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[gentle wistful music playing]
[TV host 1] Katharine Hepburn.
[TV host 2] Katharine Hepburn.
-[TV host 3] Katharine Hepburn. -[TV host 4] Katharine Hepburn.
Four Oscars, which is more than anybody else.
[TV host 5] A true American eccentric.
[TV host 6] Every time somebody compiles a list
of the most admired women, there's Katharine Hepburn.
[Kat] She wasn't afraid to say, "I really just wanted to be famous."
[Robin] She would use her own intelligence
and her own savvy to negotiate deals and changes in scripts.
She's opening doors that she doesn't necessarily realize
are going to be there for other women to walk through.
[typewriter keys clacking]
[Glenn] She was one of the first women to wear pants
and to wear sometimes rather masculine-looking,
tailored clothes that women were not wearing.
[Angela Lansbury] She was told by the heads of RKO,
"No self-respecting actress would ever wear Dungarees in public."
She stripped them off and strolled through the lot in her undergarments.
[audience laughs]
[Katharine] The wardrobe is a self-indulgence, isn't it?
That everybody's been smart enough to copy. [chuckles]
[Mundy] Kate was always an intense person.
She was a lot of fun and fascinating and deep-thinking and mischievous.
"Come on, let's go break in that house and see what's in there."
[Katharine] I could get in anywhere.
The only time I nearly lost my life was dropping through a skylight.
Shoplifting. I didn't know that she ever did that.
No, she's not a shoplifter. She may be other things.
[Claudia] What happens to women's ideals and how they see themselves,
how they dream about themselves?
There's nobody more than Hepburn who tells you about that story.
Thank you, of course, to Ms. Hepburn.
The longevity of her career I think is inspiring to everyone.
[Angela] She dared to say no to how the system wanted to mold her.
Now, how you feel about being you?
I feel very good about it.
She confused the industry. She confused the movie-goer.
She confused the press.
Katharine Hepburn refused to be an influencer.
Influence yourself.
[gentle wistful music continues]
[Katharine] When I was starting out, all I wanted was to be famous.
But I soon realized that if I wanted to last
more than five minutes in this industry
and survive to tell the tale,
I had to put in the work to never stop pushing.
I still try to swim every day I'm out here.
It helps me get out of my head.
Feels like only yesterday I was just a child
climbing trees and fighting with the boys.
It's my safe place. Always has been.
Through it all, I always come back.
I've lived a good life.
I remember when I was young,
I'd look at old people and think,
"That will never happen to me."
But I tell you, it goes like...
[fingers snap]
You always call me Miss Hepburn.
So why don't you shift and call me Kate?
[gentle string music]
Now, here I am, and I've been here quite a long time.
The feet have a few more steps in them.
One leg is a bit shaky.
I keep bumping myself. I don't know what that means.
Certain things have maintained themselves.
I can see pretty well, and I still seem to have
a wild amount of energy that I can still go on.
But I can't tell you the things that have made me
do this or this or this.
You know, how the hell could I tell the story of my life?
[Dick Cavett] Katharine Hepburn, never having been on television,
she agreed to come into my studio for a test only.
No, I think I go the other way.
[Dick Cavett] She checked the cameras,
the lights, these chairs, the temperature in the studio.
She pronounced the carpet ugly.
-Can we have a table that's-- -John.
Nobody answers.
[Dick Cavett] Then she surprised me by suddenly saying,
"Why don't we just go ahead and do it now?"
I have a feeling that millions of people,
they feel that you probably have some guiding principles,
some secret that if only they knew them,
they could be as successful and as content as you seem to be.
But you say it's luck. That there aren't two or three rules.
No, well, I think it's in the first place, it's lucky if you have an intelligent
and brilliant and inspiring father and mother.
-Yeah. -And it's lucky if you've had experiences
before the age of 15,
which teach you not to be afraid.
[bright jazz music playing]
It's changed a lot around here since I was a kid.
I grew up wild and free with one brother Tom, older,
and my two younger, Dick and Bob.
Being a girl was a torment.
I would shave my hair every summer just like them.
I always wanted to be a boy.
Dad taught us gymnastics and how to swim and wrestle.
When I think back, it really was the most perfect, happiest of childhoods.
[bright jazz music continues]
One of my earliest memories was that of my mother
getting me and my brothers to give out red balloons
at the local fair.
She had a stall and asked us to hand out leaflets
promoting the women's vote.
Their radical beliefs caused quite a scandal in the town.
That was one of dad's gems.
Mother was one of the top debaters.
She was quick-witted and a lot of fun.
She would read us all the greats,
Bernard Shaw, Emerson, O'Neill.
Our house was a meeting ground
for all the progressive radicals of the time.
[Katharine, on tape] We kids were allowed in,
but we didn't do much talking.
We met Emmeline Pankhurst, Rebecca West, Richard Bennett,
any number of distinguished doctors and professors.
The door of our house was always open.
[Bonnie] She was the daughter of what we now consider progressive parents.
Her father was a doctor and he advocated birth control.
Her mom was a suffragette.
They told her basically, "You do what you want."
So she called herself by a boy's name.
I think it was Jimmy or Billy or something.
Cut her hair and she learned to play golf, she swam.
Because her parents say, "You just do what you wanna do.
I mean, we're not gonna stop you."
And so that's how she felt about her life.
[Katharine] All us children were incredibly close,
but Tom, Dick and I were inseparable.
[bright jazz music]
[ship horns blaring]
[Katharine, on tape] I've come to the conclusion it was an accident.
[Glenn, on tape] Based on the fact that your father
had taught him or kind of-
[Katharine] Taught him, taught us, to hang ourselves.
[Glenn] Just as a stunt.
[Katharine] As a stunt, and this was at games and various events.
-[Glenn] Had you ever tried it? -[Katharine] No.
[Glenn] But your brother, it would seem decided to try.
[Katharine] He was fascinated by it. He could do it.
[Glenn] Excuse me. I just wanna turn this over.
[Katharine] We were in New York visiting our aunt.
We went out to see a play one evening,
and when we came back, Tom, who was 16 at the time,
came to me before bed and told me how much he loved me.
I didn't think anything of it.
The following morning when I went to his room
to fetch him for breakfast, I found him hanging.
-Dead. -[gentle pensive music]
I took him down and lay his cold body on the bed.
I felt detached from everything that was happening around me.
I was devastated.
The hardest part about it all
was that we weren't only told to not talk about Tom.
We had to pretend that he was not ever part of our family,
to act as if he'd never lived.
This was how our father managed the family's grief,
to pretend it never happened.
[gentle pensive music]
[Mundy] They were an amazing, bright, capable, cohesive family.
But her father came from a different era.
The reality of what happened in the Hepburn household
was that everybody was horrified and quiet.
Dr. Hepburn loved his children,
he wanted to be a good father,
but he was really tough on his kids
in an idealistic way.
But by today's standards, really harsh, probably abusive.
You have to heat it slowly,
or else it'll pop.
I remember my mother talking about Tom's death,
and my mother said,
"Well, they told the newspapers it was an accident."
He had been to the circus a few days before
and watched a hanging thing where there was a fake way
to hang yourself and appear as though you were hanging.
But then...
That's what my mother said when I was young.
But then as time passed, I asked my father about it,
and that's when he said he remembered his father
sitting in the chair in the front hall,
the straight back chair with his head in his hands going,
"Why did he do it? Why did he do it?"
And my father said, "Well," to himself, my father said, "Well, you big ass.
