Kate Remembered

by A. Scott Berg

  The company—which included a young Anthony Hopkins as her son Richard (soon to be “the Lion-Hearted”) and an even younger Timothy Dalton as King Philip of France—rehearsed for two weeks in the Haymarket Theatre in London. Then they all moved to Dublin to shoot interior scenes and to Fontvieille, a small village in the south of France, where they filmed in an old abbey.

  Hepburn admired everyone in the cast. O’Toole was wild and rambunctious, “sometimes utterly impossible, a real Irishman,” Kate said, “—too much charm and too much liquor. But I was used to that. And what an actor! Great voice. Great performance. Great fun.” His great vigor, she suggested, helped restore her vitality. Years later, she would take pride in the deserved success of Hopkins. And when Dalton was hired to play James Bond, she bragged that she “knew him when.”

  The film was another triumph for Hepburn, with the public and within the industry. Again, her film was nominated in all the major categories—Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay. Again the screenwriter won . . . and so did Hepburn. This third victory was unprecedented. (So was the fact that there was a tie that year—with Hepburn sharing Best Actress honors with twenty-six-year-old Barbra Streisand, who had debuted in Funny Girl. After saying, “Hello, gorgeous” to her gleaming trophy, Streisand said what an honor it was to be in the same company as Hepburn, whose award was accepted by Tony Harvey.)

  By then, Hepburn had left one locale in southern France for another, this time to appear in a production of The Madwoman of Chaillot. When she had signed on to appear in this film version of the Jean Giraudoux play, John Huston was meant to direct. By the time shooting began, however, Bryan Forbes had replaced him. “John was no fool,” Kate said of his abandoning this allegory, in which a quixotic noblewoman, the Countess Aurelia, takes on the greedy capitalists of the world. She holds a mock trial and lures all the villains into a bottomless pit by telling them of an oil reserve beneath her house. “The big problem,” Kate said, “is that material like this plays better on a stage than on screen, which requires something more literal. I mean, you have to photograph something. And I think it’s difficult for a movie audience to accept an entire film that is so abstract and stylized.”

  Ely Landau, the producer of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, produced this picture as well, hiring a charm bracelet of international stars—including Charles Boyer, Claude Dauphin, Oscar Homolka, Yul Brynner, Donald Pleasence, and Danny Kaye; the Countess Aurelia’s conspirators were played by Edith Evans, Margaret Leighton, and Giulietta Masina. “I think the real problem with the picture,” Kate said, “is that none of us ever really figured out how to play our parts, how to speak that dialogue, which was terribly artificial. The old girls, we all started impersonating Edith Evans, who really was terribly amusing . . . but I don’t think she knew what she was doing any more than we did. It was really quite hopeless.” It was ultimately difficult for an audience—to say nothing of the star herself—to accept Katharine Hepburn as somebody who had truly lost her mind. She ultimately came across as more eccentric than mad.

  Undaunted, Hepburn found that work begat more work, and her resurgence inspired her to new challenges. In 1969 she agreed to return to the stage after close to a decade’s absence . . . in a genre she had never attempted. Alan J. Lerner had been at work for a year on a musical based loosely on the life of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the legendary clothes designer; and he wanted Hepburn—also a woman of style, stature, and staying power—to assume the title role. “Now, I’m sure I saw Ethel Merman in something, and I adored My Fair Lady,” Kate recalled, (though it turned out to be the Cukor-directed film version of the Lerner and Loewe classic that she recollected), “but I honestly don’t remember ever sitting through a Broadway musical. I certainly never thought I could sing my way through one.”

  Hepburn herself admitted that after a lifetime in the theater she never learned to vocalize properly; and the only tunes she felt comfortable carrying were hymns. “But I can be loud,” she said, “and I figured if Rex Harrison could star in a musical, so could I.” She worked up a few songs with musical arranger and vocal coach Roger Edens, which she tried out one night at Irene Selznick’s before the guests of a small dinner party, which included Alan Lerner and Frederick Brisson, the play’s producer and husband of Rosalind Russell. After bellowing a captivating rendition of “Miss Otis Regrets,” everybody seemed convinced that she had enough equipment to carry a musical. What she lacked in euphony she made up for in guts. Ultimately she found both the challenge and Alan J. Lerner—a man of extraordinary wit and intelligence—irresistible.

