Katharine Hepburn

by Anne Edwards

  “The water was infested with tiny worms carrying a disease called bilharzia.* The worms penetrate the skin and stay with the victim for up to thirty years. The disease affects the liver and weakens you, and can eventually kill you. It’s said to be the most agonizing way to die. At one time or another, practically everyone fell into the water. We would quickly fish them out, dry them down, spray them with a disinfectant and pray,” he admitted.

  Spiegel was bitten on the back of his neck by a tarantula spider, but massive doses of Bacall’s penicillin saved his life.

  Location shooting for The African Queen was completed on July 17, 1951, only two days over schedule. Kate’s African adventure was behind her. She came back to London to find Tracy waiting for her, but they did not have the time together she would have wanted. For the next six weeks, she and Bogart filmed from early morning to late day at either Shepperton Studios or at Worton Hall, where the scenes of them bathing in the river, the scenes of Allnut removing and replacing the propeller and shaft underwater, then towing The African Queen chest-deep in water through the thick reeds and the sludge, the scene following when he finds himself covered with leeches (these last were studio imitations), and all the scenes with Robert Morley were shot. The footage of the pair going through the rapids and being caught in the torrential rains was also filmed on a back lot at Shepperton using special effects.

  The African Queen remains one of Kate’s most unforgettable films, and one of Bogart’s and her best performances. Together they created a kind of cinematic magic, their contrasting personalities cramming the film with one sharp scene after the other. Toward the end of The African Queen’s journey, when it looks as if Charlie and Rose may never reach the safety of the lake whose far shore is British territory, no one could doubt the depth of the tender love of this curiously matched pair. And when they begin swimming gleefully in the direction of that shore after having sunk the German boat with homemade torpedoes, and The African Queen with it, it is impossible to doubt that these two will live a splendid, first-rate life together. Kate had proved that she could send sparks flying on screen with a leading man other than Tracy; and she had done it in a blaze of Technicolor, fiery-red hair and ash-gray eyes being revealed for the first time.

  The African Queen is a deeply moving, marvelously funny, mature cinema experience, and with its release before Christmas, 1951 (to qualify for the Academy Awards*), Kate had turned a new corner in her career. The Bryn Mawr society-girl image had been replaced forever by one of a more mature woman, a person who had the strength to endure the worst hardships and survive as ably as any man.

  Huston remembers all “the many nights I sat with Katie on the top deck of the paddle boat [at Murchison Falls] and watched the eyes of the hippos in the water all around us; every eye seemed to be staring in our direction. And we talked. We talked about anything and everything. But there was never an idea of romance—Spencer Tracy was the only man in Kate’s life.”

  During the same period of time, Joan Fontaine, in England to make first Ivanhoe and then Decameron Nights, had dinner with Tracy and their mutual friends Mr. and Mrs. William Goetz† while Tracy was waiting for Kate to return from the Congo. Tracy was withdrawn and not too good company. Later he rang Fontaine at her hotel and asked if she would go out to dinner with him the following night. His manner was flirtatious and Fontaine replied that out of respect to Kate she could not consider seeing him alone. Tracy went on to explain that he and Kate were terribly good friends but that they had a completely platonic arrangement.

  “That’s what they all say!” Fontaine laughed as she refused his invitation even more firmly. She left for Sweden a few days later, and he called her long-distance to ask if she might not change her mind when she returned to London. “I’m afraid not,” she told him. “Not only is there Kate to consider but you are a married man.”

  “I can get a divorce whenever I want to,” was his surprising reply. “But my wife and Kate like things just as they are.”

  Footnotes

  * Based on the novel by Eleazar Lypsky.

  † Sam Spiegel (1903– ), born in Poland, reverted to his real name in 1954, but heproduced The African Queen under his pseudonym, S. P. Eagle. He had produced a few well-received low-budget films previously—Tales of Manhattan (1942), The Stranger (1945), The Prowler (1951), but after The African Queen, he made three memorable films—On the Waterfront (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962)—receiving an Oscar for Best Picture for each of them. In 1959, Hepburn appeared in his film adaptation of Suddenly Last Summer.