It's because you were so mean to him."
Dr. Hepburn was on some level, aware of his contribution.
And to have his eldest son die of his own hand
was deeply troubling and obviously, horribly painful.
Our family had a lot of troubles.
Kate's mother's father committed suicide.
Dr. Hepburn's older brothers died under suspicious conditions.
But it was considered in bad taste
to go around with your tragedy evident.
So his way of being strong was to go,
"Well, it's a nice day. We got work to do. Let's go."
[Katharine's brother] Our father moved us to a new neighborhood
to try and help us all move on with our lives.
"A fresh start," he said.
But Tom's death seemed to separate Kate from the outside world.
She became more introverted and withdrawn,
like Tom was, sinking into a deeper kind of depression.
She told me she'd made a promise that she would never forget him
and would live her life secretly for the both of them.
She started getting anxiety attacks, which made her sick.
She found it hard being around the other kids at school.
So our parents let her be homeschooled.
Dad thought if they kept her busy, it would help.
But she started withdrawing into herself.
They eventually became so worried, they made her go back to school.
[Katharine] I hated college.
I wasn't used to the discipline,
the regular hours and classes.
I started getting into trouble for smoking and breaking into houses.
Anyway, after about two years, they called in my parents
and practically asked me to leave.
One night soon after, I decided that's it.
I'd pull myself together, get on with life,
but also do what I wanted.
In my junior year, I won a role in the school play.
Nerves, fear, applause.
I finally felt fascinating.
It was right there and then I decided to be an actress.
[Bob] Dad always felt that if a girl went into theater,
it was as though she had announced that she was going to be a prostitute
and that she would not get anywhere
or any good jobs unless she slept with the director.
[Katharine] When I told my parents
I was moving to New York, dad hit the roof.
But mom was just glad to see me do something
other than what was expected of women.
She was a true feminist, and just told me to do what I wanted.
So I went.
And I had started out as an understudy,
and I was always a pretty good flash actor.
I could read a part without knowing what I was doing,
and I could always get a part.
Never could keep it, 'cause I would get so excited
that my voice would shoot way up in the top of my head
and I would get red in the face, talk too fast,
and couldn't act.
When they were all sitting out there, it just petrified me.
So I wrote Dad and said, "Would you back me with lessons?"
He wrote me and said he was winning bets on the golf course
and he considered that that was bad money,
so he'd send it to me.
[gentle bright music]
[Katharine] The first real friend I made there was Laura Harding.
I met her through my acting coach Robinson-Duff.
She was part of New York's High Society
and heir to the American Express fortune.
She knew all the highbrow customs of the time
and introduced me to her circle of friends
in the theater world.
Then Luddy, my old friend from back home,
moved to New York, and in no time at all,
he'd become part of our gang.
He was my beau, too, from then on,
and he was a real sweetheart.
He made it his mission to do everything he could
to make me a star.
He paid for lessons, drove me to rehearsals,
and helped me film my auditions.
[Robin] Kate was landing understudy roles
in some great plays, but she kept getting fired.
She finally had the chance to step into the leading role,
and after delivering an amusing line where the audience exploded with laughter,
her overconfidence found its way in.
Her voice rose to a high pitch and she spoke so quickly
that no one could even understand her through the remainder of the performance.
So she was fired.
[Katharine] After about a year of knock backs,
getting dropped from shows, and with only understudy roles,
I was just about ready to give up.
Sensing my sinking mood, Luddy proposed to me,
and I thought, you know, why not?
We had a simple wedding, and I even convinced him
to bring our friends, Jack and Laura on our honeymoon.
[Mundy] Kate wanted to do all the normal things
like have a life and have children and have a mate.
But when she really tried to do that with Luddy,
she realized that she was different,
that her enormous energy would drive her insane very quickly.
And within two weeks, she needed to move back to New York
and continue her efforts.
And he, for his part, understood that he had married a mad woman
with 10 times the energy,
and so he packed up and moved with her,
throwing his own life aside
and just going, "Whatever you want, Kate. Let's do it.
I love you. I'm gonna help."
[bright jazz music]
[gentle orchestral music]
[crowd chattering]
[Robin] Kate had understudied for Hope Williams
in several New York productions,
and she studied Hope's style and persona from the wings each night.
Her masculine dress sense in what Kate would call
the half boy, half woman persona.
Like a chameleon, Kate adopted some of these mannerisms.
So when Hope abandons The Warrior's Husband production,
Kate's given the lead role chance
and she channeled everything that she had practiced.
The play was a huge success and catapulted her into the public's eye.
[Katharine] I was finally starting to get the recognition I had craved.
My career skyrocketed.
My headshot was sent to L.A.
and I was asked to go out to test for a part in a film
called A Bill of Divorcement,
to be directed by George Cukor and starring John Barrymore.
I got a train with Laura
and we both arrived in L.A. in a hot, sweaty mess.
I don't think the head of RKO, David Selznick,
was very impressed when he picked us up from the station.
[gentle piano music]
-[camera beeps] -[reel clicking]
[Katharine] Every actor in America had gone up for this part,
and I knew George would've seen hundreds of tests.
So I decided to do something different,
a scene from Holiday.
I'd understudied Hope and watched her play that scene night after night,
and I took a lot of her into my performance.
I knew I'd made an impression.
John Barrymore came straight to see me after they watched it
to tell me what he thought.
I was going to be a star.
[camera beeps]
[Katharine] A few days later, the call came in.
Laura was to play the supporting role,
and I was given the leading part in my first ever picture.
Laura and I decided to move to Hollywood,
and that was the beginning of the end for me and Luddy.
[bells dinging]
[beeping]
[bright orchestral music]
[Katharine] Then shooting started on A Bill of Divorcement,
and the first shot was a party scene.
In a beautiful chiffon dress,
I came floating down the stairs and into the arms of David Manners.
[Robin] In her very first film she played John Barrymore's daughter
in a creaky melodrama called A Bill of Divorcement.
She was 24 making her film debut. He was 50, a long established star.
He was one of the famous Hamlets of his generation.
He was also an infamous alcoholic, a womanizer,
and like other powerful men in Hollywood, used to getting exactly what he wanted.
[Katharine, on tape] He asked me to come to his dressing room on the lot one day.
I went, and there he was lying on his couch
in a, what shall I say, comparative disarray.
There was a pause, a quick shuffle of the blanket.
"Oh, oh, I'm sorry. See you later," he said.
I went, "Oh, my. How very strange."
I'll make it up to you.
[Katharine] Anyway, he was an angel after that.
His main object really seemed
to be absolutely certain that I made a big hit.
He held my face to the camera in our many scenes together.
[bird whistling]
What's that?
Nothing.
[plane whirring]
[Robin] After working on A Bill of Divorcement,
Kate and Laura became part of George Cukor's close circle,
attending his parties, making friends in the industry.
Kate said that George would always sit her next to people
that could help her in her career,
but no one in Hollywood knew she was married.
She was courting several big players in the industry,
including her agent, Leland Hayward,
who taught her the ins and outs of negotiating with the studios.
[interviewee] She was anything but a big star,
but she treated herself like a star in the negotiations.
She wouldn't sign a term contract,
and her agent, Leland Hayward, wouldn't let her.
So she signed a contract
that gave her a very big salary, $1,500 a week.
[Katharine] One day, I was hanging out between meetings
in Pandro's office,
and I spotted the script for Morning Glory on his desk.
