Kate Remembered

by A. Scott Berg

  “Forty-five bucks?” I laughed. Realizing she was way off, Kate tried again. “Sixty-five?”

  Kate said her “good nights” and went upstairs, followed by Norah, who had already packed most of Hepburn’s clothes for the journey. I went downstairs to get my bag and to show Warren out. He felt good about the way the evening went. “But listen,” I said. “It’s not over. She’s going to wake up tomorrow and refuse to go.” I suggested he put Erik Hanson on alert, and I told Warren to be ready to return to the house himself at nine for the final round of persuasion. Winter weather had arrived in New York, and Norah beamed at the thought of three weeks in Los Angeles—with Warren Beatty no less.

  The next morning I went downstairs at seven-thirty to get my breakfast tray, which I brought up to Kate’s room. She was propped up in bed, pouring another cup of coffee and poring over the script. “It’s really terrible,” she said. “I read it and read it, and it makes absolutely no sense. Here,” she said, throwing her copy across the bed, “you play it.” I acted out the scene, which included some drivel likening the promiscuous Beatty character to a duck. Kate rolled her eyes. “It’ll be fine once you get out there,” I said reassuringly.

  “Out where?” she asked blankly.

  “L.A.”

  “L.A.? I’m not going to L.A.” I said I was under the impression she was, that she had told Warren Beatty that she was, and the Warners’ jet was scheduled to take off at noon. “Well,” she insisted, “I will not be on it.”

  The next few hours were bedlam. I called Warren a little after nine, and when the operator patched me through to his room, it sounded as though I had awakened him. I said he had better come over right away, that Hepburn was back at square one. He said he would be there in an hour. I suggested he get Erik Hanson over to the house as well. Norah efficiently finished Hepburn’s packing and put the house in order. I continued to tell Kate that she should make the trip and that she could “get sick” and return home if she wanted, but that it might just be some fun.

  She would not budge, clearly waiting to be wooed one more time by Beatty. He arrived a little after ten, and restated how important it was to him and the movie that she appear. But it really wasn’t until Erik Hanson, the financial adviser, arrived that she was moved into action. In a sharp tone, he argued that there was no good reason for her to stay home, that she had nothing to do there but sit around and look at the same four walls. Here was an opportunity, he said, for her to travel in great comfort and work under ideal circumstances. A little before noon, Norah, Warren, Kate, and I were packed in a limousine on our way to the airport—in dead silence.

  Kate looked miserable, sad and tired, like some exotic animal that had been bagged. “Now Warren,” I asked, for Hepburn to hear, “if at any time, Kate wants to come home, she can come home, right?” Right, he said; he’d arrange for the jet to take her back. “And there’s still plenty of time to work on the script, right?” Right. “And there’s plenty of time to get the costumes fitted, right?” Right.

  The stewardess greeted us as we entered the Warners’ jet; and as soon as we had settled into the comfortable seats, we took off. A buffet of salads and meats was set up; and it was one of the few times I saw Kate eat food that hadn’t been prepared in her own house. After lunch, she looked exhausted and said she wanted to lie down. Norah covered her with a blanket on a daybed in the front of the cabin, and she fell asleep. During the flight I spoke to Beatty about the script. He asked a few questions about Hepburn’s career, which made me think he might be rewriting some of her dialogue. He brought up Elia Kazan’s name, not realizing that Kate had worked with him. Kazan had, of course, unleashed Beatty onto the public in Splendor in the Grass, a galvanic film debut. “Kate was in his other ‘grass’ movie,” I said, The Sea of Grass. After a two-hour nap, Hepburn awoke—her face looking somewhat the worse for having slept on it, irritating some of its small lesions. A look of shock came over Beatty.

  He spent the balance of the flight making conversation with Hepburn, trying to get her to warm up to him. As I sank into a nap myself, I heard only his icebreaker: “I was just thinking,” he said, “you and I both did Elia Kazan’s ‘grass’ movies.”