  * C. S. Forester (1899-1966). British author famous for his Captain Hornblower sea novels. He was also correspondent for the London Times during the Spanish Civil War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.

  † John Huston (1906– ), the son of actor Walter Huston. Huston and Bogart had worked together twice before—on The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). After The African Queen, Huston made about thirty films, all of them seeming to be either misguided (Annie [1983]) or less than met the eye (Freud [1962], The Bible [1966], Reflections in a Golden Eye [1967]). Huston also acted in some of his own films, and in many others—Chinatown (1974), Breakout (1975) and The Wind and the Lion (1975) among them; and he wrote numerous screenplays—-Jezebel, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Juarez (1939), Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940), High Sierra and Sergeant York (1941), and The Killers (1946). He co-authored the screenplay of The African Queen with James Agee (1909-1955), novelist and film critic for Life and Time. A gee had never worked on a screenplay before; subsequently, he adapted The Night of the Hunter (1955).

  ‡ Bogart was promised (and received) $35,000 cash, $125,000 in deferred payments and 25 percent of the film’s profits. Huston was promised $87,000 for his services as director (which he received) and a 50 percent interest in Spiegel’s company, Horizon Pictures (which he did not receive).

  * Spiegel made a deal with Britain’s Romulus Films (James and John Wolff) for £4.5 million and with a Chicago corporation for an additional $1 million. The African Queen’s final production costs were slightly under $15 million, very high for 1951.

  * The first press release on Mrs. Hepburn’s death stated that her body was found by her daughter Katharine. Another release followed that said Dr. Hepburn had discovered the body. His daughter, he claimed, was at her brother’s home in nearby Bloomfield. The word “Bloomfield” had confused the reporter (because of Bloomfield Avenue). Ten years later, Hepburn told the story printed above to an English reporter.

  † David Levin in the Daily Express (April 17, 1951) commented on her entrance at Claridge’s, “She has the air of the professional eccentric who plays her off-screen part with unflagging skill.” The Sunday Express reporter (no by-line) decreed that, “Shewore her favourite attention getting costume-slacks and a severely cut jacket, which made her look like a male impersonator.” Lauren Bacall was to have the last word. “There was a press conference at Claridge’s for which I got myself all done up in a Balenciaga suit and Katharine Hepburn stole the show in her pants.”

  * Lauren Bacall (1924– ). She played minor roles in several Broadway plays before turning to modeling. “Discovered” by Mrs. Howard Hawks, wife of the Hollywood producer-director, she became a movie actress, probably most well known for her roles in To Have and Have Not (1944), Key Largo with Bogart (1948) and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Following Bogart’s death, she married Jason Robards, Jr. In the late 1960s she appeared successfully on Broadway in Cactus Flower, and in 1970 she won the Tony Award for her performance in the musical Applause.

  ‡ Peter Viertel (1916– ), son of the Viennese director Berthold Viertel and the Polish-born actress Salka Viertel, wrote many scripts for Greta Garbo. Peter Viertel’s screenplays include Saboteur (1942), The Sun Also Rises (1957) and The Old Man and the Sea (1958). His best-selling novel, Black Heart-White Hunter, was based on his experiences while filming The African Qyeen. He
was married to actress Deborah Kerr in 1960.

  ‡ A new American edition which included the two missing chapters was subsequently published.

  * Mock-ups (a re-creation of the real thing on a sound stage) like boats and cars and building facades are used in films to provide better shooting conditions and angles than could be obtained if the actual object was used.

  * Guy Hamilton (1922– ) worked as an assistant director on a number of distin guished British productions, including The Fallen Idol and The Third Man (1949). In 1952, he began to direct on his own. His James Bond films Goldjinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) are among his best efforts.

  * Zulac was a word purely of Hepburn’s invention,

  † Bdingo, an African string instrument played like a banjo.