  Coco proved to be the most arduous production of Hepburn’s career, a constant uphill battle. She continued her voice lessons six days a week. “I’m not sure I ever really learned to sing,” Kate admitted, “but I acted well enough to give the impression that I was singing!” The lyrics of Coco were among the cleverest Lerner ever wrote, but neither they nor the star were helped much by the music of André Previn, mostly forgettable tunes, some of which sounded like remnants from Gigi.

  Then the show’s director, Michael Benthall, who had guided Hepburn in The Millionairess, began to stumble. When he proved unable to tackle all the elements of the musical—which included not only a complicated revolving set but also several characters out of Coco’s past appearing on large screens in filmed segments—he was sidelined. The choreographer, the young Michael Bennett, stepped in and assumed directorial duties as well. Bold and brash and full of his own ideas, he clashed constantly with Lerner and the star—both of whom, he felt, had somehow turned the show from the life of Chanel into that of Katharine Hepburn—an independent female artist, who gets through life by remaining “always mademoiselle.”

  In fact, that was the title of the big finale; and several of its sentiments came straight from Hepburn’s mouth. One night while she was getting extremely frustrated with the entire production, Kate threw her hands up at dinner and said to Lerner, “Who the devil cares what a woman wears!” He said, “Kate, that’s a good lyric,” and used it. In the same number he also adopted one of Hepburn’s firmest beliefs about character, that actions define a person, that—as Lerner lyricized it—“One is as one does.”

  With the exception of George Rose, who played Coco’s friend and manager Louis Greff, Hepburn felt the cast was “pretty mediocre.” “With all the actors in New York,” she said, “it always amazes me how difficult it is to find a few with real talent.”

  During one number, Bennett staged a routine in which a dancer had to stand in front of Hepburn and perform a series of fan kicks, first swinging his right leg over her head, then the left. “I’m sure Michael kept hoping that man would miss one night and kick me right in the face,” Kate said. Everybody lived in constant fear that the set wouldn’t revolve properly, and on more than one occasion it didn’t. The audiences on those nights got perhaps the best show of all, as Hepburn would step center stage and regale the crowd with show-business anecdotes until the machinery was functioning again.

  Once the show opened, the week before Christmas 1969, none of the problems seemed to matter. For eight months fans came steadily to see this sumptuous showcase for Katharine Hepburn, with its Cecil Beaton sets and costumes. While some critics quibbled over her warbling or quarreled over the writing, everybody succumbed to the power and energy the trim, Chanel-tailored sexagenarian exuded on the stage of the Mark Hellinger Theatre eight times a week. It remained a strained production, for which Hepburn shouldered much of the responsibility. “How couldn’t it be tense?” Kate asked. “I was nervous about every performance . . . wondering what the hell I was doing out there.” She left Coco in August 1970, and was replaced by Danielle Darrieux, who performed admirably. But the production closed shortly thereafter. (Hepburn recorded the cast album and resurrected the show on the road before soldout standing ovations.)

  Through the 1970s, Katharine Hepburn remained in perpetual motion, tackling one project after another. Work remained the best antidote
against grief. In fact, she refused far more offers than she accepted, agreeing only to those that provided the opportunity to work with unique talent or special material. Never having performed Greek tragedy, she went to Spain at the end of 1970 to appear in a film version of Euripides’ Trojan Women. Michael Cacoyannis, who had directed Zorba the Greek, had also enticed Vanessa Redgrave to costar. Kate considered her the most accomplished actress of her generation—“a thrill to look at and to listen to.” (Years later, in fact, there was talk of turning Hepburn’s memoir about the making of The African Queen into a film, which didn’t excite her until she learned that Redgrave might play her. “I don’t know who else could possibly do it,” she said.)

