by Anne Edwards
Kate was understandably unsympathetic toward a woman with such an antifeminist attitude. But Flo Ziegfeld died midway through the shooting of A Bill of Divorcement and his widow coped with her bereavement with such maturity and professionalism that Kate altered her first opinion. Three days after her husband’s death, on the morning following the funeral, Billie Burke returned to the sound stage, giving a fine performance in a difficult character part and keeping her grief to herself.
By the end of Kate’s first week on the film, the press got on to the news that a new star might be rising on Hollywood’s horizon. Reporters visiting the set became a daily occurrence. To the publicity department’s chagrin and the news photographers’ delight, Kate would appear between scenes in her old dungarees. The studio threatened to steal the objectionable piece of clothing unless she stopped wearing it. She refused their ultimatum. One day she returned to her dressing room to find the trousers gone, and she threatened to walk “practically naked through the R.K.O. lot” if they did not immediately give them back.
The decision was not an easy one for the studio. In 1932, wellborn, well-educated young ladies (the image of Kate the publicity department had decided upon) did not expose themselves in public, and the studio already was aware that Kate was rebellious enough to carry through her threat. Nonetheless, they refused to return the dungarees.
“So I did it,” Kate recalls. “Of course I did it. I walked through the lot in my underpants.”
Barrymore thought this was uproarious, but the studio did not laugh. They immediately confiscated all pictures taken of Kate in her stroll and, to her delight, gave her back her dungarees.
The film was shot in four weeks (not unusual for those preunion days). Kate’s contract called for her to be available for any retakes, but she and Laura trained back to New York the following week, only to have to return within two weeks for Kate to reshoot two brief scenes.
David O. Selznick was to remember that “Everybody was shocked silly [when I signed Hepburn]. The world knows that startling Hepburn face now, but when she first appeared on the R.K.O. lot there was consternation. ‘Ye Gods, that horse face!’ they cried, and when the first rushes were shown, the gloom around the studio was so heavy you could cut it with a knife. Not until the preview was the [executive] staff convinced we had a great screen personality. During the first few feet you could feel the audience’s bewilderment at this completely new type, and also feel they weren’t quite used to this kind of a face. But very early in the picture there was a scene in which Hepburn just walked across the room, stretched her arms, and then lay out on the floor before the fireplace. It sounds very simple, but you could almost feel, and you could definitely hear, the excitement in the audience. It was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. In those few simple feet of film a new star was born.”*
Selznick decided R.K.O. would pick up Kate’s option. Whether or not Kate was a fine actress had not been a decisive factor. Movie audiences do not require their favorite performers to be great actors. They want idols, personalities, glamour. In the early thirties times were hard and going to a movie was one of the few inexpensive escapes. Films with content had to be sugarcoated and spoon-fed to sell tickets. Crime films, such as Public Enemy and Little Caesar, featured stars the public loved to hate (James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson). Occasionally such films contained a spurious social consciousness, but even so they were clearly designed as escapist entertainment. Audiences grew to know exactly what to expect from a film’s star once they had purchased a movie ticket. Joan Crawford would more than likely be a fallen woman; Garbo, a woman of mystery; Irene Dunne, a charming, well-bred, always lovable lady. Kate represented a new category: the independent woman of money and breeding.
A meeting was held at David Selznick’s beach house with David’s battery of lawyers present, as well as his brother Myron, Leland Hayward, Laura and Kate. Kate wanted, and was promised, star billing, approval of parts and the right to return to the stage between films. The contract that was delivered to her the following week did not contain these points. Kate refused to sign until Selznick’s verbal concessions were put in writing. While Leland Hayward entered into negotiations with Selznick, Laura and Kate headed back to New York, where Luddy met them. Nothing was as it had once been with Kate and Luddy. The great camaraderie they had shared had somehow diminished as the depth of Kate’s friendship with Laura had grown. Kate was uneasy about herself and her marriage, and—since she had not yet seen the final cut of A Bill of Divorcement—fearful as well that she might have made a fool of herself on screen. Laura retreated to her family home in New Jersey when Kate and Luddy decided they should go to Europe before the film was previewed to see if they could make something viable of their marriage. They sailed on steerage tickets because, as Kate explained, “There’s no reason why I should get sick on a first class ticket.” But the discomfort of the voyage and Luddy’s resentment of the irrelevancy of such travel arrangements in their circumstances placed more stress upon their already strained relationship.