  ‡ Robert Morley (1908– ), English actor and playwright, co-author of Edward, My Son (1948). At this time best known for his work in Marie Antoinette (1938) and as Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara (1941). In the United States he is recognized now as the television spokesman for British Airways, He is the father of English critic and author Sheridan Morley.

  § Huston reported later that while the company was building this village a black hunter was contracted to take care of the food. The neighboring village chief whom Huston had befriended informed him that some of his villagers had been disappearing mysteriously. It seems that when the hunter could not find meat or game for the pot “he got the meat the simplest possible way.” The man was executed a few days later, before the advance company moved in. Until Hepburn and the Bogarts left Butiaba, Huston held back the telling of this lurid story, confirmed by his associates.

  * Actress Edwina Booth (1909– ) contracted bilharzia while filming Trader Horn in the Congo in 1931. The role she played, that of a white goddess, had made her a star. It was thought that she had died from the disease as she disappeared from the screen that same year. She is, however, alive and living in Hollywood.

  * The African Queen won four Academy Award nominations: Best Actor (Bogart), Best Actress (Hepburn), Best Director (Huston) and Best Screenplay (Huston and Agee). Bogart was the only one to win. Hepburn lost to Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

  † William Goetz (1903-1969), Hollywood producer. He had produced the film Jane Eyre (1944), which starred Fontaine. His wife, Edie, was Louis B. Mayer’s daughter and Irene Selznick’s sister.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Kate returned to New York in the summer of 1951 both exhilarated and exhausted. Africa and her trials and experiences there had awakened a new consciousness. She now wanted to travel and see more of the world. A kind of restlessness and dissatisfaction with the complacency of her own life set in. She had been made vividly aware of the extreme struggle other people had merely to survive. She had also discovered the extent of her own physical strength and endurance. At the same time, she recognized her Achilles’ heel—changes within the family structure.

  Her brother Tom’s death thirty years earlier had marked drastic upheavals in her life at the same time that it had bound her closer to her family. Mrs. Hepburn’s death had had the same effect. Her need for family and home were even stronger. During the time she had been in Africa, Dr. Hepburn had married Madelaine Santa Croce, the nurse who had worked with him in his office for many years. Bloomfield Avenue would never be the same. The realization of this could not have been an easy thing for Kate to face. Nor could it have helped that Tracy had backtracked considerably in his battle with alcoholism.

  Loaded down with African artifacts—masks, mementos, jewelry—Kate, joined by the Kanins, took a train to California three weeks after she had arrived back in the States. Once again she stayed at Irene Selznick’s house at 1050 Summit Drive.* While Kate had been away, Ruth and Garson had been working on a screenplay, Pat and Mike, tailored for Tracy and Kate. Kate was to be Pat, a physical-education teacher with the potential to be a top all-around professional athlete. Tracy was to be cast as Mike, “a smooth, fast-talking sports promoter.” The film was to give Kate a chance to display her extraordinary athletic prowess. By the time Kate and the Kanins had reached the West Coast, any problems in the screenplay had been worked out.

  On her arrival, she moved into the Selznick estate, redecorating it with her African artifacts. Tracy still had Cukor’s guest house. The double housekeeping chores for Kate began right away, as did her rehabilitation of Tracy, who swore this time he would lick the booze habit forever. Kate worked diligently to see he kept his word.

  Tracy had become almost reclusive without Kate. Now completely gray, he read a lot, listened to music (preferably Brahms), smoked cigars, cigarettes, pipes, slept fitfully and drank when things got too closed in for him. Kate did what she could to change his habits. The pots of coffee were forever brewing. She insisted he take cold showers and swim every day no matter what the temperature. Heavier than before, he wore his bulk well and had no problems about the fact that at fifty he looked distinctly older. The pounds and years only gave him a more impressive appearance and promised to allow him to play the kinds of roles that interested him most. He glowed having Kate back again as he said, “in one frame at my feet,” and he enthusiastically welcomed the idea of doing another film with her.