  Later in the flight, while I was sitting with them, he brought up the name of Shirley MacLaine. “Bad girl,” Kate said, presumably remembering something she had heard, because I didn’t think they had ever met. Warren dropped the subject. A few minutes later, when he changed seats, I told Kate that MacLaine was Beatty’s sister. “Oh dear,” she said, then laughed for the first time that day.

  Upon our arrival we were ferried off in limousines—our luggage in a separate car—to a secluded, spacious house at the top of Benedict Canyon. It seemed to meet all of Hepburn’s criteria. It sat behind a gate and had a beautiful tree in the courtyard; the rooms were large and bright, with comfortable furniture in neutral colors; the large master bedroom was within shouting distance of what would be Norah’s bedroom, and it opened onto a large patio with a pool; the living room had a big fireplace. Norah was giddy, having left slushy New York behind her; and when Warren told her a team of assistants stood at the ready to run any errands, I could practically see her praying for the filming to go over schedule. After walking through the house, Kate said, “It’s awful. Let’s go home.”

  Promptly insisting he would find her another house, Beatty asked what the problems were. The chair in the living room was in the wrong place for her to enjoy the fire, and the house looked too boring and bare. I suggested that Beatty leave her alone for a few hours, to allow her to make it her own. When he returned, I was just moving a potted tree from another room onto a low ledge by the fireplace, and Kate had showered and changed into a crisp white outfit and was holding a Scotch, sitting in a comfortable chair that had been moved to face the hearth.

  The three of us ate a small dinner, after which I said I had to go home. Hepburn had assumed I was staying at the house, but I explained that I lived only ten minutes away myself, that Norah was on the premises, and that I would be back the next morning for breakfast, as though we were in New York together. I asked if the assistant on duty could drop me off at my house, but Beatty volunteered to drive me. We were hardly out the driveway, when he said, “My God, her face looks like a fruitcake. Is it always that bad? What is it, skin cancer?” I said the blotches were probably the result of many years of outdoor sports. “And what is that grease she puts on her face?” I said that it was some formula she had been using for years, really little more than petroleum jelly with lanolin. “My God,” he said, “that can’t be good for her.”

  As soon as we hit Mulholland Drive, he reached for the car phone and called a doctor, who immediately got on the line and to whom he described her condition. They began to discuss long-term treatment for Hepburn’s condition and short-term remedies in the week they had before shooting. When he had finished his call, he told me that he had an active interest in medicine, that he tried to keep up-to-date on all the latest cures and treatments and which doctors and hospitals were best in their fields. “Are you a hypochondriac as well?” I asked. He laughed and said, “A little.”

  I asked Beatty what the schedule would be like for Hepburn during this week before shooting, as the most important thing for the moment was to keep her occupied. “Her life may have slowed down in New York,” I explained, “but she has a routine there, and all her time is accounted for. So I think you should make sure there’s some activity for her every day.” I explained that until she was before the cameras, I could be there to have breakfast with her every morning and dinner at night, but that he would have to see that her days were filled. He said there would be no problem—what with showing her the set, costume fittings, and the like.

  He dropped me off at my house, and I said I would be at the Hepburn Command Center at eight the next morning. As I got out of the car, Warren leaned to the right and yelled through the passenger window, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Look,” I said,
“I’m doing this mostly for Kate. But think of something.”

  With that, he turned off his motor, got out of the car, and rushed over to give me a bearhug. Then, without a word, he drove down the hill toward home.

  I spent a few hours every morning that week at Hepburn’s house. Trying to duplicate our regimen, I sat in her bedroom while she finished breakfast and we discussed the newspapers. She seemed tired and disoriented and unsteady on her feet. Thinking part of the problem was that she wasn’t getting any exercise, I took a long swim every day; and a few times I was able to induce her into the pool as well. Although Beatty did come up with an activity each day, that still left the bulk of the time unfilled, with nothing for Hepburn to do but sit around and moan. She suffered from spells of vertigo.