Shortly after Kate and Luddy departed for Europe, A Bill of Divorcement premiered at the Mayfair Theatre in New York. The film was generally well received, but Kate’s personal reviews were marvelous. Richard Watts of the New York Herald Tribune wrote that “Katharine Hepburn . . . seems definitely established for an important cinema career.” Thornton Delehanty of the New York Post commented on her “dignity and an instinct for underplaying an emotion. . . . Miss Hepburn has the makings of a star. . . .” The New Yorker called her “half Botticelli page and half bobbed-hair bandit, [who] might well be the daughter of one of the old English families.” A more florid press (the Journal-American) claimed that she had “flamed like an opal, half-demon and half-madonna.”
Kate possessed that intangible something the movies call “star material.” Mae West, who entered films at the same time as Kate, had it. So did Garbo and Dietrich. A contemporary legend persisted that the role of the daughter in A Bill of Divorcement was actress proof, that any comparatively inexperienced young actress would seem miraculous in it and would be hailed as a possible star. Critics insisted the role genuinely touched audiences irrespective of the actress playing it. However, the three young women besides Kate who had portrayed the tragic daughter in A Bill of Divorcement also happened to have that incandescent quality that differentiated a star from an actor.*
The number of technically brilliant stage performers that Hollywood could have cast in lead roles was enormous. The stars of a film, however, had to possess an elusive power of personality and a physical magnetism that could stand up to the greatly enlarged close-up of a movie screen, where bone structure that gives off planes of light is often crucial. The fact that Garbo, Dietrich, and Mae West, as well as Katharine Hepburn, had high cheekbones, wide-apart eyes and broad jaw lines, could be a coincidence. But too many film stars, male and female, have had these similarities to discount the fascination this facial type has for movie audiences.
Kate had much more than an intriguing face. Her powerful, authentic personality never became restricted by the camera. She later claimed she loved the camera, its warmth, its familiarity. She responded to its naked glare, its slavish attention to every expression of her face and body, with the kind of immediacy a trusted lover could expect; and she seldom rejected a studio request for posed still-camera sessions despite the work and hours these entailed.
Kate and Luddy were in Vienna when she received a telegram from Leland Hayward urging her to return to New York. The new R.K.O. contract—with even better terms than either she or Hayward had anticipated—was ready for her signature, and the studio had a film planned for her, entitled Three Came Unarmed, that he felt she would approve. The trip had been an exercise in futility where she and Luddy were concerned. With Kate’s decision to return to New York prematurely, even the most tenuous bindings of the marriage were now severed.
She stood on the deck of the French liner that had brought her back to New York, d
ressed in pants and surrounded by a gaggle of reporters snapping photographs that showed her lean figure etched against the Statue of Liberty (looking no more regal or unbending than she). Luddy had “discreetly” disappeared, disembarking later, unrecognized and alone. But Kate had been registered on the ship as Mrs. Ludlow Smith (a rare acknowledgment of her legal name) and the press scented a story. She denied she was married, an unfortunate lie that she later made worse by answering a fan magazine writer’s query, “Have you any children?” with, “Yes, two white and three colored.”
Hollywood fan magazines then had a tremendous circulation and a strong hold on the film-going public. The star system was well established. A growth of intimacy between stars and their fans was necessary to make the latter loyal to their favorites’ films. Garbo’s silence was intriguing, but no other film star had been able to succeed using such tactics. True biographical information was seldom given. Studios employed armies of publicity people to create an aura of glamour about their players, and Hollywood reporters were looking for good copy not true stories. Kate’s major miscalculation in her treatment of the press would later prove extremely costly.
