Celebrate Kate Hepburn’s 100th birthday

Transcended mere stardom
Mann got the idea for his book after seeing the emotional response to her death. While many books had been written about her — and she’d come up with one of her own, 1991’s “Me: Stories of My Life” — he realized a full, true biography of Hepburn could never have been written while she was alive.

“She had transcended that idea of being a star of Hollywood movies into being something much more. She had really become a symbol of American character. I saw that by the way people reacted to her death — there was such an outpouring. I remember being in San Francisco promoting another book and people were crying in the hotel lobby looking at the television. Then I got back to New York and the flowers were piling up outside her house in Turtle Bay.

“This woman,” he wondered, “how did she do it? How did she become this institution?”

“She said, ‘The public thinks of me as an old building,”’ Osborne recalled. “And I think it’s true. They would take her for granted, they really liked her.”

He believes her best work was in “Alice Adams” (1935) while Mann points to “Holiday” and “Bringing Up Baby,” roles in 1938 that crystallized her career.

“In both films you got a sense of the real Hepburn — subversive, rebellious Katharine Hepburn, always upending expectations,” he said. “‘The African Queen’ (1951) transformed her into what we think of her today — the noble, gruff spinster, afraid of nothing.

“She didn’t have the range of roles Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck did, or Meryl Streep,” Mann added. (Or as Dorothy Parker famously put it, Hepburn “ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.”) “But when she played close to herself, she was so good. In something like ‘Little Women’ (1933) or ‘Sylvia Scarlett’ (1935), she was so good because she was essentially playing herself.”

Her life off-screen
Hepburn found she could be herself off-screen, as well, in the coastal Connecticut town of Old Saybrook, where she summered with her family as a tomboyish child and spent her final days as an adult. The town is celebrating her life Saturday with a benefit birthday party — giant cake and all — with the money raised going to the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center and Theatre, which is scheduled for completion in 2008.

“A lot of press have asked me why we kept her so secret — she was one of our own, I think. She had a life here,” said Linanne Lee, executive director of the Old Saybrook Chamber of Commerce. “You’d see her playing golf or tennis, riding her bike. Sometimes she’d have dark glasses on and a beautiful scarf.

“You’d be in a store and you’d hear that voice,” Lee said. “It was very distinctive, you could definitely hear her.”

If Hepburn were alive today — young, vibrant and about to burst onto the scene in Hollywood — she might not have become an actress at all, Osborne said.

“She’d be the head of Vogue magazine. She’d be like Tina Brown, running something, running a corporation,” he said. “Most of the parts offered to women, and the public seems to want women in, wouldn’t appeal to Katharine Hepburn.”

But if she were to become an actress today, Osborne suggested, she’d likely have a meaty, eclectic career similar to that of Cate Blanchett, who won an Oscar for 2004’s “The Aviator” for playing — that’s right — Katharine Hepburn.

MORE FROM MOVIES

Movies Section Front

Cameron aims for ‘Titanic’ results with ‘Avatar’ ‘Avatar’ blasts off with $232 million worldwide You’ll wish you didn’t ‘Hear About the Morgans’ Midnight ‘Avatar’ screenings pull in $3.5M Sarah Jessica Parker can’t wait for Christmas Jeff Bridges is Bad to the bone in ‘Crazy Heart’ Clooney, Streep, Bullock earn SAG Award nods Effects wow, but story in ‘Avatar’ is unsatisfying This was not the decision Lucas was looking for ‘Avatar’ joins tradition of Hollywood colossi Movies Section Front   Add Movies headlines to your news reader: