. Taylor and Trump were joined by another Giants legend, running back Otis “O.J.” Anderson at the Wildwood, N.J. rally.

    Leading in the polls, Trump held the rally as he vowed to expand the election map to blue states like New York and New Jersey.”

    Liked by 1 person

  16. hmmmmmmm….now where could if have gone?

    GGGGGggggrrrrrrrrrrr

    GGGGGggggrrrrrrrrrrr

    May 12, 2024 8:09 am

    California Democrats Turn on Gov Newsom as $20 Billion in Homeless Council Funding Goes Missing

    California Democrats have begun turning against Governor Gavin Newsom after $20 billion in taxpayer money allocated for tackling homelessness in the state has gone missing.

    Gov. Newsom’s California Interagency Council on Homelessness (CICH) is unable to account for billions of dollars in funding over the past five years.

    The homeless council has no record of where the $20B has been spent, nor can Newsom’s administration provide any evidence or examples of where the program has been successful in tackling homelessness in the states.

    https://slaynews.com/news/california-democrats-turn-gov-newsom-20-billion-homeless-council-funding-missing/

    Liked by 1 person

  17. i am making perogies today –some for us and some for my mom when we visit later this week. The filling is made (mashed potatoes, sauteed onions and velveeta cheese) but it has to cool somewhat before I can make the dough and perogies. so if a disappear a little later, you’ll know why.

    Liked by 2 people

  22. I’m going to make a run to Menards/Norfolk – they’ve got some white painted trellis panels for less than $20/ea with long stakes. Then I won’t need to worry about buying more t-posts – I’ve already got a couple I can put at either end to help with stability against the wind. And mulch – a BUNCH of mulch! BBL….gorgeous day! Up to 73 now.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. Whew! I am sweatin’ my butt off! Up to 79 now – still sunny at the moment but it was pouring down rain in Norfolk! You try moving/spreading 15 bags of wet mulch! But I got ‘er done! I re-mulched under the willow tree and then put the rest on the cantaloupe bed. Finished product…..I haven’t decided yet whether to put the decorate black metal fencing up around the outside or not. We’ll see….

    Liked by 1 person

  34. Fibonacci’s Cat (NF: I haven’t a clue what this means! LOL)

    USAF Kansas ANG 127Th Tactical Fighter Squadron Jayhawks F-4 Phantom in the engine test cell, running at full afterburner.

    Fort in the Darial Gorge on the border between Russia and Georgia, 1964.

    Liked by 1 person

  37. I am adding a short daily prayer to the board. I would invite each of you, if you wish, to also add one or maybe two of your own liking. I do not want to stifle anyone but please limit yourself to one or two religious postings. here’s one I found that I liked.

    Like

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