She returned to Hollywood with Laura, where the two women rented an isolated, dismal house in the hills above Hollywood and near the Los Angeles Reservoir.* What strikes one here is the collegiate behavior of both women who, after all, were in their mid-twenties at the time. Under the guise of revolting against Hollywood’s nouveau riche pretentions, they bribed the servants at the home of film producer Walter Wanger (whom they knew only slightly).† (Before being found out they dressed in uniforms and served one course at a dinner party at which film stars Charles Boyer* and Madeleine Carroll† were present. Mrs. Wanger was not amused, but she recovered enough to ask Kate and Laura to join her guests. “No, no! Thanks all the same,” Kate replied as she and Laura retreated to the kitchen, changed back into their own clothes, “and rushed out to fall on the grass and laugh hysterically.”
On another occasion, they hid in the trunk of director William Wellman’s imported limousine and “didn’t emerge until he reached home, jumping out and making funny faces.” They made several nocturnal invasions of Hollywood’s most elaborate homes, usually entering in and out of windows while the owners were away, somehow avoiding guards, dogs, alarms and detectors, and leaving unsigned notes in obvious places so the occupants would know they had had uninvited guests. “I could look over a place and get in faster than any teenager in Juvenile Court,” Kate admitted. “But, of course, being naturally timid, I could never do it alone. I had to have [Laura] going along with me. She’d say, ‘We’re going in here,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, do you think we ought to?’ and she’d say, ‘Yes, you go up and drop through that skylight.’ I would throw a rope down to her and lug her up. I don’t have too much nerve on my own, but I have great ability when I am prodded.”
None of these escapades did the press report, although stories of Kate’s “eccentricity” were inevitable when she was seen walking with her new acquisition, a pet monkey, on her shoulder. Off the set Kate now wore pants almost exclusively. She claimed bad indigestion was responsible. “If my feet are as high as my seat, I digest my dinner, if they aren’t, I don’t,” she told George Cukor when he complained about her mode of dress and her insistence at refusing all dinner invitations.
She did, however, attend Cukor’s very private Sunday afternoon salons where Hollywood’s more intellectual residents gathered. Cukor called her “the tigress” and warned friends to put on their boxing gloves to meet her. But her great charm was her uncompromising individuality and the fact that she could talk on anything from atomic energy to how to grow beans in your backyard. Cukor’s Sunday guest list often included such luminaries as author Hugh Walpole, Tallulah Bankhead, opera singer Mary Garden, silent-screen star Tilly Loesch, and, on occasion, Greta Garbo. The day Garbo and Kate were both to be guests at Cukor’s house, Kate arrived early and Garbo late. Cukor had a well-protected pool and Kate decided to go swimming in the nude. Just as she came out of the water, Cukor appeared with Garbo. Kate quickly grabbed a towel to wrap around herself and stammered a greeting to the impeccably groomed Swedish star. The experience truly distressed Kate. Garbo was one of the few performers Kate revered.
The phone calls home continued. Kate listened to her father’s advice and welcomed his grudging approval of her new status as a high-salaried member of the Hepburn clan. In view of her mother’s continuing accomplishments in the field of birth control, her own success seemed inconsequential. Dr. Hepburn had less respect for films than for theater and was of the mind that his daughter was grossly overpaid for what she was doing. His main concern was that Kate might spend her money in an irresponsible manner. Her salary, she agreed, would continue to be sent to him for care and cautious investment while she lived on the allowance he doled out to her weekly.
