Kate Remembered

by A. Scott Berg

  Ever since he had been a young man, he said, she had bowled him over—with her brains, her beauty, and her attitude. “She’s very sexy,” he said.

  “That’s what Howard Hughes thought,” I replied, knowing that Beatty had talked of producing a film about Hughes for more than a decade. “Yeah, what about that?” Warren said, as I was getting into the car, which Kevin had started up. “Did she ever talk to you about Hughes?” After I told him that she had, I could see he was prepared to pump me all night. I figured the only way we could leave was if I threw him a bone. So I said, “Kate often told me, ‘What you must always remember about Howard is that he was deaf. And from an early age that affected him.’ ” As the car began to move, Warren followed along for a few paces, continuing the conversation—mostly about how chancy a sentimental love story was these days.

  “Well,” said Kevin as we reached the end of the driveway, “—now I see what that dinner was all about.” I said he was being ridiculous, that the purpose of the evening was to learn about Lindbergh, and now that Warren had heard all I was willing to impart, that would be the last I would ever hear from him. We arrived home at eleven.

  At 11:05, the phone rang. Kevin said, “Warren.”

  “This is Warren Beatty, the movie star,” said the exuberant voice at the other end of the line. “It was really great meeting you guys,” he said. Then he chatted aimlessly about Lindbergh for a few minutes before asking, “So do you think Hepburn might be interested in doing this part?” I reiterated that it seemed unlikely, but I volunteered to inquire discreetly. “This much I can tell you,” I added. “Don’t approach her right away. She likes to feel she’s coming in to save the day. She loves to save the day.” In the meantime, I advised him to tailor the scene in ways that might especially appeal to her. I further advised that he think of other actresses who could play the part, so that he wouldn’t be stuck in the probable eventuality that she wouldn’t do it. Obviously, Beatty had already compiled such a list.

  I pushed Frances Dee, Hepburn’s costar in Little Women, saying that I had seen her in recent years and that she was an extremely attractive older woman with all her wits. “I know,” Beatty said, “but I think the part needs a bigger name, a real star.” I mentioned Luise Rainer, who had won back-to-back Oscars in the 1930s—for The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth—and who was also in her eighties. Furthermore, I argued, she had been off the screen for decades, so the studio could probably get some publicity mileage out of the casting. “No,” Beatty whined, “she just doesn’t seem right.” I argued that the part sounded more appropriate for her than for Hepburn. “I could see Luise Rainer languishing in her final days in Tahiti,” I said, “but not Kate. No balmy breezes for her. Greenland, maybe. Or the Yukon. But not Tahiti.” That seemed like a frivolous technicality to Beatty, who added, “I just don’t see Luise Rainer as my aunt.”

  “I’ve always found Hepburn really sexy,” he told me again. In that moment, what I had long known became perfectly clear. I realized that even for movie stars, Katharine Hepburn was the actress they all wanted to meet and the one with whom they all dreamed of working. Once again I said I would sound Hepburn out but that he should also think about Wendy Hiller, Loretta Young, Jessica Tandy. “The old lady lives in Tahiti,” I suggested before hanging up; “how about Dorothy Lamour coming out in a sarong?”

  I called Kate the next morning—waiting until seven-thirty Los Angeles time, knowing that one could no longer call her “at any time.” In fact, she often didn’t awaken until eight, sometimes nine, and then she lingered in bed reading, writing, and sorting through her mail. I told her about my evening with Warren Beatty and his interest in getting her in his movie. “Tell him you spoke with me,” she directed, “and that I have absolutely no interest in the film. Is that the one where the girl gets hit by the car on her way to the Empire State Building?” she asked. I complimented her on her memory. She seemed to have been approached to appear in this version of the film already, and she wrote the story off as “pretty silly stuff.”

  “My God,” she added. “Have I become Maria Ouspenskaya?”

  Strangely, our conversation on the subject did not end there. “Is he interesting?” she asked, indicating Warren Beatty. “I’m not sure,” I said. “He’s certainly engaging. He gives the big rush. And he has a kind of courtliness. I think you’d like him.”

