The Great Katharine Hepburn

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Kate talks to Clive James:


The entire interview:

 
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Miss Texas 1967

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I don’t know how, but I’ve been sleeping on Katharine Hepburn. I recently watched Bringing Up Baby after seeing a clip, and oh my gosh, what a hoot of a film!

After that, I went down the rabbit hole and watched her other collaborations with Cary Grant: The Philadelphia Story (which I liked, though I was a bit puzzled by the plot and ending, I went in basically blind, but I did enjoy the quick, sharp dialogue), and Holiday, which was just fantastic.

I’m definitely going to watch more. I love the feeling of discovering a new actor and diving deep into their filmography.
 

Karin

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I'm glad you've discoverd Katharine Hepburn. I think my favorite movie of hers is "Adams Rib" (1949) where she co-starred with Spencer Tracy. I rewatched that again last year and the movie still held up well on my third watch or something like that. :)
 

Snarky Oracle!

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I have to say (and probably already have, earlier in this thread, but I'm too lazy this morning to go back and peruse it) I have a strong preference for Kate's dowager roles from later in her career. Her earlier comedic parts are just fine -- she's chic and elegant (I have a copy of THE PHILADELPHIA STORY yet find it hard to trudge through sometimes).

But, for me, Hepburn becomes more interesting, magisterial yet looser, as she ages. She's alternately breathtaking and awful in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962) and her most deserved Oscar (although she had to share it with Streisand) was for LION IN WINTER (1968) -- one of the great dialogue pictures ever.

THE TROJAN WOMEN (1971) was not one of her biggest hits, critically or financially, but how many actors could handle a scene like this??, from about 01: 21:00 thru 01:24:00...

 

KayLloyd

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If you're ever in Old Saybrook, CT, I highly recommend a visit to the lovely small museum at the Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center. The have rotating special exhibits and show her movies. When I was there last month, they had her real life wedding dress and other dresses that she wore in plays and movies. Love that she gave Spencer Tracy's hat to Henry Fonda when they filmed On Golden Pond, so sweet.
 
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Crimson

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From Reddit: The 13 actresses Kate beat for Best Actress. May Robson, Diana Wynyard, Anne Bancroft, Faye Dunaway, Edith Evans, Patricia Neal, Audrey Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Joanne Woodward, Diane Keaton, Marsha Mason, Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep.

It's wild that Hepburn competitively overlapped with Streep.

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Toni

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Desk Set from the 1950s was my favorite of the Tracy/Hepburn pairings, but my favorite of her movies is a tie between Bringing Up Baby and Suddenly Last Summer
Have you seen "The African Queen", "Guess Who´s Coming to Dinner" and "The Lion in Winter"?
 

ClassyCo

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I watched CALL ME KATE (2023), a documentary I had no idea even existed until this past week. It's on Netflix, so I decided to give it a look after I stumbled upon it.

Right from the start, I notice there's something "off" about the voiceover narration that's supposed to be Katharine Hepburn. It's most definitely not her, it's a "sound-alike" impersonation that is honestly quite distracting in some areas, especially when it comes right before or right after Hepburn's real voice clipped from interviews and other recordings.

That aside, the documentary was pretty good. It focuses on her life, as all documentaries aim to do. During her liberal-leaning childhood and adolescence, she was embedded with ideals she took into adulthood and she allowed those same beliefs to carry her through life. One of the things I found most informative about this documentary was the aftermath surrounding the suicide of Hepburn's older brother when she was quite young. Her father practically erased him from their lives, barring the very mentioning of his name. "They had to pretend like he was never a part of their family," the narration says. That's honestly quite sad and something I couldn't have dealt with.

Other than that, the documentary was pretty much what one might expect: there's talks on her introduction to Hollywood, her determination in the negotiations, her changing the face of womanhood on screen, her relationships, her decades-long relationship with Spencer Tracy, and her later life resurgence as one of the most famous women in the world. There's also a little tangent about her rumored homosexuality or bisexuality, but it's basically brushed off. The real Hepburn even pops in for a voiceover where she makes a few jokes about people thinking she's a lesbian.

As I say, it's on Netflix, and it might even be streaming elsewhere. It's worth a look, so give it a try.

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Crimson

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. It's most definitely not her, it's a "sound-alike"

I don't have a problem with documentaries using recreations long as they're identified as such. I've only seen the promo for this particular doc. The sound-alike didn't seem to sound very much alike.

In Kate's case, odd to even need a sound-a-like; we have so much of Kate talking about her own life, including her narrating her own autobiography, that it seems like there was plenty in her own voice to pull from.
 
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