I started to flick through it. It was incredible.
I called Laura and told her to drive over.
We read the script together and she was as convinced as I
that no matter what, I had to play the lead.
Leland told me they'd already cast it,
but I said, "No, it's for me."
Well, he went off and managed to get me the part.
[gentle string music]
Good morning, Tom.
[Robin] In 1933, she stars in Morning Glory,
and Kate was perfect for the role of a small town actress
who arrives in New York, hungry for stardom.
And in this performance, you really see Kate
trying to prove to the world that she could be a serious actress.
And all of you, be quiet. Be quiet.
[gentle string music]
Romeo. Romeo.
Wherefore art thou, Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
[Robin] As the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Art Center,
affectionately known as the Kate,
the most significant contribution to our collection
was in February, 2020, when Ms. Hepburn's grand-niece,
Skylar Grant, gave to us several boxes of items
that had been at the Grant home in Fenwick.
Let's see.
To our delight, we opened the boxes and found dozens of letters
that Ms. Hepburn had written to her family,
as well as some wonderful photos.
I felt like her voice was in my head after a little while
of transcribing letters.
This is a very typical letter
that she would have written home to her mother.
This is from July of 1933.
Morning Glory is about to open,
and, you know, she's talking in this letter
about, "I hope people will like it."
"I hope," again, "it's well received."
And Morning Glory becomes her first Academy Award.
[Katharine, on tape] The first week or two that I was in Hollywood,
I got all my money in cash
and I put it in the bureau drawer and I spent it all.
And Dad said, "Where's the money? We'd better put it in the bank."
And I said, "It's gone."
So he said, "You better have them send it to me."
So until the day he died, he took my money and sent me an allowance.
[jovial piano music]
[Katharine] The press started calling Laura my other half,
because when things kicked off,
she helped take over every aspect of my life,
becoming my wardrobe designer, press agent,
and even negotiating with the producers and directors,
putting her career on hold to look after mine.
[jovial piano music continues]
[Robin] Kate was off to a flying start, making back-to-back films.
A Bill of Divorcement is a hit.
She's immediately offered a part in Christopher Strong.
Then she makes Morning Glory, which as we all know,
is a hit, and then "Little Women.
But in one of the letters in our collection,
she writes to her mother, "I'm not decided yet on 'Little Women,'
so I'm stalling about as long as possible."
It's going to be a long production.
It means she may have to give up theatrical roles
in New York if she decides to make the film.
It was never cut and dry decision making.
But Little Women became the most
commercially successful film that Kate made,
and the money she earned, still managed by her father,
allowed her to rent increasingly extravagant places.
[water sloshing]
[woman] "Dear Brimsl,"
your house is beyond my wildest imagination.
I beg to see it and I'm wildly jealous
of that cat, Pollocks.
I wish you were here or I with you.
I dare not think of what I'm missing."
[gentle wistful music]
[Robin] There's a break where she goes
back to the stage and she makes The Lake.
This is not a success.
She actually has to buy her way out of this contract
so that she doesn't have to continue performing
in this production that is going nowhere.
She gives the producer every last cent that she had
in her checking account in order to get out of that contract
and get back to Hollywood.
[Katharine, on tape] That was a very, very difficult thing
for me to deal with.
From defeat, I learned you have to know a little bit what you're doing,
and you can't move on saying,
"Well, I don't want to go this way.
I'm going this way because you are pushing me."
Don't do that.
There's one person to blame,
and that is you.
Every girl has a time in her life when she's positive
she's divinely talented for the stage.
[Robin] After The Lake,
it's miss, miss, miss, miss, unfortunately.
Spitfire.
I'm the best thief in the country.
[Castmate] Oh, Trigger, you're sinful.
I ain't sinful. I'm hungry.
[Robin] The Little Minister.
I suppose one must be very clever to be a minister.
[Robin] Break of Hearts.
[dramatic emotional music]
Stop.
[Robin] And then Sylvia Scarlett.
But what a role in Sylvia Scarlett.
She portrays a young woman, masquerading as a young man
so that she can travel with her father.
And the transformation is amazing.
Oh, I say that's marvelous.
I say.
I wonder what it'd be like to kiss anybody with a mustache like that.
-I don't know. -Let's try.
[Robin] That was a movie that was very controversial
and unfortunately, I don't think a lot of people understood
the premise of the film, and so that was a miss.
Michael. Michael.
[Robin] They filmed a lot of the scenes outdoors and on the beach.
And that's where she meets Howard Hughes for the first time.
Howard was an inventor, a businessman,
a film producer, and he was a friend of Cary Grant's.
He wants to meet her, so he flies in,
and she thought it was so obtrusive. How dare he.
[waves crashing]
[Katharine] My relationship with Leland felt like it was getting serious,
and I felt awful for stringing Luddy along.
I knew it was time to let him go.
Poor Luddy.
He had done everything to help me get to where I was.
I took his money, used his car, then broke his heart.
[Mundy] She was always friends with Luddy,
and I get the feeling, ultimately honest with him,
probably after being found out or something like that.
But I don't think that she ever worked to deceive.
And as she said, the attitude was, "I'm going over there. Get outta my way."
[cars whizzing]
This letter was as she was sailing to Mexico
for her divorce, to have it done hush hush.
And she's of course, sailing with her friend Laura.
She tells her mother,
"I hope we do not get bitten by snakes and tarantulas."
And, you know, she says here, "I've spoken to no one."
She would always tell her mother,
"Don't ever talk to the press," even before she was a star.
"Don't talk to anybody."
And it's when Kate returned to Hollywood, we presume Leland proposed to her.
But by then she had figured out she wasn't marriage material.
After she turned him down, he started to drift away.
Then the story goes one day while he was away in New York,
she received a telegram out of the blue
saying that he had married another actress.
[plane whirring]
[Katharine] I was heartbroken and couldn't stop crying.
But mother told me to stop moping and get busy.
So I accepted a theater role in Boston playing Jane Eyre.
I saw in the press that Howard was in town,
and I must have been lonely or something, because I invited him to dinner.
Then we had dinner every show thereafter.
He moved into the same hotel,
and then he followed us on tour. conducting his work on the telephone.
After the play finished, we headed back to California together,
and I moved into his house, proving that persistence pays.
[Toyah] Howard Hughes collected women the way most people collect ornaments.
And he had them scattered around Hollywood.
These young starlets that he promised work to,
and work never, ever came.
And Katharine had quite a long and very deep relationship with him,
and she held her ground.
[Glenn, on tape] Sounds like you two had a lot of fun together.
[Katharine, on tape] Yes, he was a good golfer, good tennis player.
[Glenn] Flew planes.
[Katharine] Yeah, yeah.
[Glenn] Even you flew one under the 59th Street Bridge.
Do you think it was that you liked his adventurousness?
[Katharine] I suppose he opened doors for me.
[Glenn] Were you an opportunist?
[Katharine] I think everyone is an opportunist.
If they have an opportunity to be opportunistic.
[both laughing]
[solemn ambient music]
[Bonnie] Katharine Hepburn scared people and she frightened people.
She was a threat. She was Lilith.
She was this thing that was going to come down and sort you out.
And oh, oh, by the way, guys,
she actually didn't need you to live either.
So in that arc of time, and we're talking about the middle '30s,
when she had three films in a row that flopped,
there was no mercy.
[Robin] The '30s killed a lot of careers.
She made a lot of bad movies and some movies that are terrific,
that weren't appreciated at the time, like Bringing Up Baby.
