Katharine Hepburn

by Anne Edwards

  A shattering time lay ahead for Hollywood and the nation. The House Committee for Un-American Activities (HUAC) was revving up its motor; and J. Parnell Thomas, its chairman and chief investigator, had begun an investigation to reveal subversive Communist and un-American influence in motion pictures. What he had in his corner was the ill-gotten confidence that the masses could be stirred into a lynch mob.* What he had not bargained for was the passion, eloquence and influence of his opponents.

  When Wallace was barred from hiring the Hollywood Bowl for a political address (frequently used in this manner) in May, 1947, Kate spoke at an anticensorship rally at Los Angeles’ Gilmore Auditorium on Wallace’s behalf. “At first I was going to wear white,” she remembered, “and then I decided they’d think I was the dove of peace so I wore pink. Pink! How could I have been so dumb!”

  Many stars, directors and writers joined her on the platform (Judy Garland for one†), each making a short statement, most directed against Mr. Thomas and his committee of “inquisitors.” Kate warned, “J. Parnell Thomas is engaged in a personally conducted smear campaign of the motion picture industry. He is aided and abetted in his efforts by a group of super patriots who call themselves the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. For myself, I want no part of their ideals or those of Mr. Thomas. The artist since the beginning of time has always expressed the aspirations and dreams of his people. Silence the artist and you have silenced the most articulate voice the people have.”

  Mayer was decidedly unamused by the venture of his various “children” (as he often called Metro’s players) into the political arena, and he made sure they knew of his displeasure. Kate’s name was given in the HUAC investigative hearings, attached to an innuendo that was enough for Mayer to decide not to cast her in a film for several months. Kate, directors Leo McCarey and Sam Wood (both immediately labeled informers by the people whose lives they were destroying) testified, had helped raise eighty-seven thousand dollars for a “very special” political party, which, McCarey added, “Certainly wasn’t the Boy Scouts.” Kate smoldered with fury, especially when she saw the careers and lives of so many of her good friends—Donald Ogden Stewart, Ring Lardner, Jr., perhaps the closest among them—being torn apart.

  Kate believed as Thomas Jefferson had written, “It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself.”

  Though never subpoenaed by the Committee, Kate made it very clear that she would give no names or aid or abet Chairman Thomas in any of his scare and smear tactics.

  Tracy was fond of saying, “Remember who shot Lincoln,” when asked his political opinions. His contempt for J. Parnell Thomas and his committee matched Kate’s; but he held strong to the belief that actors, being emotional people, had no place in politics. Portraying a politician was another matter. Tracy had never done so, but when director Frank Capra* offered him the role of presidential contender Grant Mathews in the film adaptation of the Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse Pulitzer Prize-winning stage success, State of the Union, he enthusiastically accepted. Claudette Colbert had been slated to co-star with Tracy. Three days before production was scheduled to begin, she backed out, giving a feeble excuse. In truth, she had just received the final script and could see that Tracy’s role was dominant and that she would be supporting him despite her co-star billing.

  In desperation, Capra called Tracy for suggestions. “Waal, come to think of it, Kate isn’t hamming it up at the moment,” he replied.

  Not wanting to count on a miracle, Capra asked if he thought she would really do it on such short notice.

  “I dunno. But the bag of bones has been helping me rehearse. Kinda stops you, Frank, by the way she reads the woman’s part. She’s a real theater nut, you know. She might do it for the hell of it—”

  Tracy handed the telephone to Kate, who accepted without reservations. She appeared on the set ready to work that Monday morning before a contract could be negotiated or a salary fixed (she asked for and got the same fee as had been allocated to Colbert) and played the first scenes wearing her own wardrobe (pajamas and bathrobe, as it happened) while new costumes were hastily being made.*

  Capra was to say, “There are women and there are women—and then there is Kate. There are actresses and actresses—then there is Hepburn. A rare professional-amateur, acting is her hobby, her living, her love. She is wedded to her vocation as a nun is to hers, and as competitive in acting as Sonya Henie was in skating. No clock-watching, no humbug, no sham temperament. If Katharine Hepburn made up her mind to become a runner, she’d be the first woman to break the four-minute mile.”