  “Why does he want to remake that movie?” she asked.

  “Cary Grant, I think.”

  “Cary Grant?”

  I told her a story I had heard years earlier about Cary Grant walking into a big Hollywood party in the sixties, where he saw all the gorgeous women in the room swarming around the young Warren Beatty. Grant was said to have commented to a friend, “See that guy. That used to be me.”

  “Now,” I told Kate, “I think Mr. Beatty wants to be Cary Grant. No man aged more gracefully on the screen than your friend Cary, and when he was fifty-three he made An Affair to Remember.”

  “How old is Warren Beatty?” she asked.

  “Fifty-six.”

  “Is he any fun?” she asked. “I’m not sure.” I said. “He takes himself extremely seriously, but I think that’s so people around him will take him seriously. But I have a hunch he’s kind of goofy underneath it all.”

  “Hmmm,” Kate said. “Well, that could be fun.”

  I reported most of the conversation to Warren and suggested that he leave her alone as long as possible, that in closing the door she had left a slight crack. It was a clear signal that Hepburn was ready neither to end her career nor to commit to anything new. I told him that I would be visiting her in New York in early September and I could take her pulse in person.

  At that dinner in New York, I raised the subject of the Warren Beatty movie. Again she was noncommittal. With such a small role, she asked, what was the point? I said that it might be fun to do such a part—one that would make a great impression and wouldn’t require much time or effort. Besides, I argued, it would be nice circumstances under which to visit her friends in Los Angeles, something she hadn’t done in years. “They’re all dead,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not,” I protested.

  “If you keep talking about this movie,” she said, “you will be.”

  Most people, even in Hollywood, don’t know exactly what a producer does. In fact, producers come in all varieties and perform any number of functions. Some seize an idea or get their hands on a piece of unpublished material and shepherd it to a studio, where they develop it as a motion picture; others simply raise the money for the venture. Studios often stir other producers into the stew because of their ability to lure big stars and prominent directors. Still other producers get assigned to a film because of their ability to “make the trains run on time,” seeing that the dozens of artists and technicians and drivers and caterers all perform their tasks according to the budget. Such extensive division of labor accounts for the large number of producers one finds in the credits of motion pictures today.

  In the golden age of Hollywood, each film generally had one producer, and perhaps an associate who monitored the mechanics of the physical production. In more modern times, there are very few producers who conceive a film project and oversee its journey from inception to exhibition. The conglomeratization of the studios is, in part, the reason for the increase in number of producers—as bean-counting corporate heads want to insure their ever-increasing investments by hiring high-paid specialists to perform each production task. Another reason is that there’s little room for the big personalities that existed in the old studio system—men like Goldwyn and Selznick and Thalberg, whose passion practically willed their movies into existence.

  Not long after remaking Love Affair popped into my life, I asked a venerated member of the Hollywood community what he thought of Warren Beatty. “As an actor,” he said, “he had one of the greatest ten years an actor could have. And since then, his career has pretty much slipped, and so has his acting. As a director, he’s had
a couple of good pictures. But as a producer, he’s one of the best I’ve ever seen in this town. He can get anybody to do anything. That’s producing.”

  Into the fall of 1993, I watched Warren Beatty produce. He made contact with Hepburn herself and her no-nonsense financial adviser named Erik Hanson. Upon learning that Kate liked cut flowers, Beatty began sending arrangements—one after another. I too began to receive his calls. At first they came once a week, to devise a game plan; then once a day, soon five times a day, analyzing every word she had said to him and strategizing every word he might say back. The calls were always flattering and full of excitement, manipulation so overt that it was comical. Kate was amused as well and called one morning to say, “Please tell your friend Mr. Beatty to stop sending me flowers. It looks like a funeral parlor around here.”

  She clearly enjoyed the seduction; but as December arrived, the courtship had to end. The film’s remaining scenes had to be shot—with or without Katharine Hepburn. Feelers had been put out to Frances Dee, who was standing by in case her old friend Kate declined.

  Meantime, Hepburn’s health was failing. Her energy was not what it had been even the year before, and her short-term memory came and went. She found it difficult to concentrate. She asked what I thought of the script, as she could make little sense of it. When I told her I had not seen it, she asked me to call Warren Beatty and request a copy.

