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21 unusual facts about Katharine Hepburn


A Matter of Gravity

Originally produced as Call Me Jacky at The Oxford Playhouse in 1967, the play eventually caught the attention of producer Robert Whitehead, who viewed it as an ideal star vehicle for Katharine Hepburn.

Bunny Watson

Named for Katharine Hepburn's librarian character in the movie Desk Set, the show was hosted by Bill Richardson and was produced by Jennifer Van Evra and Tod Elvidge in Vancouver.

Chris-Craft Boats

The company sold high-end boats to famous customers such as Dean Martin, Katharine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley.

Clemence Dane

In 1932 the smash hit play was adapted for film starring Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore.

David Musgrave

He is a descendant of William Witter and Hannah Churchman of Boston, whose descendents include Thomas Pynchon, Archibald MacLeish, Katharine Hepburn and the poets Francis Goddard Tuckerman and Henry Theodore Tuckerman.

Fork Church

From 1893 to 1903, Fork Church's rector was the Reverend S. S. Hepburn, grandfather of actress Katharine Hepburn.

Gertrude Sanford Legendre

Katharine Hepburn’s character of Linda Seton in the 1938 version of Holiday was loosely based on her.

Irene Mayer Selznick

She was an adventurous young girl of considerable intellect who became a lifelong friend of actress Katharine Hepburn.

Leading man

Less frequently, the epithet has been applied to an actor who is often associated with one particular actress, for example, Errol Flynn was Olivia de Havilland's leading man in several films, Spencer Tracy had a similar association with Katharine Hepburn; used in this sense, however, the woman is usually described as the leading lady of the man.

Lucille Carroll

When the play received scathing reviews and closed, Carroll sought consolation by visiting backstage with Katharine Hepburn, then 26, who had also received terrible reviews while acting in a nearby theater.

Mary Nash

She played Katharine Hepburn's socialite mother in both stage and movie productions of The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Mel's Drive-In

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn are out for a drive and Tracy pulls into Mels and orders Oregon Boysenberry ice cream, then has a minor traffic altercation with a black man.

Night Hostess

Silver screen legend Katharine Hepburn (using the alias "Katharine Burns") made her Broadway debut in Night Hostess, playing the bit part of "Other Hostess".

Paul T. Frankl

After he later relocated to Los Angeles and opened a gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, celebrities such as Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Walter Huston and Alfred Hitchcock became clients.

The French, They Are a Funny Race

He did some work on Broadway, wrote the screenplay for an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's The Millionairess which Katharine Hepburn, who had performed in the play in New York, wanted to get produced, and then came to France where, because he was fluent in French, he was able to write and direct the screenplay for this adaptation of Pierre Daninos popular novel.

The Lake

It debuted on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on December 26, 1933 and was one of acting legend Katharine Hepburn's first major Broadway roles.

The Sea of Grass

The novel was adapted for a 1947 film of the same name directed by Elia Kazan and starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

Ubundu

In 1951, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and the crew of the film The African Queen arrived in Ubundu by train for filming in the jungle.

Ward Morehouse III

Morehouse ended his freelancing with The New York Post in 2000 with the last interview on record with stage and screen legend Katharine Hepburn.

Watson family

The Watson children worked with some of the big stars in those days, including James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda.

Windsor Arms Hotel

The hotel has been known to be frequented by many celebrities such as Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Woody Allen, Richard Burton, and, more recently, Richard Gere, Britney Spears and Tina Turner.


Adam's Rib

The following morning, married lawyers, Adam and Amanda Bonner (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) read about the incident in the newspaper.

American Shakespeare Theatre

Actors involved with American Shakespeare Theatre include Alex Cord, Earle Hyman, David Groh, Katharine Hepburn, Fred Gwynne, Morris Carnovsky, Will Geer, John Houseman, James Earl Jones, Christopher Plummer, Hal Miller Lynn Redgrave, Christopher Walken, Rene Auberjonois, David Birney, Meredith Baxter, Michael Moriarty, Jan Miner, Kate Reid, Fritz Weaver, Dirk Benedict and Charles Siebert.

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff

Among many anecdotes in the film, Jack Cardiff relates what it was like to work with Hollywood’s greatest icons: Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Alfred Hitchcock, Marlene Dietrich and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Darwin Porter

He has written biographies of the Gabor sisters: Zsa Zsa, Eva and Magda, Merv Griffin, Michael Jackson, Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Howard Hughes, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (with Roy Moseley), Linda Lovelace and J. Edgar Hoover, all, apart from Jackson and Zsa Zsa Gabor, after their deaths.

Desk Set

Desk Set (released as His Other Woman in the UK) is a 1957 American romantic comedy film directed by Walter Lang and starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

Ely Landau

Landau was the co-producer of Long Day's Journey into Night (1962), a screen rendering of the play by Eugene O'Neill with Ralph Richardson and Katharine Hepburn.

Feminism in culture

In a film from popular culture although not in women's film, an early reference to the "feminist movement" is heard from Katharine Hepburn in the 1942 movie Woman of the Year.

Flight From Glory

After starring in Broadway, Heflin had made his first screen appearance opposite Katharine Hepburn in A Woman Rebels (1936).

Hagar Wilde

Her work includes co-writing the screenplay for Bringing Up Baby (for which she had also written the original story, published in the mass-market magazine Collier's Weekly), starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and was directed by Howard Hawks, and the screenplay for I Was a Male War Bride, also starring Cary Grant and again directed by Howard Hawks as well as co-wrote The Unseen.

Jack Dawn

Dawn worked with many of Hollywood's legendary performers, including Laurel and Hardy, Greta Garbo, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, Fred Astaire, and Betty Hutton.

Noel Willman

He was also nominated in 1966 for the same category for James Goldman's The Lion in Winter, and he directed Katharine Hepburn and Christopher Reeve in A Matter of Gravity in 1976.

Norma MacMillan

During this time, she also appeared in feature films, including Nightmare on the 13th Floor, Big Business, Love at Stake, Dangerous Intentions, Big Bully, and Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry with Katharine Hepburn.

Remembrance Rock

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had announced, in 1941, a film "American Cavalcade" that was to star Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, playing husband-and-wife teams from different periods of American history.

Robert Koch Woolf

Their clients included many of the leading entertainment personalities of the day including George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn, Ira Gershwin, Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Fanny Brice, Cary Grant, Lillian Gish, Ray Milland and Loretta Young.

Rossano Brazzi

He was propelled to international fame with his role in the English-language film Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), followed by the leading male role in David Lean's Summertime (1955), opposite Katharine Hepburn.

Sally Lapiduss

Lapiduss is a 1974 graduate of Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh and worked at the Pittsburgh Public Theater in the late 1970s when she was "discovered" by Katharine Hepburn when she arrived in town to see a production of the Seagull, Lapiduss became Hepburn's assistant.

The Little Minister

Katharine Hepburn initially rejected the role of Babbie, then reconsidered, against the advice of her agent Leland Hayward, when Margaret Sullavan was offered the role.

The Whales of August

Other greats turned down the producers' overtures for other reasons, e.g., Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Katharine Hepburn, John Gielgud.

Willis Steell

Her father commissioned a portrait of her about 1923 from the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury, which was exhibited in 1925 and of which American Art News, April 11, 1925, said that it ‘...shows Mr. Ury at his most discerning.’ Susan (often later called Suzanne) was to enter Broadway, and became one of the close friends of Katharine Hepburn at the time of her first Hollywood success.