Kate the Great. As of yet, no actress has matched her record of four Oscar wins for Best Actress. Her first was for 1933's MORNING GLORY and her last for 1981's ON GOLDEN POND. My mother loved Katharine Hepburn. I grew up loving Katharine Hepburn. When I was in my last two years of high school in Los Angeles, fellow teens and college kids I'd encountered talked about hot new actress of the day -- Faye Dunaway and Jane Fonda. They also talked about Katharine Hepburn. 1967's GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER did very well at the box office. Young moviegoers were paying to see her in 1968's THE LION IN WINTER, a historical drama based on a Broadway play. Both of those 1960s films brought Hepburn Best Actress Oscars. And young moviegoers were also taking about Hepburn's now-famous impromptu TV interview with Dick Cavett. Her independence, her intelligence, her energetic Connecticut feminism and even her unique and well-tailored tomboy-ish fashion statement made this actress, a movie star since the 1930s, seem modern and hip to a new audience in the 60s and 70s. And there was her legendary screen teaming with Spencer Tracy -- a special relationship onscreen and off. One of their classics is George Cukor's 1949 comedy, ADAM'S RIB. They starred as married New York lawyers who wind up on opposite sides in the courtroom in this comedy about women's equality.
From a buddy on Facebook, I learned that there's a new documentary on Netflix about Hepburn. CALL ME KATE was written and directed by Lorna Tucker. If you're a fellow Hepburn fan, you should check out the 90-minute feature. It's full of footage and information we don't usually see -- or have never seen -- in previous features on the fiercely private screen great. We see home movies, if you will, and learn about her parents in Connecticut and how Kate's mother was a major force in influencing how Hepburn crafted her screen image. We learn about her beloved brother who died by his own hand. We learn about her early Broadway flop performances from which she learned and carried on with a steely ambition.
In her early Hollywood years, we hear how she shook off rumors of lesbianism and had a romance with millionaire Howard Hughes. Then there's Spencer Tracy, Lorna Tucker's documentary delves deep into this 30-year relationship that obviously had its turbulence. Tracy drank too much, he was far from being as outgoing as she, he had fits of depression and was wracked with Catholic guilt because he was a married man with children. We hear from relatives of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. We also hear Hepburn in never-before-revealed taped interviews.
The documentary also addresses one Hepburn success that's rarely mentioned. She starred in a hit Broadway musical about famed French designer Coco Chanel. The 1969 show, COCO, had a score by Alan Jay Lerner and André Previn. Katharine Hepburn was a Tony nominee for Best Lead Actress in a Musical.
I saw the show when it played in L.A. at the Music Center. I was in high school and a family friend gave me her ticket to a matinee performance because she had to be out of town. I was not the only one in the audience who was awestruck by Katharine Hepburn's magnetism, energy and her skill in the musical numbers. She talk/sang like Rex Harrison in MY FAIR LADY and Robert Preston in THE MUSIC MAN. She never missed a beat and her vocal delivery was a crisp as a ripe apple. You could hear every single syllable. It was her first and only Broadway musical -- yet she seemed born to do it.
The audience gave her a well-deserved and most loving standing ovation. This was back in the day when a standing ovation really meant something -- especially in L.A. where enthusiastic audiences tended to keep their seats because they were used to TV and being in movie theaters or cars at the drive-in.
You will learn new things about the complicated, charismatic Katharine Hepburn in CALL ME KATE. Check it out on Netflix. In the meantime, click onto the link below to hear Katharine Hepburn as Coco Chanel on the original Broadway cast album of COCO.
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