  A tense atmosphere settled over State of the Union whenever Adolphe Menjou was on the set. Kate had not particularly liked the extreme right-wing Menjou when they worked together thirteen years earlier on Morning Glory. Now, with his testimony before HUAC, she distrusted him. Menjou had cited every liberal he knew in the industry as pro-Communist. About Kate he had said, “Scratch a do-gooder, like Hepburn, and they’ll yell, Travda.’ ” The remark enraged Tracy, who told Capra, “You scratch some members of the Hepburn clan and you’re liable to get an ass full of buckshot.”

  Kate refused to be goaded by Menjou (“wisecracking, witty—a flag-waving super patriot who invested his American dollars in Canadian bonds and had a thing about Communists”) and spoke to him only before the cameras. As Menjou played a conniving politician whom Kate despised in the film, her scenes with him—mainly confrontational—bristle. These and Kate’s scenes with Angela Lansbury* (“As the adderish lady publisher, she sinks a fine fang,” wrote Time critic James Agee) are the best in the film. On the whole, State of the Union did not work as well as a movie as it had as a play. One of the reasons was that Lindsay and Crouse kept adding and subtracting relevant world happenings to the dialogue in their script so that it always seemed up to date. The film did not have that advantage, and the dialogue was glib rather than biting. Despite this, State of the Union, with its glittering cast and Capra’s directorial artistry, is a slick film, more charming than controversial. Kate played her role with a nice balance of humor and conviction, and Tracy was sufficiently honorable and persuadably male; but Angela Lansbury walked away with the acting kudos. For Kate and Tracy, the film achieved the goal of marking them forever in the public’s eye as a team.

  By winter, 1948, life in Hollywood had grown into a stultifying day-by-day existence. Kate had read dozens of scripts and not found one a suitable vehicle for them. Tracy found it too easy to “go off the deep end” when he wasn’t working. Also, in Hollywood, Tracy had Louise and the kids to consider. Appearances had to be kept up and, in fact, a publicity picture of “The Tracy Family, Spencer, Susie (16), John (24)” appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country in connection with some of Louise’s fine work for the John Tracy Clinic. Kate and Tracy badly needed a long stretch of undivided time together. Therefore, when George Cukor approached Tracy to accept the role of the obsessed father in Edward, My Son,† he took it on with enthusiasm. Besides the fact that Kate’s old friends Edwin Knopf (producer), Donald Ogden Stewart (writer) and Cukor (director) were involved, the film was to be shot in England and Kate could go with him. (For a brief time the possibility of Kate playing the wife’s role, finally portrayed by Deborah Kerr, was discussed, but Kate was not right for the part and she knew it.) All they needed was a place to be together where the press would not find them.

  Garson Kanin, back on good terms with them, contacted his old, good friends, the Oliviers; and Vivien Leigh, being a romantic, warm and generous woman, immediately wrote Tracy extending an invitation to stay with them at Notley Abbey during the shooting of Edward, My Son. A suite at Claridge’s was engaged f
or Kate, who arrived (with a remarkable lack of press coverage) a short time after Tracy was ensconced at Notley. In the grim winter of 1948, Britain had not yet recovered from the ravages of the war, and traces remained of the hardships caused by the previous winter (the coldest the country had known in decades) when the gas and coal supplies had given out. Notley’s stone walls and cavernous fireplaces, where drafts swept down chimneys and into the oversized rooms, was less than comfortable to a Californian like Tracy, who had been accustomed to mild winters and good American central heat. In addition, food was scarce in England. Gas flickered weakly in stoves. Hot water and electricity had to be conserved. And, in addition, neither Tracy nor Kate had been aware of the serious personal problems Notley’s owners were having.