She said, "I think moviegoers thought I was just too la-dee-da.
And there were a lot of people who just wanted
to see me fall flat on my face."
[Katharine] My going rate had nose dived from 150,000
to Paramount offering me just 10,000.
Howard was pressuring me to accept.
He was worried about what people were saying about him.
It was the only offer I had,
but I knew it would be the end of my career if I took it.
So I called them back and declined,
then retreated back to Fenwick to figure out my next move.
[wind whooshing]
And then the hurricane came.
And we watched as our family home got swept up and carried down the river.
It was when Howard sent water over in a plane
but didn't visit, that I knew our relationship was over.
To say that I was feeling sorry for myself was an understatement.
[Mundy] Kate said to Mama, "Oh, I'm ruined. I'm done," and,
"they all are mean to me."
And Mama said to Kate, [laughs]
"You've gotten rich and famous, and now you're complaining about it.
You've been knocked down. Get up."
[Katharine] Not long after starting to rebuild our home,
the phone rang.
It was an old friend of mine, Philip Barry, the playwright.
He had heard I was back home and wanted to come
and pitch me a new idea.
So he joined me for tea and described in great detail
a play called The Philadelphia Story.
It was so good, I signed up right away.
Afterwards, I called Howard. We were still speaking almost every day,
and he told me to act fast and buy the movie rights
before the play opened.
So I did, and worked closely with Philip to finish the script.
[Claudia] She is a smart businesswoman.
She is in charge of this image that she presents,
and she has a friend called Philip Barry.
And he writes this play when she has no movies to make
called Philadelphia Story.
And she reads it and says, "Not only am I playing this role,
I'm investing in the Broadway production,
and I'm buying the movie rights,"
which has gotta be one of the most brilliant
business decisions any woman in movies ever made.
Never mind a movie star in movies.
She borrows the money, as I understand it,
from Howard Hughes, but she gets the movie rights.
She's a huge hit on Broadway.
Everything is looking good again,
and she sells the movie to MGM.
The studio of studios in Hollywood to Louis B. Mayer.
She can insist on being the star, which is obvious.
She can tell him what director she wants, which is Cukor.
She knew what she wanted exactly,
but she was officially box office poison.
[Bonnie] What male was box office poison?
I can't think of anybody.
I mean, it was even known that John Barrymore,
who was a big star, was a drunk.
He wasn't box office poison as far as the industry was concerned,
but she was box office poison.
So she's what's called a Yankee,
and I mean it not the way Southerners call people in the north.
She was actually a form of American aristocracy.
It was the Depression.
And people are like, "What the? I can't even eat."
And then this voice comes through,
so Americans could hear in her voice
that she had money and that she was highly educated.
Would you care to see me do the sleepwalking scene from Macbeth?
No. Oh, Paul, damn it.
Well, the teachers at Ms. Porter's school thought it was very promising.
[Bonnie] She had to change herself so that she was acceptable to the industry
and acceptable to viewers.
She had to find her heart. She had to find her soul.
She had to come down a peg.
And that's why Philadelphia Story," the beginning of it is so exquisite.
[bright uplifting music]
[tense suspenseful music]
[Bonnie] First shot, first shot, first shot.
Before there's no word spoken. Cary Grant pushes her down in the door.
[Katharine thuds]
That's what guys wanted to do to her.
Guys wanted-- the minute she opened her mouth,
they wanted to take a pie and go, "Shut up."
Or... [grunts]
She thought, "Well, let me just do it."
So she did it.
[Mundy] After that, it's like, ooh, she's a force to be reckoned with.
She thinks big. She's got brains.
Now let's see what's next.
[gentle ethereal music]
[Katharine] My friend Garson sent me a new idea he had had
that his brother was working on.
It wasn't finished, but I could already see it had great potential,
and I knew at this point in my career, I had to strike while the iron was hot.
I ripped off the front page that had their names on,
and put on a new front page with Philadelphia Story II
scribbled on it with a big question mark before sending it on to Mankiewicz.
I told him if he was interested,
to get back to me in 24 hours or I'd go elsewhere.
He told me to head out to LA for a meeting with Mayer and himself as soon as I could.
So I caught a Stratoliner out straightaway.
[Katharine, on tape] Mayer, shrewd as hell,
used flattery for all it was worth.
Inside I was nervous,
but I held firm and told them what I wanted.
One hundred thousand for the story and script.
One hundred thousand for myself to star in it,
and 10,000 for my commission.
The room went quiet.
They tried to offer me 175,000,
but I refused.
I held my nerve,
and when I sensed Mayer might back out, insisting I tell him who wrote it,
I doubled down even more,
telling him I was taking offers only.
And if he was interested, I would send him the finished script
over in a couple of days.
Now, knowing there was genuine interest, we locked ourselves away.
Ring, Mike, and I worked together to finish the script,
delivering it to them a few days later.
-[solemn music] -[typewriter keys clack]
[Robin] The purchase of the script for Woman of the Year by Mankiewicz and Mayer
would make it at that time, a record for an original screenplay.
And they had no idea until after they had signed
the contract that it had been by two novice writers.
Kate wanted Spencer Tracy to play the leading man.
She greatly admired him as a person, as an actor.
She always called him an actor's actor.
After she did some digging around and found out
that he had a window of availability, she got him.
[Larry King] Spencer Tracy, he comes into her life
through making a movie with her.
[Katharine Houghton] Yes, they made Woman of the Year.
And by the way, that story about when they met,
she supposedly said to him, "Well, you are not very tall."
And he supposed to have said, "I'll cut you down to my size."
You remember that story?
-[Larry King] Is that true? -[Katharine Houghton] No.
She used to wear three inch platform shoes to make herself terribly tall.
So she said, "You are not as tall as I thought you were."
And Joe Mankiewicz said, "Don't worry, Kate.
He'll cut you down to his size."
[Katharine] I heard after our meeting that Spence told Garson
he found me to be a strange creature.
Apparently he didn't like that I had a rather ambiguous sexuality,
dirty fingernails, and always wore pants.
I just think he found me rather unattractive
and disappointing and thought, "Oh my God, what am I stuck with?"
I guess he thought I was a lesbian, but found out pretty quickly
that I had no problems with the opposite sex.
Anyway, he signed up for the film, and after that, in my career,
I'd never again budge on something I believed in.
[energetic orchestral music playing]
[Claudia] I love Woman of the Year.
It's again, a script written for her.
And every cliche of male, female relationships
is ironically reversed in this movie.
She's the important woman
having a life of not only independence, but importance,
dealing with world politics at a time of war.
She's this new female ideal.
Shill.
Spencer Tracy is the sports columnist
for the same newspaper where she's the political columnist.
Their chemistry was clearly obvious for everyone to see.
What are you trying to prove? Why am I here?
-Well, Sam-- -After all, you know, a little normal
could have driven you down here. Why did you ask me?
Thought you might wanna kiss me goodbye.
[Claudia] Their first kiss on screen is mostly hidden
by the way it's shot from behind his head with his face hidden
and with his hat brim hiding her face almost completely.
[Glenn, on tape] You say that you found the true meaning of love.
[Katharine, on tape] Yes. No question that that's true.
[Glenn] How quickly did you fall in love?
[Katharine] I would think almost immediately.
[Claudia] When Woman of the Year was playing at Radio City in 1942,
the gossip columnist Sheilah Graham managed to tell her
thousands of readers that Tracy and Hepburn
got on like a house of fire,
and the love scenes in the picture are extremely convincing.