  Even so, late mornings she wanted to go out on drives. I thought they would exacerbate her dizziness, but she said inactivity was worse. The first day she wanted to look at some of the houses in which she had lived. I drove her to the cottage she shared with Tracy on the Cukor estate, which had recently been bought and remodeled into a charmless house. It bore so little resemblance to what it had been, Kate had no idea where we were until she looked at the street sign. “Do you know who lives there?” she asked. No, I told her; but I was sure they would be thrilled to let her look around if she wanted. “Let’s,” she said. As I got out of the car, I saw her staring sadly at the place. As I opened her door to help her out, she said, “Let’s not.”

  We drove up Doheny Drive a few blocks, to my house—three stories perched on stilts, modern, and with a big view of the city from the mid-Wilshire area to the ocean. It was a beautiful clear day. She got as far as the entrance on the top floor, marveled at the vista, and said, “Where’s the fireplace?” When I told her I had none, her interest in the place waned. I started to lead her down the stairs to show her the rest of the house, especially my office. Not two steps down, she changed her mind. “I’d rather not know,” she said, beginning a familiar refrain.

  “Know what?” I asked.

  “That you live somewhere,” she said in a slightly wistful tone.

  She wanted to leave the house right away and carry on our tour of the canyons. Hepburn remembered every turn up every small street, stopping at one address or another, seldom getting more than a glimpse of a driveway. Later in the ride, she asked out of the blue, “How can you live in a house without a fireplace?”

  That night Annette Bening accompanied Warren to Hepburn’s house, and the four of us had dinner. The meals Norah prepared were the same she served in New York. Annette was charming and courtly with Hepburn. When she and Warren left, Kate asked, “Who’s the girl?” That, I explained, was her costar in the movie—a very good actress and Warren Beatty’s wife. “His wife!” she said. “He has a wife?” Yes, I explained; after years of his being Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor, with countless celebrated romances, he married her. “Poor girl,” said Kate. I asked why she said that, that I thought they both seemed in love. “Hmmm,” observed Kate. Then, without missing a beat, she added, “With the same man.”

  The second day our driving tour took us to the top of Tower Road. She wanted to see the wonderful house in which she had lived in the thirties, one later owned by Jules Stein, the founder of MCA, the entertainment empire. She asked who the current owner was, and I said, Rupert Murdoch. “Hmmmm,” she nodded knowingly, “this is a place for somebody who feels that he owns the world.” Big gates with the letter “M”—reminding me of the gates outside Xanadu in Citizen Kane—barred entry onto the property; but Kate asked me to try to get us in. I buzzed a half-dozen times from the gate, but there was no response. “This is New Year’s Eve,” I said. “Everybody’s probably away.” That was good, she said, instructing me to drive around to the back of the property. There was a chain-link gate ajar, through which we were both able to squeeze, thus setting foot on the grounds. After a few steps, however, we were met by a more formidable fence.

  “We need some of those big wire-cutters,” she said. I apologized for not traveling with metal shears. “What about a bat, or something,” she said, suggesting that we could probably pry the locked gate open. After I struck out again, she scrounged around for a big stick. Not until we had rattled the chain-link fence for several minutes did she abort our mission. We tried the front gate one more time, then retreated down the hill.

  Before going out to a New Year’s Eve party that night, I returned to Kate’s house to have dinner with her and the Beattys—at five-thirty. In honor of the occasion, Kate had me open a bottle of champagne. We all hoisted our glasses to good things in 1994, all except Annette . . . who at the last minute picked up her glass and, as though talking to herself, quietly said, “Well, the doctor said a small glass of wine would be all right.” It would not make the columns for a few months, but I drove off that night thinking the Beattys were expecting a second child.