  The Oliviers were thought to be the golden couple. Olivier, only the previous year knighted Sir Laurence, Knight Bachelor, at forty the youngest actor to receive the honor, and Vivien, Lady Olivier, more beautiful, more loved than ever, had recently returned from a triumphant tour of Australia; and he had just released his production of Hamlet, for which he won the 1948 Academy and British Film awards. Weekends during the summer at Notley were reminiscent of the glittering days at Pickfair when two other screen idols, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, had filled their magnificent estate with the most famous people in the world. Vivien at this time was “the happiest when playing hostess, seeing after her guests, supervising the meals, selecting the linens, the silver, the china, and arranging the flowers she would pick herself. The Notley guest book was a theatre Who’s Here. There were bucolic pleasures during the day, walks by the Thames, picnics on the banks, croquet and tennis, bicycling into the neighborhood villages, breakfast and lunch on the terrace, tea in the small garden room, cocktails in the drawing room, and lavish dinners in the dining room. Then there would be games until the wee hours. Vivien still adored games and checkers and charades and was masterful at all of them.”

  Vivien, however, was like a piece of exquisite porcelain. She had only recently recovered from one of her worst attacks of tuberculosis followed by severe emotional problems caused by her then undiagnosed manic-depression. The Australian tour had been a great healer; the overwhelming ovations paid to them, the royal receptions and the tributes had given Vivien a great boost. But when Tracy arrived at Notley, she and Larry had been back from the tour only a few weeks and her strength had not yet caught up with her enthusiasm.

  Notley, a thirteenth-century house that had been endowed by Henry V, stood gray and forbidding in the chill November cold. The massive, twenty-two-room stone abbey with its mullioned windows, red-tiled roofs and ancient brick chimneys looked quite unwelcoming to Tracy after his forty-eight-mile drive from London in an unheated car. Nor did the sight of the dark and murky winter waters of the river Thames bordering one side of the Abbey ease his apprehension. Once inside he was only slightly reassured. Vivien had done a masterful job and saved no expense in decoration and restoration. Color had been dashed about brilliantly on drapes and settees and beds. Silver gleamed. Crystal chandeliers glimmered. In the main rooms, Notley’s forest had supplied great logs to counteract the lack of other heat. Bowls of bright fall leaves filled the rooms. Yet, just as the halls of Notley received little warmth from the great fires burning inside the rooms, so Vivien seemed chilled when Olivier was not present. Vivien was driven, ill, and no amount of gay banter could disguise it. When Kate arrived, the situation became only more troublesome. Tracy could not very well stay with her at Claridge’s and did not feel at ease when they were at Notley, although the Oliviers did everything they could to make their stay a happy one.

  On her own, Kate went antiquing, visited museums and walked all over London. She spent time with Tracy on the set and enjoyed being reunited again with Cukor. Talk subsequently turned to Kate, Tracy and Cukor working together on another film. Kate recalled the story Garson had said he and Ruth wanted to develop when Tracy had the time. The Leading Lady, a recent play by Ruth, had closed; and in one of Kate’s phone conversations with Garson, he told her a screenplay would be ready by her return. And, when Kate arrived home in February, 1949 (leaving Tracy on his own), the Kanins’ script was, in fact, ready to go before the cameras. It had been retitled Adam’s Rib.

  The story could have been categorized as conventional situation comedy (a pair of lawyers, man and wife, are placed in the position of prosecuting and defending the same client, a woman who has shot but not killed her husband after tracking him through the streets of New York to his love nest). The humor derives from the personal conflict the case creates in the marriage of the lawyers. Since the court arguments and the theme deal with law and order and women’s rights, the script also has a satirical quality.

  Years later, critic and writer Gavin Lambert was to say, “Hepburn’s antics in the courtroom absolutely prefigured the Chicago Seven. She introduces side shows and absurd characters and turns the courtroom into a circus. Then Tracy argues that we’ve got to respect the law, we may be against it but we’ve got to respect it and it’s exactly like Abbie Hoffman versus Judge Hoffman.”

  The Kanins might not have been prophetic, but they were writers with a strong social conscience. The reason Adam’s Rib works even when the comedy becomes too broad and the action difficult to accept is because the basic script could have played as tragedy as well as comedy and the people are human.