[gentle romantic music]
[interviewer] What attracted you to Spencer Tracy?
[Katharine, on tape] His sense of humor.
He had a wonderful sense of humor, a remarkable memory.
What attracted me to Spencer Tracy is... What's the word? Magic.
[Claudia] It was adultery, of course.
Tracy was married, but had been having affairs for years
before Hepburn showed up,
which was an open secret apparently in Hollywood,
although not at all bandied about in the press.
[Mundy] Kate was harried by the press,
and she learned very quickly to keep them at arm's length.
And it was a fun game I think also,
to be terribly important and don't let anybody know,
and let's sneak over here.
And it's a fun game to feel wanted, to feel important.
[tape whirring]
[Glenn, on tape] He told me the rumors in the early '30s
were she must be a lesbian.
[Katharine, on tape] Yes.
[Glenn] Because she's so aggressive and she wears pants,
and in those days, you didn't give interviews.
[Katharine] Well, I didn't want to give interviews
because I thought, "No use talking about something
until you know whether it's any good."
Then when I found out that it was okay, then I didn't need to talk to him.
[both chuckling]
[Katharine] People were always gossiping about Laura and I.
The director Mark Sandrich eventually told me
that he might have been the one responsible
for starting this rumor after he overheard Laura on the phone at the studio
trying to get hold of me, referring to herself as my husband.
[Mundy] Oh, was she a lesbian? I don't know.
She was probably everything and maybe nothing.
She was whatever you dream her to have been.
Because that's the point.
Like, if a guy's too nice, he must be gay.
If a woman's too aggressive, she must be gay.
Well, as Kate would say, "What a bore."
The whole thing is so boring.
You can't know, and it's none of your business
and who the hell cares, anyway?
[gentle bright music]
[Claudia] She certainly didn't mind the speculation
about who she was dating or how significant it was
that she wore slacks all the time.
It kept people guessing about her and talking about her.
But when it came to scripts, she knew exactly what she wanted,
and she went back to the theater
to do another Philip Barry play called Without Love.
She tried to get the producers in New York to hire Tracy
to co-star with her, but they were worried about his drinking.
That was hard.
Working together was a pleasure on its own,
but it was also an excuse
for being together without sneaking around.
[Larry King] Was that love affair a secret?
[Katharine Houghton] It had to be Larry, because of his being married.
And I don't think that either one of them wanted to bring attention.
[Larry King] So how did they pull it off?
[Katharine Houghton] They worked very hard at it.
Never staying in the same hotels,
going in back doors.
My aunt went up lots of fire escapes,
climbed in and out of windows across roofs.
[Katharine] It took me until I was 33 years of age
to fall in love and know what it really meant.
His needs came before mine,
and I looked for his approval with everything that I did.
[bright lounge music]
[metal sign creaking]
[Joe] He was pretty quiet, my grandfather.
Strong silent type, you know?
But he actually took time to take me out in the yard
and play Frisbee.
And, you know, he offered to take me places,
but my grandmother wouldn't let me ride in the car with him
because he was a fast driver
and whatever other reasons she might have had.
When I started drinking, my mom would tell me
about alcoholism in the family and how it's hereditary.
And then Spencer, when I had questions about his health,
it was blamed on damage he did
from drinking and from depression and anxiety.
Having my dad, having a deaf son,
and then Catholic guilt for his relationship problems.
And he actually felt guilty that he became an actor
instead of a father in the Catholic church.
He said, "You should have more respect for your plumber."
You know, "They do more for you than an actor ever will."
[gentle somber music]
[Claudia] It wasn't the fairy tale that they later presented it as being.
Spencer the alcoholic.
Spencer who couldn't work on a set
without her being there to help control him.
[gentle morose music]
[Katharine Houghton] Sure, it was a tempestuous or complicated relationship.
And fiery.
He could be often tough on her,
and I think that was the only person she allowed
to get away with that.
[Katharine, on tape] Spencer had found life very difficult.
He felt that the miseries that he brought on people
were avoidable and that if he hadn't existed,
the world would've been better off.
That's a heavy load to carry.
[woman] "Dearestt Brimsl, how are things for you?
I know so little about you these days,
what you are thinking and how you are.
I hope you are well and you're about to start on the new picture.
I send my love and lots of it."
[Robin] Although Kate was making time
to look after Spencer, she still was challenging herself,
looking for interesting scripts, things that she could put her stamp on.
When she got the script for Keeper of the Flame in 1943,
it was a controversial idea for the time.
Not only was this script smart and incredibly dramatic,
but there had never been a film depicting women in this way.
A woman going to trial for murder.
[Katharine] The character of Christine
was a mature, complex woman.
Fully rounded, not another girl like in so many of my other films.
So I jumped at the chance to play a real character
with real life experience.
[Robin] Keeper of the Flame was another classic Tracy, Hepburn pairing.
And I think it particularly inspired Kate,
because there had been an unspoken rule in Hollywood films
that a woman could never get away with murder.
Kate wouldn't settle for this, and she rewrote the ending of the film.
But when she submitted the new ending,
the writer refused to budge , and that was that.
[Katharine, on TV] Senator Kennedy has just introduced 11 bills
in the state Senate, which if passed,
will set California education back 50 years.
These men have learned well
that the hand which rocks the cradle
shakes the world.
[Robin] Kate had been cautious to engage
in the public domain, but by the end of the '40s,
the House Un-American Committee concerned with moral decline
had introduced new censorship laws across the arts.
This was Kate's world, and she disagreed completely.
So she stood up and she spoke.
[Katharine] I did it because I believed in it.
I had the full support of my parents who believed
the only advantages of my position was the voice it gave me
to uplift others without it.
It wasn't about politics. It was about censorship.
Spence disapproved of actors meddling in public affairs.
And again, the press sought to drag me through the mud,
branding me pink.
I didn't work for the rest of the year after that.
Garson called with a new script he had written for us, Adam's Rib.
It represented everything I believed in,
and I worked closely with him on the script.
With Spencer on board and George directing,
it was nice to have all my friends back working together.
Good morning, Mr. Hurlock.
Good morning.
Do you believe in equal rights for women?
-What? -Objection.
[Claudia] Adam's Rib is one of the movies
where she really gives voice to the idea of women's equality,
loud and clear and blatant,
because she's arguing for it in court.
She has continual speeches about what would you do
to a man in this position?
Why wouldn't you do that to a woman in this position?
In fact, women's equality is not only a subtext of the movie
the way it always is with her, but the subject.
This poor woman, isn't she entitled to the same justice,
I mean, that's usually reserved for men?
The same unwritten law that got Lenahan off.
[Robin] Kate was becoming known for playing
characters who defied society's expectations.
And this was what she was doing in her own life.
She was living very differently from most women
who were settling down and having children.
[Glenn, on tape] Had you wanted children, would you have married?
[Katharine, on tape] Yeah, I would've,
but I would have led a totally different life.
I wouldn't have worked, 'cause I felt that it was a tremendous job
to bring up children carefully.
-But I wanted to be filmed and a star. -[laughter]
[Glenn] And you are.
[Katharine] Yes, but I mean, and one pays the price, I think.
[Glenn] And the price though, was it any lonelier for you, do you think?
[Katharine] No, I don't think so. I don't think, I'm not the lonely type.
[TV host] I know the whole story.