  I did, suggesting that Hepburn herself realized that this might very well be her swan song and that she wanted it to be special. Toward that end, I said he should consider interpolating a few lines that would be “personal”—not just in style but also in substance. I was thinking of dialogue that might comment upon the character’s life and philosophy but which was obviously drawn from Hepburn’s as well, rather the way Spencer Tracy had spoken his heart in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

  Beatty messengered a script over—not the entire script actually, just the fifteen pages that featured old “Aunt Ginny.” They didn’t seem like much to me. In the first of my calls from Warren the next day, I asked, “Who wrote this?” The simple question elicited a most complicated answer—of the sort one found in most of his interviews, rambling and evasive: “Oh, it’s really hard to say. A lot of people have had their say, and of course it goes back to the original movie and Mildred Cram and . . .” The best I’ve gathered since is that Robert Towne wrote the script with Beatty rewriting, or vice versa.

  Hepburn also called that day and asked what I thought of the script. I said I thought it was pretty mediocre, flat and charmless. “I thought I was the only one,” she said. “That puts an end to that.” But, I added, there was still plenty of time to fix it, because it was a potentially wonderful scene. “What’s the point?” Hepburn asked. “Why bother?” The fact that she even asked, that none of her refusals to do this movie had sounded definitive, made me think she really wanted to take the job. If they could have shot the scene in New York, I don’t think she would have hesitated for a moment. But this would mean uprooting herself and moving to California for several weeks; and I think that, for the first time, she was factoring her age and health into the equation. Beatty promised to find her a comfortable house, one that could easily accommodate Norah and anyone else with whom she wanted to travel. Of course, she could select the personnel tending to her hair and makeup and costumes.

  Kate seemed to be wondering if she would be alone during this venture. Laura Harding had been there for her in the old days, but she was estate-bound in New Jersey; Phyllis had become too feeble to make the trip; and Cynthia McFadden, who had become Kate’s favorite companion on both business trips and vacations, could no longer simply take time off from work. When Kate asked again what the point was in doing the film, I felt she was asking whether or not I would be around.

  “I think you should do it,” I said. “You always said, ‘Actors act.’ So I think you should act. Do you need this movie for your career? I don’t think so. But I think it could be fun, we can have some adventures in L.A., and you’ll be starting your seventh decade in movies. Now that’s pretty great—a career that goes from John Barrymore to Warren Beatty.”

  “Jesus!” she said. “I might have to say ‘yes’ just to stop him from sending any more flowers.”

  “I believe that’s part of his campaign, Kate, to show the kind of attention he’ll lavish upon you.”

  “We’ve run out of room here,” she said. “So it shows me that he’s a goddamned fool for wasting so much money.”

  I updated Warren Beatty, explaining that Kate would probably flip-flop another dozen times in the next two weeks and that left to her own volition, she would prefer to stay at home. “She is eighty-five,” I reminded him. All that said, I told Beatty that I would be willing to fly east to reassure Hepburn of the soundness of this venture and that I would accompany her to Los Angeles. I also said that if he wanted to act on his own, that would be fine with me as well. In any case, I added, “you really should let up on the flowers.”

  Christmas Day, a Saturday, Beatty called to say if my offer still held, we should leave on Monday, the three p.m. flight. Hepburn still had not committed to the role, but her deal had been negotiated, her backup team was on alert, and accommodations were being arranged. We just had to lure the lion out of her lair. Because we would be arriving in New York long after Hepburn’s bedtime, I asked him to book a hotel room for me on Monday night and to make a dinner date with Hepburn for Tuesday. Meantime, I would call Kate and arrange to be with her Tuesday afternoon to discuss the trip. I would stay for dinner, and spend the night upstairs—because Wednesday morning she would rise with absolutely no intention of leaving for California.