Kate was now part of a world where, as F. Scott Fitzgerald (who had j ust arrived in Hollywood) said, “Everybody watches for everybody else’s blunders, or tries to make sure they’re with people that’ll do them credit.” Kate was the exception. She no longer needed Hollywood as much as Hollywood needed her. Not until 1930, when sound-on-film systems replaced the awkward use of disc synchronization, were “talkies” exclusively made. The voices of a large percentage of Hollywood’s silent-screen stars proved inadequate to the requirements of a microphone, and their careers ended. Desperate for performers who could speak distinctly, studios had turned to the theater for recruits.
As the hard years of the Depression threw women out into the work market, the need for education was obvious, and Kate’s was one of the first college-educated women’s voices to be heard on film.
Footnotes
* Myron Selznick (1898–1944) had been a producer early in his career. In 1928, he became a talent agent with swift success. Selznick’s clients were among the most prestigious in Hollywood, giving him great leverage with the studios.
* Joseph P. Kennedy (1888–1969), father of President John F. Kennedy, financier and one-time ambassador to Britain. In 1928, he became chairman of the KeithAlbee-Orpheum Corporation. When the company merged with R.K.O., Kennedy became executive producer for the films starring his mistress, Gloria Swanson.
† Based on the Edna Ferber best-selling novel of the same name, the film starred Irene Dunne and Richard Dix and was directed by Wesley Ruggles.
* John Barrymore (1882–1942). The youngest of the famous Barrymore theater family, son of Georgiana Drew and Maurice Barrymore, brother of Lionel and Ethel Barrymore. Star of stage and screen. Famous for his role as a great lover, he preferred playing grotesque, tortured roles, such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Suengali (1931) and Rasputin and the Empress (1933).
* Georgiana Drew (1856–1893), sister of John Drew, the foremost actor of the nineteenth century in America. She married matinee idol Maurice Barrymore (Hubert Blythe). Their three children, Lionel, Ethel and John Barrymore, all became famous actors. The play and film The Royal Family of Broadway parodied this famous theatrical family.
* A quote from Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas.
† Because of her eye, Katharine Hepburn’s first scene in A Bill of Divorcement was moved up to the third day of shooting.
* Billie Burke (1885–1970) made her debut on the London stage in 1 903. She came to New York in 1907 to star opposite John Drew in My Wife. She appeared in many silent films and more than seventy-five sound pmductions, her most memorable performance probably being Glenda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz (1939). She and Hepburn made one more film together, Christopher Strong.
* Selznick claims that immediately after the preview of A Bill of Divorcement he decided to do Little Women with Hepburn as Jo March, and started making production plans for it. Then he left R.K.O. to return to M.G.M. just before the actual filming began.
* The three actresses who had portrayed Sydney Fairfield and became stars thereafter were Katharine Cornell (Broadway), Edna Best (Lon
don stage) and Maureen O’Hara (films).
* Once Cukor took Greta Garbo to visit Kate in this house. “God, what a dreary place!” Cukor reported Garbo commented. “But then, I always loved dreary places.”
† Walter Wanger (1894–1968) made his first film, The Cocoanuts, in 1929. In 1934, after producing Garbo’s Queen Christina, he became one of Hollywood’s most prestigious producers. Some of his finest films were History Is Made at Night (1937), Stagecoach (1939) and The Long Journey Home (1940). In the early 1950s, after shooting and injuring his second wife Joan Bennett’s lover, Jennings Lang, he served time in prison. He returned to Hollywood but was never as successful again.
* Charles Boyer (1899–1978) had only recently arrived in Hollywood from France to star in The Magnificent Lie (1931). An immediate success, he went on to appear opposite the films’ most glamorous stars. Hepburn co-starred with him four years later in Break of Hearts and again thirty-eight years later in The Madwoman of Chaillot. They were on friendly terms and Hepburn once rented his former home.
† Madeleine Carroll (1906– ) made her London stage debut in 1927. In 1936, after playing the lead in two of director Alfred Hitchcock’s films, The 39 Steps (1935) and The Secret Agent (1936), she came to Hollywood where she appeared as leading lady until 1942, when she left the United States.