Sam Spiegel told Bogie, he had Huston and Hepburn,
And he told Huston he had Bogart and Hepburn.
And he told Hepburn he had Bogart and Huston
before he had any of them.
And that's how he got all of them.
[crowd laughs]
[Katharine] Sam Spiegel sent me C.S. Forester's The African Queen,"
to see if I would consider playing Rose in the adaptation.
It was excellent, and I met right away with John Huston and Sam.
At that point, they weren't sure who was going to play the man,
but thought it should be an authentic Cockney.
But once they thought of Bogie, there was no one that could compete
with his personality and looks, so they changed the character to Canadian.
Heading out to Africa felt foreboding.
I still hadn't seen a completed script,
but Bogie who had worked with John before said,
"Don't worry, this is the way he does it."
I said, "Wow, this is getting a bit tight."
He said, "You'll see. It'll be worth it."
[Angela] It was in those days called continuity.
That's me, Katie Hepburn,
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston.
We were all bitten, as I used to say,
bitten to buggery by all these flying insects.
Well, I was young, so it was all a new experience.
I mean, the camp was literally hacked out of the jungle.
The boys would play cards or what. There was nowhere else to go.
But Katie, she kept to herself and read and learnt her lines
and things like that.
She was very disciplined, but she'd be quite bossy.
I mean, John, I suppose you could say he certainly
wasn't methodical in the way she was used to.
One day we had the famous morning. We'd traveled up the river and everything.
We're doing this scene and he said, "Print it."
And she said, "But you weren't looking."
She said, "But John, you weren't-" "But I was listening, Katie."
"That's not the same. I wanna do it again."
Well, we turned the boat around.
We managed to decapitate the boiler and everything else
with all the trees.
So that took about four or five hours to put the boat back together again
and do the scene.
We used the original, actually, in the film. She never knew.
That way.
Pull her over.
[gentle somber music]
[Mundy] Kate's mother was very bright, very capable,
very original thinking,
and really held the family together by being a skilled negotiator.
She could handle Hep.
And she had a brain hemorrhage and abruptly died
at the age of 72.
Everybody was in shock.
It was a horrific moment.
Later when her father died,
she by then had a little experience with death.
But after Kate's mother died,
she basically overdosed on work.
'Cause if there's one thing Kate has, it's nervous energy.
And so the pain turns into,
"Okay, I'm gonna make it right. I'm gonna fix it."
And it's possible to fix it so much that you collapse.
[Claudia] One knows that she had certain nervous afflictions.
And there's the story about The Millionairess in London
where she apparently was having a nervous breakdown
while she was playing it
where she couldn't speak and all this with her throat.
She was increasingly manic,
and then eventually in New York, she checked into a hospital.
But there she was performing night after night after night.
[Mundy] My mother said there was a waste basket where you'd get on stage.
And now and again she'd puke in the waste basket,
'cause she was so wired and scared and, "Oh, my God, what'll they think?
I've got to do a good job."
And so she'd puke.
And then as my mother said, she'd go on stage
and be absolutely brilliant,
and she'd come backstage and she'd grab me by the shoulders,
"Was I any good? Was I any good?"
[Katharine] I always felt they were out to get me
and that I better be good.
And I still think I'd better be good. You know, I struggled to do my best.
-[TV host] I understand that. -I struggled for days to...
do my best for this. Do you know what I mean?
And I don't think you ever feel like anything.
You feel like a bore.
You know, don't you? Or, do you feel fascinating?
[TV host] No, I feel like a bore a good most of the time.
Like a bore. Like a bore.
Then you think, "My God, they're gonna find out
what a bore I am, and then that'll be a terrible thing."
[Robin] "I am delighted to know that not only
did you survive the African expedition,
but you got so much fun and only a little disease out of it.
I wish I could write this minute dash for London
and be with you for a couple of weeks."
The Millionairess was a huge hit for Hepburn in London,
but she optioned the film rights, she worked on a screen adaptation
and she pushed the script to everyone she knew
who had some power in the business.
She offered to work for free and pay the director out of her pocket
if anybody would make a movie of this.
No one bought it.
[Katharine] I wish I'd never given up on it.
It's that strange thing that time does.
I had forgotten all the doors shut in my face before then.
All the no's.
It had never stopped me before.
But this time I gave up too quickly.
[Robin] Kate reached out to Constance Collier
and asked if she would coach her for her upcoming Shakespeare tour.
She had helped Kate on The Millionairess.
and had become not only a friend, but a confidant.
So Constance headed to London
with her trusted assistant, Phyllis Wilbourn.
When Constance died suddenly while Kate was on tour,
Kate immediately hired Phyllis as her own personal secretary.
[Mundy] Phyllis said, "I never married because there were no men.
They had all been killed in the war.
So I came to America with Miss Hepburn and here I am."
Phyllis was the sweetest, most helpful,
gentle creature on the planet.
And Kate kept her carefully [laughs] for the rest of her life.
[Glenn] Phyllis was very introverted and there to serve, basically.
She would call and arrange an interview.
She'd greet you at the door. She would say, "Madam is upstairs."
She would kind of drift in and out of a room.
You wouldn't hardly know she was there.
She was clearly very closely bonded to Hepburn.
It was a very trusting relationship.
[Katharine] Spence, Phyllis and I became like a tight-knit family.
Phyllis helped take over everything in my life
so I could just focus on my work.
She would join us on holiday
and help me nurse Spence back to health when he got sick.
[gentle bright music]
[Bonnie] Women have to constantly be an act.
And Katharine Hepburn decided, "If I'm going to be an act,
I'm going to control what that act is."
When she got older in the '50s,
she made herself into the spinster who's looking for love.
[Claudia] The film I have the most trouble watching
is the very beautiful David Lean movie, Summertime.
The idea of the character undercut her at every single moment.
She is desperately alone and sad because she has no man.
It's a lesson about what will happen to you
if you don't get on the marital boat early on.
And the next horrible nail in the spinster coffin
is called Desk Set.
She's the head of a research foundation,
but she has a male boss for whom she's been pining
for seven years, waiting for him to propose marriage to her.
For the 500th time, there's a glass wall behind you.
Bunny, who do you think you're kidding?
Everybody knows you haven't got a brain in your head.
The only way you keep your job is by being nice to me.
Well, a girl has to work.
Work? Oh, yes, work.
[Claudia] It's incredible to watch Hepburn with all her vigor
and vitality and intelligence fit this part of the story in.
She can do anything, but she won't get the credit for it.
She won't get the money for it, and she's still pining away for it.
There's a happy ending where Spencer Tracy enters
and presumably better things will happen for her now.
But again, those are the endings. And what you walk away with is an image
of what's been going on through the entire movie.
You're the only thing I care about.
[camera clicks]
[Katharine] In the space of a few years, Spence and I lost many good friends.
David Selznick, Louis B. Mayer, Bogie.
It was a difficult time, and each lost deeply affected Spencer.
[Bonnie] Spencer Tracy...
can't go on any longer. He just can't do it.
The demons have got him physically and mentally.
And she takes five years out of her career,
which means everything to her, to take care of him.
[Robin] After Spence became ill, Kate and Spence finally moved in together
in a cottage on George Cukor's property.
He used to paint and they would go to the beach
and they lived a very quiet life.
And when he was sick, she loved that.
She seemed to feel empowered by him not being so strong, I guess.
[Katharine, on tape] I was not able to solve his problems,
but I was able to help him by seeing that he didn't fall down the stairs.