  Work started on Pat and Mike in January, 1952, and ended in mid-March. For Kate, the film was a welcome respite. She got her body back into marvelous shape—even Cukor, who directed the film, could not believe her athletic prowess. “She can swing a golf club or tennis racquet as adroitly as she can an epigram,” Bosley Crowther commented. In the film Kate also swam, biked, boxed and played basketball. She looked radiant, amazingly youthful and gave a polished, delightful performance. Together Tracy and Hepburn had never displayed more magic. Pat and Mike won the Kanins another Academy Award nomination and the film met with both critical and commercial success. Yet, the fact that it appeared in movie houses within a few months of The African Queen was jarring. The old Hepburn, though charming and glib, simply could not hold a candle to Rose Sayer, and Kate knew and quickly accepted the end of this era in her life. Something new and wonderful and exciting was ahead: roles that equaled or bettered Rosie’s. Pat and Mike was her last film on her Metro contract; and determined to move onward, she did not renew it. Instead, she headed back to New York while Tracy remained in Hollywood to fulfill his Metro commitment for another film, a historical potboiler called The Plymouth Adventure.

  Like Kate, Tracy felt at the end of his tether with Metro. But he did not enjoy travel as Kate did, nor did he hanker for the insecurity that often attaches itself to independent production. Tracy asked her to come back, but Kate refused. Instead, she accepted one of the greatest career challenges in her life—the lead in a George Bernard Shaw play to open in London after a short provincial tour. The play, The Millionairess, had been considered by Kate twice before, once as a follow-up onstage to The Philadelphia Story and again as a possible film. Both times she had decided against it. The Millionairess was written by Shaw in his late seventies. “I am finishing—practically rewriting—my play called The Millionairess ” he wrote his good friend, Lady Nancy Astor, in 1936. “People will say you are the millionairess. An awful, impossible woman.” The following year the play had its world premiere in Vienna. One year later, with Edith Evans* in the role, it had its British premiere at Malvern, England, where many of Shaw’s later works were tried out. Because of the play’s poor reception, it had not continued on to a West End production.

  If Shaw had had Nancy Astor—an American society woman—in mind as a kind of model when he wrote The Millionairess, Kate would have been well cast. And, in fact, the role of Epifania, the dominating, violent lady of the title who is a symbol of the irresistible and corrupting power of money, was better suited to the flamboyant personality of Kate than to the more disciplined nature of Edith Evans. But Kate was well aware of the problems she faced. To appear in a Shavian comedy in London, having
never played in England before, was the least of them. The greatest obstacle was the play itself. The Shavian wit is missing, the plot is weak and, except for Epifania, the characters are dull lampoons. The play also contains a preface titled “Preface on Bosses,” which, because it is alert and provocative and displayed Shaw’s still skilled talent as a pamphleteer, points up the failure of the ensuing script. Even so, Kate, who believed that an inspired performance would transform The Millionairess into a riveting theater experience, spoke to Lawrence Langner and Michael Benthall about it. Benthall, in turn, got Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont* of H. M. Tennent, the theatrical production company, to agree to a British production to star Kate. Kate was elated. When Shaw was asked for permission to produce The Millionairess, he inquired, “Is she a good athlete?” He was told she was not only a good athlete but as “strong as a horse.”

  “Then you’ll have to watch out,” Shaw said, “for she’ll have to play a scene where she applies jujitsu to her leading man and she’ll kill him if she isn’t careful.”

  Shaw died several months before Beaumont sent Kate two first-class tickets on the Nieuw Amsterdam. Although Constance Collier was to accompany her, Beaumont refused to pay Phyllis Wilbourn’s fare. Kate traded in these tickets for three less expensive accommodations on the liner America, and the three women sailed on March 15, arriving in Southampton four days later. The small female entourage occupied one of Claridge’s best suites for the run of the play. Rehearsals began almost immediately and Kate immersed herself in the role of Epifania. Beaumont might have been tightfisted where Kate’s friends were concerned, but he was most generous otherwise and spared no expense on the production. Kate’s lavish costumes were designed by Pierre Balmain and her co-stars were Robert Helpmann,† as the Egyptian doctor Epifania loves, and Cyril Ritchard,‡ as her yes man.