  Monday morning, Beatty called to say a car would pick me up at two o‘clock, return to his house to fetch him, then we’d go to the airport. “Isn’t that cutting it a little close?” I asked. He said he didn’t think so, but I could have the car come whenever I wanted. He asked if I would bring a copy of Hepburn’s Me, which he had not read; and for comfort’s sake, I asked for an extra fifteen minutes. That quarter of an hour proved worthless, because when I arrived at Beatty’s house on Mulholland, he was still running around gathering things for the trip and fielding phone calls. We met in the kitchen at 2:15, where he insisted we eat some roast-beef hash the cook was preparing. At 2:25 I suggested we move along if we were to catch our three o’clock flight. “Okay,” he said, downing the last of the hash.

  At five minutes before the hour, we arrived at the American Airlines terminal, where a special representative met us curbside. We must have walked through security, but I don’t remember it, as we were escorted right onto the plane. The first-class stewardess had our names and greeted me and Mr. Mike Gambril—the name of Beatty’s character in the movie. The first-class section was empty except for us; and Warren used the flight to whip through Hepburn’s book, periodically asking for amplification on one chapter or another.

  We were whisked through JFK and taken to the Carlyle Hotel, where I was shown to an enormous suite—a big bedroom, two baths, and a huge living room—easily costing $1,000 a night. It was only nine o’clock California time when Warren rang and asked me to accompany him to P. J. Clarke’s for a bite.

  The restaurant was quiet at that hour, except for a rowdy group of young Italians sitting a few tables away. They periodically pointed to my dinner companion and chanted, “Deek Tracy! Deek Tracy!” Our chatty waitress kept lingering at our table; and when she brought our salads, she seized the moment to ask Beatty if he remembered her. She said they had “dated” some ten years prior. He said he did remember her, which put a big smile on her face; and when she left, he told me that even though she had put on some weight, he did recognize her. As we were leaving the restaurant, one of the Italian men asked “Deek Tracy” for his autograph, which Beatty happily provided. “Where does Hepburn go out to eat?” Warren asked as we headed out.

  “She doesn’t,” I said.

  “No—I mean, when she goes out, what restaur
ants does she go to?” I explained that she hardly went to restaurants at all, maybe three in the last twenty years, and only once in the last decade that I was aware of. “Why?” he asked in disbelief. “First of all, she knows she’ll get better food at home. And she also knows that people will be watching her every time she lifts the fork. And then there’s those guys,” I added, pointing back to the jovial Italians. Warren laughed, put his arm on my shoulder, and said, “That’s the reason I do go out to restaurants.”

  It was after one when we returned to the hotel, but it was still early on Warren’s wristwatch. Although it was already evident that alcohol was not part of his diet, he asked if I’d join him for a drink in the hotel bar. “What do you drink?” he asked; and I told him a single-malt Scotch or Famous Grouse. “What does Miss Hepburn drink?” he asked. The same, I said. He ordered two Famous Grouses. “How do we like it?” he asked me. Neat, I said. “Neat!” he called out to the bartender, delighting in making his request. For the next hour we sat at the bar—“Another!” he called out with glee—and he was warm, funny, self-deprecating, inquisitive, and positively reverent every time he spoke of Hepburn, to whom he hoisted the second glass.

  The next afternoon I went to Turtle Bay with my overnight bag, parked it downstairs in case the plan backfired, and went to the living room where I found Kate examining the script of Love Affair. “I have no idea what this scene is supposed to be about,” she kept saying. “Let’s ask him when he gets here,” I said, “and see if it can be rewritten.”

  Beatty was all charm at dinner, attentive to his hostess and even a little nervous. He spoke of the house he had found for her in California—not far from the studio and even closer to his house, at the top of Benedict Canyon. The Warners’ private jet, he said, would be available at noon to fly us to Burbank. Norah was in a swivet, barely able to keep her eyes off him as she ran trays up and down the stairs. I asked if there was still time to tinker with the script; and the producer and cowriter assured Kate that she would not have to film a word of it until she was satisfied. Hepburn came around. She said she would fly to California and appear in the picture. A little after eight, she was ready to retire and asked where I’d be spending the night. I said that Warren had a suite at the Carlyle for me but that I would prefer to stay on the fourth floor. “Good idea,” she said. “Save the forty-five bucks!”