You know, or break his goddamn neck or just be miserable.
So that was my pleasure.
[Kat] My father was filmmaker Stanley Kramer,
who made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
My parents were part of the Kate, Spence inner circle,
and she used to come over after playing tennis and say,
"I wanna see my baby." [laughs]
Cat, my mom and Spence and my father,
they used to have dinner and Spence and her were both
always very gossipy about who was sleeping with who
or who was cheating on whom or who was dating whom.
And this was kind of their form of entertainment.
My mom helped cast Katharine Houghton in the role of Joey.
She said to my father, "Why don't you cast her actual niece?"
Dr. John Wade Prentice. This is my dad.
-Pleased to meet you. -Oh, how are you?
Nice to know you, but, but what is it? Is something wrong?
[Bonnie] This is a picture about a fairly upper middle class,
left wing, white couple whose daughter brings home a Black man.
You know, we would think to ourselves now, you know,
"Anybody would let you marry Sidney Poitier."
It didn't matter, you know, what color or gender you were,
you'd marry Sidney Poitier, so what was the deal?
But in those days, that was shocking,
because there were states of the Union where,
for real, Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier
could not get married legally.
Two weeks ago, I would've said such a thing was inconceivable.
[Bonnie] Spencer Tracy, he doesn't stand up, if you notice,
in that movie very much, 'cause he can't.
His heart is giving way. She was very tense.
And she knows based on his politics and the way he's lived his life,
this is the way he wants to go out,
to make this statement that we're all equal.
Where John made his mistake, I think, was attaching
so much importance to what her mother and I might think.
Because in the final analysis, it doesn't matter a damn what we think.
The only thing that matters is what they feel
and how much they feel for each other.
And if it's half of what we felt...
that's everything.
[gentle solemn music]
[water dripping]
[Katharine] The day after I wrapped my shots,
in the middle of the night, I heard Spence shuffling down the hall.
I got up to help him, and I heard a cup smash.
Then the sound of his body hitting the floor.
Spence was dead. Heart attack.
Peace at last.
The first person I called was Phyllis, who came straight over.
We took all my stuff to the car.
Then I thought, "Good God, Kath, what the hell are you doing?
No more sneaking around.
You can't deny your life of nearly 30 years together."
So I carried everything back to the house and put it back the way it had been.
Then I called Spencer's wife and she arrived soon after
with their children, Susie and John.
[Bonnie] All of Hollywood goes to his funeral and she doesn't go.
And she gives the funeral to his wife and his family.
It's massive, because everybody knew what they were to each other.
She's devastated and she can't grieve.
She can't show anybody the grief.
[Katharine] After the press died down,
I reached out to Louise and said, "Why not be friends?"
But she said, "You see, I thought you were nothing but a rumor."
A rumor for 30 years?
I couldn't believe it.
These are her pictures with him.
Spencer's funeral.
Joe was 12 when his grandpa passed away, you know.
[Joe] I think he worked hard and he became one of the best in the world.
And what's great is he didn't even love it.
He didn't go out and try the publicity and all the little angles.
He stayed behind the scenes. He didn't fight for the big contract.
He took the salary, you know?
After he passed, actors still study him
and respect him for his work.
[Sean] As talented as he was, he suffered a lot more than he had to.
In his own life, I feel like he didn't know
how to be himself as easily as he knew
how to be all of the other characters he played.
And that was almost the relief of the guilt
of living this double life, of really being with Katharine,
but also having the mother to your children and John.
And he was, like, split in two,
and there's no resolution.
But if we're trying to learn lessons now,
I feel like the lesson is figure out what you really want
and just be honest.
Communicate, live in integrity and truth.
Don't be crushed by guilt.
[woman] "My darling, Brimsl,
words can only skim the surface.
The whole world must seem so odd and so strange.
No one could have loved as much or half as much
as you and Spence.
God bless you. I love you so. Laura."
[Bonnie] After his death, she keeps working.
She's working with Olivier, she's doing all that.
She's working with Cukor again, and then The Lion in Winter,
the great movie she makes with Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins.
She never had any children,
but she knew what a mother was and she shows it.
[Anthony Hopkins] It was the first film I'd ever been involved in.
And the first day on set with her, I did everything wrong.
And she asked me if I was frightened of the camera
or if I liked the camera. I said, "Well, yes, I suppose so."
She said, "Why'd you play the whole scene with the back of your head to it?"
And then she proceeded to help me.
No, she was wonderful, very demanding of herself.
She would turn up at 6:30 in the morning, speak off camera lines for us, you know.
Many actors don't do that.
[Anthony Harvey] She won an Oscar. I accepted it for her.
And I called her up in New York.
I said, "You've won the Oscar." "Oh, for God's sake," she said.
"Put it in a bag somewhere," and that's what she thought of it.
[interviewer] Have you ever picked up an Oscar in person?
[Katharine] No. No. Too gutless. -[interviewer] You don't score an award--
[Katharine] No, I'm afraid I wouldn't win it.
It must be that. [crowd laughs]
My father said about his children, when they go to a party,
they're afraid they're going to be neither the bride nor the corpse.
[gentle wistful music]
For a long time I was too egotistical, I suppose,
and too frightened to accept the fact
that the audience after all these years,
had given me their friendship. Not until "Coco" did I really understand.
I thought they were my natural enemy and waiting for me to fall down
or break my neck or be a flop.
And I think that's what we all think. Don't let 'em trip you up.
You know? Get there, do it. I don't think that's true.
It certainly hasn't been true with me from the time of that little girl.
-[Dick Cavett] They meant well. -[Katharine] They tried to help me.
They've tried to help me.
[Robin] Everyone knows her for On Golden Pond,
the film for which she won her fourth Academy Award.
It was a real partnership to produce that film
with Jane Fonda, and Jane Fonda used it as a vehicle
to get closer to her father.
-Oh, look at you. -Happy birthday.
Look at this little fat girl now.
Oh, no, honey. You're as thin as a rail.
[Jane Fonda] Ms. Hepburn didn't like me very much.
-She was so competitive. -I'm so glad you're home.
[Jane Fonda] I was younger and I was more of a box office star
at that particular point in time, and he was always making sure
that I was being put in my place.
There's also though, this part of her,
she wanted me to have stories that I could tell about her
after she died, and she made sure I did.
I was producing the movie for my father.
You know, I'd mentioned earlier my dad made tremendous fun of me.
I just felt awful.
But I was sitting on the couch,
and suddenly I felt these arms going around me.
It was Kate.
She sat down next to me and she said, "Don't let him get to you."
She says, "I know just how you feel."
She said, "Spencer used to do that to me all the time.
They have no idea." She said, "They don't know
how much those words can hurt you.
Don't let it hurt you."
And the fact that she had witnessed my pain
and was acknowledging it, meant the world to me.
[Mundy] When I was quite young, Kate moved in over at Fenwick.
She kicked us out for, like, six weeks,
then she threw out all the old, crappy furniture and stuff,
and she brought stuff from California and New York,
and she would just collect whatever odds and ends there were
and arranged them.
Now this lamp would give you a terrible shock if you had bare feet
and you touched the leading on the edge. It was really fun.
[chuckling]
Ah, this is the shot that I was looking for.
"Dick reports the windchill is 20 below zero.
She's been making these swims since she was five."
Absolute bullshit.
She would do it occasionally.
Kate was always an intense person
in that old style Victorian way of, you get enough sleep, you exercise.
You don't want to? Do it anyway.