  Cukor had chosen to shoot most of Adam’s Rib in New York on location to get more of a documentary feel. This meant that Kate could stay at the Turtle Bay house and Tracy at the Waldorf Towers just a few streets away and they could both walk to the day’s location. New York also guaranteed them a maximum amount of privacy. In Hollywood, not only did all the press know the addresses of the stars, so did tour-bus companies. New York had even more tourists but they did not come to gape at stars and their homes.

  Tracy and Hepburn in a battle of the sexes was a sure winner, and Adam’s Rib rescued their sagging box-office ratings and made a sizable profit.* For several months after its completion, Kate hoped a script might come along that would be right for both of them. When none did, Tracy agreed to appear in another Knopf film, Malaya.* One of the things that sold him on the project was that his role as a hard-hitting soldier of fortune constituted a return to the tough-guy portrayals of his early career. The effects of alcoholism had begun to age and bloat Tracy. His gray hair was distinguished-looking; and when he smiled that half-smirky smile of his, the old charm leaped back into his face. He looked more than his fifty years; but because he never relied on being a romantic lead, it did not matter.

  Kate, at forty-three, had matured into a handsome woman. Her body remained lean, and her voice, perhaps because of her heavy smoking, had lowered attractively so that some of the metallic quality had been mellowed. Working with Tracy had given her a new confidence in her acting. She had learned much from him. The artificiality that had often crept into her performances was now gone, and her knowledge and use of film technique were truly spectacular. Like Tracy, she could now play any suitable part and make it a star role. Glamour and romantic illusion no longer concerned her. She felt as though she might be able to tackle anything, even Shakespeare.

  The relationship between Kate and Tracy had hit a particularly rough patch at this time. Tracy was drinking again. Kate did everything she could to help him fight it, but he became hostile to her interference and highly resentful of any suggestions from her or friends that he seek some sort of professional help. By the time Malaya was finished, he and Kate had reached near estrangement. California now presented insuperable problems for her. To add to her unhappiness over her difficulties with Tracy, HUAC was on the march and the film industry was being purged. On June 8, 1949, the committee had listed several hundred film people—actors, writers, directors—as having “followed or appeased some of the Communist party line program over a long period of time.” Kate’s name had been included in a staggering and often ludicrous list of prominent people, including Pearl Buck (apparent
ly because she had written novels about China), Lena Horne (because she was married to a white man possibly), and Maurice Chevalier (who was considered a reactionary in his own country).

  Most of the celebrities named rushed into print with a statement. Sinatra called the list “the product of liars, and liars to me make very un-American leaders . . . and furthermore, if they don’t cut it out, I’ll show them how much an American can fight back—even if it’s against the state—if the American happens to be right—and I’m Right not Left. . . .”

  Through a studio spokesman, Kate said that she “refused to dignify [the] un-American accusation with a reply.”

  Kate had been in correspondence with Lawrence Langner at the Theatre Guild. Langner wanted her to play Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The idea of attempting Shakespeare for the first time in the role of a young maiden terrified Kate. Besides, there was the problem of dressing once again in boy’s clothes as she had done in Sylvia Scarlett with terrible results. But Langner would not give up and finally she agreed. Theresa Hel-burn, in London on holiday at the time, received a cable from her co-director: “Kate definitely wants to do As You Like It . . . both feel that there can be some good casting done in England. As this may be the beginning of a very important series of things for us, Kate says ‘Don’t be cheap—we only live once’ and [I] say Don’t be extravagant either.’ ”

  Helburn did not engage any actors on the trip but she did discuss with Michael Benthall* of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre the possibility of directing. She wired Kate of her wish to sign Benthall, and Kate replied that she must meet with him before she made up her mind. Helburn had to persuade him to leave England and make the long trip to Hollywood,† where Benthall’s sensitivity and urbane wit made an immediate impression upon Kate. A few days later Kate, accompanied by her old friend Constance Collier (who had played the part of the drama coach in Stage Door), and Collier’s live-in companion, a young English woman named Phyllis Wilbourn, left for New York. Collier, a fine Shakespearean performer on her own, had agreed to coach Kate in the role and in the art of Shakespearean drama.