  Kate worked next on two projects that she ultimately abandoned. She was meant to star in a film version of Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt, which George Cukor was directing. After receiving no satisfaction from several different versions of the script, Hepburn took to rewriting it herself. Shortly before shooting was to begin, the studio announced its displeasure with her version and that they were going back to earlier drafts of the script. “When I said I had no interest in any of the earlier drafts,” Kate recalled, “they said, ‘Thank you very much.’ ” She was replaced by Maggie Smith in what proved to be an unsatisfying production, released in 1972.

  And, at the height of their friendship, Kate worked for years with Irene Selznick on a project called Martha, based on a series of books by Margery Sharp about a young artist. Irene intended to produce the film, with Kate directing. The project was subsequently aborted—“not because I didn’t think I could direct . . . and not because I didn’t think Irene could produce a movie. I think it’s simply because I was afraid we’d kill each other.”

  Then producer Ely Landau approached her for the third time, on this occasion touting something called the American Film Theater. He was producing cinematic versions of important dramas, which would play on television and have theatrical film distribution. The play in question was Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, a family drama about a seemingly complacent older couple in suburban Connecticut whose lives are suddenly thrown off-kilter by the unexpected arrival of their best friends; this visit becomes a strange incursion, compelling the characters to examine the debts and deceptions in their lives. “I’ll be honest with you,” Kate divulged, “I knew that Albee was considered ‘the great white hope’ of the American theater, but I had absolutely no idea what that play was about.”

  Surrounded by an elite corps of actors—which included Paul Scofield and Joseph Cotten—and directed by Tony Richardson, a highly intelligent and fussy British expatriate, Hepburn came to appreciate the point of the play. “I think it’s about self-protection,” she said, “—how our homes become our domains, and how we want to protect that from outsiders. And we even come to see that this marriage is really made up of two people trying to protect themselves, from each other. He’s a stuffed shirt, and she’s a bossy old thing, and that’s the only way they can save themselves. At least that’s what I think. But I must tell you, for the first time in my life, I had no idea what I was saying. Maybe that tells you how good the dialogue in that play is.” Several people had told her the play was funny; but Kate confessed, “I never really saw a grain of humor in it.”

  Then producer David Susskind, who had been attempting for years to mount a television production of The Glass Menagerie, asked Kate to play the mother. She was loath to accept the offer. Having starred in motion pictures for forty years, she had a knee-jerk reaction against a work made directly for television. She also had Laurette Taylor’s performance as Amanda Wingfield ingrained in her memory. Agreeing to the project meant she would get to work with Anthony Harvey again, which pleased her enormously; but what ultimately convinced her to take the part was the opportunity for her niece Kathy Houghton to play her daughter once again, this time the crippled Laura. Hepburn signed on, only to learn that Kathy Houghton was not interested in playing the role. “She would have been perfect,” Kate said. “It’s a great part for her.” But Kathy had other acting plans at the time, as well as writing aspirations. Kate never really appreciated that it might be difficult for her niece to perform in her shadow.

  While Hepburn was not ideally cast as the Southern mother, who endlessly recalls her days as an alluring belle, she brought all the requisite power to the role, which she delivered with grace and intelligence. Tony Harvey directed a strong supporting cast—Sam Waterston, Michael Moriarty, and Joanna Miles. The program became one of the great television events in 1973, commanding huge ratings. Its success opened Hepburn’s mind to the possibilities of future work in the medium.

  Then Hepburn’s friend George Cukor, in his mid-seventies, was offered an elegant script by James Costigan—for television. Love Among the Ruins was an Edwardian story of an elderly actress who turns to a former beau to defend her against a younger man suing for breach of promise. Cukor thought it would be ideal for Hepburn and Laurence Olivier. Hepburn agreed and made a crucial suggestion to the director. “Look,” she said, “we both know Larry; and he will do this project only if you go to him first. Then suggest several other actresses, until he mentions my name. Then you can say, ‘Larry, if I knew you were doing this play, I’m sure I could get Kate.’ ” Olivier bought Cukor’s act.