As my father would say,
"Take care of the body and it will take care of you."
[Glenn, on tape] You say you can still stand on your head.
[Katharine, on tape] Yeah. I tried it the other day.
I thought, "Can you still stand on your head?" And I can.
-[Glenn] Can you? -[Katharine] Yes, I can.
[Glenn] I mean, what's it good for?
[Katharine] One's self respect. [chuckles]
[Toyah] I met Katharine Hepburn just before I turned 20.
She was producing this movie with George Cukor,
The Corn is Green, by Emlyn Williams.
We were filming all the internal shots, and one day I caught a taxi,
just absolutely panicking that I was gonna be late.
And I passed her on a bicycle,
and she was cycling into the studio through the traffic
in trousers, in a blouse.
It was summer and there she was cycling.
One day I walked into her dressing room and she said,
"Toyah, come and smell this jumper."
So I walked up and I sniffed it and it just smelled like a teddy bear.
It's just really lovely.
"Spencer Tracy. I can still smell him."
And it was just profoundly moving and incredibly,
spiritually awakening for me that he had been dead all this time,
and she was still wearing his jumpers,
would not wash them, and she smelt them to keep him there with her.
And I just didn't question it. She still was in love with him.
[Glenn] What would you like to do next?
[Katharine, on tape] I don't know.
-[Glenn] They send you things. -[Katharine] Well, a lot of lousy things.
And I've been lucky enough to do what interested me.
[Glenn] You don't have to do anything.
[Katharine] Well, the ultimate solution was "Grace Quigley."
[Glenn, on tape] That was a flop, wasn't it?
[Katharine] I thought that was very interesting.
People couldn't stand it. They hated it.
[Glenn] Was it the death angle?
[Katharine] I think people are very sentimental about life and death.
See, I look forward to life. I look forward to death.
-So I've got 'em fooled. -[laughter]
-[Glenn] You're not-- -[Katharine] You should go.
-[Glenn] I'm going in a sec. -[Katharine] Yes, you should go now.
-[Glenn] I'm going. -[Katharine] Yes. [laughs]
-[Glenn] Thank you. -[Katharine laughs]
Is it still turning?
[tape machine clattering]
I'm supposed to send my--
[gentle wistful music]
[Mundy] You know, as the decades passed,
she got jobs here and there and she'd go back and forth
to New York a lot in Luddy's old house, 244 East 49th Street.
Whoever wasn't doing well, she would go and visit.
So that would be
[imitating Katharine] "Laura Harding" as she would call her.
And Luddy.
"If you're feeling sad, do something for someone else
and that will help both of you."
After she retired, I think it frustrated her
to not be able to work.
Fame is a very addictive drug, very addictive.
[bell dinging]
That's the Cornfield Point buoy over there, dinging.
She stayed at Fenwick. She had Phyllis and my father.
He was a strange guy.
He stayed home and wrote his plays,
and she had another helper called Howard Hildebrand,
and they grew old as companions together.
But Phyllis was so polite and so deferential,
and I will never forget, Kate is ancient.
Phyllis is ancient plus four, and Hilly is slowly dying of aids.
So he's kind of tottering around in his mid-50s or so.
Kate, "Phyllis, go get me another drink."
And Hilly gets up and Kate says, "No, Hilly, sit.
Phyllis, go get me another drink."
"Oh, I don't... I, I suppose." And she can barely walk.
And finally Kate said, "Phyllis." [grumbles]
And I remember standing in the kitchen and hearing,
[in a British accent] "I won't, I won't."
And I walked in there and I was like, "Yeah, Phil.
Don't take any crap from her."
And Kate was horrified,
because that was a complete change
of the entire course of her life up to that moment
when Ms. Wilburn said, "I won't."
I love... I say it still.
I won't. [chuckles]
[gentle ethereal music]
[Katharine Houghton] A lot of people ask me,
"Does she have Parkinson's? Does she have Alzheimer's?"
You know, all that sort of thing.
She doesn't. The shaking is a familial tremor.
In fact, I would say if anything, her shaking is better
now that she's leading a very relaxed life.
And as many people in their mid-90s, there's a certain degree of old age,
but she's very much who she is. [laughs]
Is she still fun to be around?
It depends on her mood.
[gentle serene music]
[Katharine] I rather enjoy my quiet life now.
I swim, I garden.
I still like to paint.
Me and Phyllis even wrote a play together.
I keep myself busy.
[waves lapping]
[gentle wistful music]
[woman] Thank you, Kate.
[crowd applauding]
[Katharine] I think the reason people have an affection for me now
is that in a kind of a way,
I must have lived a life that a lot of women
think would be a nice life to have lived.
They think it's dignified, but they think it's free.
They think I've done what I wanted to.
They don't bother to think that they may have five children that I haven't.
Do you have a lot of fear though? Does it scare you to stop doing movies?
Yes, I think it terrifies anybody who's intelligent to do anything.
I'm a good cover upper. [laughs]
[Claudia] Maybe the great lesson of a 60 year career
when everyone loves you one year and hates you the next,
is that you keep on going.
You compromise when you absolutely have to.
But even then, you push as hard as you can
for the best material you can,
and you never quit.
You make some stinkers, you make mistakes,
but you keep on going.
When you find something good, something you really believe in,
you put your heart and your soul and your money into it.
From Philadelphia Story
to Guess who's Coming to Dinner decades later.
Romeo, Romeo.
[Claudia] When you win an Academy Award when you're in your 20s,
and then not another one for decades,
you don't show discouragement, and you win three more
when you're in your 60s and 70s.
The years when it's supposed to be all over for actresses,
but not for you.
You do work you're proud of.
Whether it's for 350 a week at the Shakespeare Festival
in Connecticut or for millions in Hollywood.
You hold up your standards as best you can in an ensemble system.
You buy the whole system when you can afford it,
and you keep on going.
It is such a simple lesson. It's amazing there were not more like her
with her longevity, her multiple lives on film,
her emphatic character.
But there was only one Katharine Hepburn.
[Mundy] Her thing is, come on, get up, do it,
be, try, make something of yourself, live.
[gentle wistful music]
So...
"Life, life." That's what Kate used to say.
"Ah, life, life."
In other words, you got now. Cherish it.
Cherish it.
[Katharine] I told you, life goes by like...
-[fingers snap] -[gentle wistful music]
[Robin] As a young girl growing up in Los Angeles,
these Hollywood starlets really came to me at a young age when I was just so enamored
by not only their beauty, but this magic about their essence.
But the reality is a lot of these people
were very, very mistreated and died very young.
And so I found myself being so inspired by Katharine.
She's such a powerful icon for women
surviving in the entertainment industry.
[Glenn] I remember once I asked her, "What's the secret to happiness?"
And she said to me,
"You're always going to be lonely and depressed
if you think about how you look, where you're going,
how you're feeling.
That's because the self is a dead end.
If you concentrate on that," she said, "God help you."
[Mundy] There they are. All the kids.
Kate, Dick, Bob, Marion, Peg.
Tom too. Everybody's there.
The most interesting thing I think
is that she made her own being her own work of art.
She created a screen persona performed for you.
And here we are decades later going, "Wow, Katharine Hepburn. She was cool."
[Toyah] We're floating on a rock in the middle of nowhere,
in a universe we know nothing about.
Every single individual on this planet is not only just a miracle,
but you are exactly that.
You are an individual.
Live that individual life.
[gentle wistful music]
[gentle wistful music continues]