I am an old movie fanatic, but it’s hard for me to choke down a Katharine Hepburn movie. I’d rather watch Mickey Rooney over her, and that says a lot.
Beloved star. Award winning actress. First rate bitch.
I know all actors and actresses weren’t always be pleasant to each other, such as Miriam Hopkins and Bette Davis or maybe June Haver and Betty Grable, but they had reasons. Hopkins slept with Davis’s husband and Haver was acting like she was the new Grable. Hepburn was rude to actors without any justification.
Hepburn and Mitchum in “Undercurrent” (1946)
Hepburn stars with Robert Taylor and Robert Mitchum, a newcomer at the time, in 1946 thriller “Undercurrent.” To be honest, she probably was miscast because she is supposed to play the demure wife of Robert Taylor who is trying to kill her.
The snobbish Hepburn and gruff Mitchum did not get along. At one point during filming she said to him, “You know you can’t act, and if you hadn’t been good-looking you would never have got a picture at all. I’m tired of working with people like you who have nothing to offer.” (from IMDB trivia for the film).
The one thing I found ironic about this quote was the fact that it seems she got along fine with Robert Taylor who was famous for his good looks and capitalized off of them, according to Turner Classic Movies primetime host Robert Osborne.
The list goes on of actors that she was unpleasant to, including Ginger Rogers, who admired the actress, and John Barrymore who acted with her in her first film, “A Bill of Divorcement” (1932).
Hepburn and Rogers in “Stage Door” (1937)
“Astaire gave her class, Rogers gave him sex,” Hepburn said about the famous dancing pair.
“She is snippy, you know, which is a shame,” Ginger Rogers said about working with Hepburn in “Stage Door.” “She was never on my side.”.
Actresses like Joan Crawford and June Allyson answered every fan letter they received personally, something Katharine Hepburn didn’t do; she didn’t even sign autographs.
Crawford and Allyson understood that they achieved fame because of their fans. Not according to Miss Hepburn.
“Once a crowd chased me for an autograph ‘Beat it,’ I said, ‘Go sit on a tack!’ ‘We made you,’ they said. ‘Like hell you did,’ I told them.”
If Miss Hepburn didn’t give a damn about her fans, then why should I care about her movies? After all, she was named “Box Office Poison” in 1938.
P.S.) As a side note, Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn are not related, to clear up confusion that some people seem to have.
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Worse, she gets a Hollywood stamp this year, only seven years after her death (the requirement used to be 10). It’s as if she jumped ahead in line of Carole Lombard (who was as likable as Hepburn was haughty), who deserves a stamp of her own.
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I absolutely agree. While Miss Hepburn truly shines in some of her roles, in her interviews she really comes off as a very unpleasaent person.
Also, in my opinion, she fails in all roles that do not call for a strong, bold character. It’s a shame, really, because I have the feeling that she simply did not try hard enough to be a skillful actress.
I also just “love” the fact that she supposedly bought the rights to “The Philadelphia Story” all by herself, thus attaining freedom from the studio, when it was Howard Huges, her then-lover, who paid for that.
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Hepburn couldn’t act in the least, not even to save her life, for that matter out of a wet paper bag with spurs and a machete. Why anyone holds the beyond hubris-ridden, imperious, self-inflated, self-serving sickly, disgusting, ruthless, vicious narcissist (who worked the casting couch to get “ahead” – no pun intended- for all it’s worth and then some and that’s a fact) as anything other than that in esteem, for that matter a vague actress has always escaped me.
Even as a child my sixth sense immediately told me she was a walking pox. And then some. And dear god……, her looks were right out of Halloween Central. Honestly, who was her father………, Leatherface? No doubt. That she was (an elitist) liberal also comes as no surprise.
The movie world would be v. well advised to bury this ruthless, talentless and vile bitch of bitches into oblivion.
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I don’t mind Katharine, she is quite funny sometimes but god this made me laugh so much!
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Seconded! She never did anything for me, but after reading about the feud between her and Ginger Rogers and that truly awful comment she made about Fred & Ginger, I absolutely cannot stand her! She stuck her nose up at most of Hollywood, but with the way she spoke of other actors and people in general, to me SHE was the one lacking any hint of class.
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True story, in the early-80’s she was appearing on Broadway in a play, and I dropped off a copy a play I had written about my three aunts at the box office with a note to her, hoping she might be interested in it. On Valentines day I got what I thought was a card in the mail, however, it turned out to be a response from Katherine Houghton Hepburn, which stated…”Dear Richard, Happy to ready your play and tell if I like it or don’t like it, but that’s my limit….Kate.” Well, when my underwear returned from my ankles, I hurriedly put the play in a manila envelope, including a return envelope addressed to my mother as I was moving back to Atlanta from New York and wasn’t sure where I would be living. A month later in Atlanta, my mother called and said she had received an envelope from New York, and I said, “Oh God, it’s a reply from Katherine Hepburn, open it.” My mother opened it and said, “Yes, it’s from her,”, and she read it to me. “Dear Richard, I’ve read your play and have nothing to say.” Dead silence. I said, “Oh my God, she must have hated it.” My mother said, “I think that’s wonderful.” I said, “Mama, how could that be wonderful?1.” She replied, “Well, probably for the first time in the bitches life you left her speechless.” A mother’s love. That day I put a curse on Katherine Hepburn, and 21 years later she dropped dead. Don’t say that voodoo doesn’t work.
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Your spell worked well.
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Mums always taught me, “If you can’t say anything nice about a person….” However, a recent airing of “All About Me” made me so ill that I had to search out others online who may feel likewise. I’m a fan of “Old Hollywood” but never Katherine Hepburn. So many sycophants still worship her that it’s disgusting. Even when it is no secret of her ill treatment–not just of these “fans”–but of her “peers.” Yet, in her conceited mind, she has none of the latter.
A blatant and proud adulteress, KH has no justification for this egotism and snobbery, either. There were and are much mpre gifted actresses who are more glamorous/feminine than her.
Kate was also quite the phoney, and a fibber, e.g., her brother’s unfortunate suicide. I think God allowed her that “shaking head syndrome” as an attempt to instill some humility (don’t think it worked).
Thank all of you for having the courage to finally tell the truth about this selfish person.
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You got her good!
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I try to look at both sides and what I know of her as a actress I truly love..
I was never there in person to know the true story of any of this stuff so I cannot make a comment..
As a fan of any star I just really need to know what I see on the silver screen..
The personal like means nothing to me for I am not there to really know the truth..
I cannot ever believe in what someone tells me unless I see it for myself then I can make my judgement myself and be able to sleep at night…
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People won’t be surprised that she named her autobiography “Me.” I wasn’t. I always thought it was horrible how Spencer Tracy & she flaunted their relationship in his wife’s face, with the help of the Hollywood media who were just fine with it. He thought it was a “sin” to divorce, because of his Catholicism, but I guess adultery wasn’t one.
I had a relative tell me one time how WONDERFUL Hepburn was not to show up at his funeral. She didn’t think it was the right thing to do under the circumstances. To which I replied, “Yes, it was so GENEROUS of her to think of his wife!”
She may not have thought Mitchum could act, but I always thought she OVERACTED. Never cared for her. Would rather have seen Larraine Day in the lead in “Undercurrent.”
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