  That weekend, just before she was to begin shooting, Kate talked of going home. She said she was tired of Los Angeles; and the deal was that she could return whenever she wanted. Over breakfast the conversation veered to where it had been weeks ago, to the script. We read her scene aloud, and she kept saying, “It just doesn’t make any sense.” I asked her what was unclear and suggested she improvise some dialogue of her own. She asked me to do the same. “Why don’t you tell him,” she said, referring to Beatty, “that you and I discussed the script, and you’ve come up with a few suggestions that you thought would help the film.” I said that as the star, producer, and cowriter, he might not take kindly to “my” suggestions, but that I would speak to him.

  After I had typed up the fresh pages, Beatty asked me to come to the house to discuss them. He said he liked them, then insisted on discussing even the most innocuous lines, word by word. I suddenly realized why so many years elapsed between each of his pictures. Then he asked what the possibilities were of her saying a line in his version of the script, “Fuck a duck.”

  I asked him what the point was, as the line was neither necessary nor funny and was, frankly, a little tasteless. “But would she ever say it?” he asked. I said the sheer shock value of the line would probably hold some appeal for Hepburn. In Coco, I told him, her character had come down a staircase after a fiasco of a fashion show and said, “Shit!” I also said that, while that had been some twenty years earlier, she had disappointed a lot of fans. “But do you think she’d say it?” Warren repeated, clearly intent on working the line into the script. I said she probably would, but why upset some of the people who would be coming to the movie to see her?

  “Nobody’s coming to this movie to see her,” Beatty said.

  “I’m sorry?” I said, having obviously misheard him.

  “I said nobody’s coming to this movie to see Hepburn.”

  I stared at him, waiting for him to crack a smile but quickly realized he was dead serious. I replayed the past few months in my mind, wondering what the exigency of getting Katharine Hepburn into this movie had been about if it wasn’t somehow to raise interest in the film. Suddenly I understood that this entire casting expedition had been little more than an exercise in vanity. “Well,” I said, “when the movie comes out in video and the distributor wants a third name on the box and the video stores shelve a copy in the ‘Katharine Hepburn’ section, some of her fans might be disappointed to hear her say that line.”

  “But,” Warren asked, ending the discussion, “you think she’d say, ‘Fuck a duck?’ ”

  Yes, Warren. Only one or two bits out of the pages I had brought over made their way onto the screen. And I did leave him with one further suggestion, which had to do with the moment when Warren’s and Annette’s characters say goodbye to his aunt for the last time. “Kate’s got a very theatrical wave,” I said. “Look at the end of Summertime.” I suggested that this could be a touching moment for Hepburn’s fans—“I mean, not that anybody’s going to see this movie because of her.”

  Beatty proceeded to tell me that he didn’t understand why
Hepburn didn’t seem to be enjoying herself in Los Angeles, regarding the trip as more of an “opportunity.” He said that the weather was certainly better than New York’s, the movie provided her with something to do, and “she’ll be working with the greatest living director in the world.” While a successful television director named Glenn Gordon Caron was nominally the man calling the shots on this picture, I knew that Beatty himself intended to direct the Hepburn scenes. And so, once again, I looked for even a suggestion of irony. “I’m sorry?” I said.

  When I saw once again that this was no laughing matter, I said, “Well, it’s true, Cukor and Huston and Ford are all dead,” naming just a few of the giants with whom she had worked. “But what about Billy Wilder and Kurosawa and David Lean?”

  “I mean guys who are still working,” Beatty contended.

  “How about Stanley Kubrick?”

  “Yeah,” he conceded, “but he hasn’t made a picture in years.” I refrained from even introducing such names as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Mike Nichols . . .

  Beatty and I saw each other again on Sunday night, for dinner at Hepburn’s. Kate’s mood seemed lighter than it had all week. She had been applying a salve one of Beatty’s doctors had prescribed, and her skin had noticeably improved. Everybody was aglow with anticipation. As Warren and I left her, she called out to me, “I hope he’s paying you a lot of money.” Warren only laughed . . . all the way out the door.