  Hepburn enjoyed working with Olivier—though she was still recuperating from a hip-replacement operation at the time. She thought he was “a first-rate actor.” But she felt compelled to add that she thought he was “a second-rate person.” More than finding him a posturing egomaniac, she based her judgment largely on his treatment of his former wife, Vivien Leigh, a talented though troubled woman, with whom Kate had been friendly. “Larry always wanted to be a big movie star,” Kate said, “and while he was considered the greatest actor on the stage, he was never in the first rank as a star in the movies. Then Vivien comes along and gets Scarlett O’Hara. Wins the Academy Award. Biggest picture ever made. Suddenly Larry says, ‘Oh darling, we really must get you out of Hollywood now. Let’s go off and do Shakespeare together.’ Now Vivien could do anything, but he was clearly trying to keep her in her place, which was billed beneath him. Then a few years pass and Vivien returns to make Streetcar. And she’s brilliant. Wins the Academy Award. Most talked-about movie of the year. And suddenly Larry says, ‘Oh darling, we really must get you out of Hollywood now. Let’s go off and do Shakespeare together.’ Small man. Giant actor. Very small man.” Love Among the Ruins was a great success, collecting rave notices, big ratings, and Emmy Awards for the director and his two stars.

  Hepburn next teamed with John Wayne. She had not worked with him before, and she hadn’t played opposite an actor who seemed so different from her since she and Humphrey Bogart navigated the Congo River. In many ways, this picture, Rooster Cogburn, was a carbon copy of The African Queen—a Bible-toting minister’s daughter ends up on a journey with an aging marshal, who is after a gang of bad guys. The title hero was, in fact, the same character Wayne had played in True Grit.

  There wasn’t much more to this movie than the two legends firing stereotypical dialogue at each other. But both stars had a good time making it. Coming from two different political camps, these rugged old-timers simply avoided controversial subjects and chose to enjoy each other’s company. Said Kate, “I can honestly say I never met a man who worked harder or played harder than Duke. He was a total straight-shooter, decent, and fun. Just a natural. We were up in the Cascades, and some days we got on our horses and rode all day. Great fun. Big man. Small backside.” The stunt casting alone was reason enough for some people to see the film, though not many.

  In 1976 Hepburn agreed to a three-month run of a play called A Matter of Gravity by her friend Enid Bagnold. This was a lighter version of her hit play The Chalk Garden, a look at several generations in a big English country house. In London, Edith Evans had played the dotty matriarch in the decaying home. Bagnold was only too happy to alter the part to suit the grande dame of the American theater
. In retrospect, one of the play’s greatest distinctions was its appearance of Christopher Reeve as her grandson in one of his first roles. Kate took a shine to the handsome young actor. So the day I heard that Reeve had been paralyzed in a near-fatal accident, I called Kate to give her the news. “Part of me thinks you’ll say, ‘He’d be better off dead.’ ”

  “Mmmm,” Kate said, passively agreeing. Then she added, “But I don’t think so. He’s strong. Strong body, strong spirit. He’s got a family he loves. He’s got guts . . . and unlike a lot of actors . . . he’s got a brain.”

  Before taking A Matter of Gravity on a successful nationwide tour, Hepburn appeared in an odd, forgotten little movie called Olly Olly Oxen Free, in which she played the owner of a junkyard who helps two children repair a hot-air balloon. “All I really remember about it,” Kate said, only five years after making it, “is that I got to ride in the balloon. And one night we filmed a scene in which I brought the balloon down right in the middle of a performance at the Hollywood Bowl. I’d say that was probably worth the price of admission for all of us.”

  After the Matter of Gravity tour, Hepburn worked again with George Cukor, then seventy-nine, remaking Emlyn Williams’s The Corn Is Green. Bette Davis had appeared in the acclaimed 1940s film version, and Kate was pleased when the television production won more kudos for everybody involved.

  So, in the fifteen years since Spencer Tracy’s death, Katharine Hepburn had been almost as active as she had during any previous period of her life. She cheerfully graced magazine covers and granted interviews, including one with Dick Cavett, the host of a popular late-night television program. In 1974 she startled a worldwide television audience—and a thousand people sitting in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion—when Academy Awards host David Niven unexpectedly announced the next presenter by saying, “To me, this is a star—Katharine Hepburn.”