Katharine Hepburn

by Anne Edwards

  During the day, Kate would rehearse with Michael Benthall and the company. At night, Collier and Wilbourn would put her through her paces, as Laura and Luddy had once done. Within six weeks of arriving in London, Kate opened in The Millionairess in the provinces to cheering ovations and full houses. In Brighton, by the end of the pre-London tour, everyone concerned was certain they had a hit and their instincts proved right.

  June 26, 1952, was a sweltering day, the hottest of the year, and the New Theatre, St. Martin’s Lane, had no air conditioning to offer the 959 theatergoers who occupied every seat in the house. No one in the audience seemed to care and it did not appear to frazzle one hair on Kate’s head as she sledgehammered her way through the evening, playing Epifania “with such a furious, rawboned, strident vitality that it sweeps away likes and dislikes and presents the creature as a force of nature.”

  The London Times found her “so vivid in her vicious arrogance that she brings us quite as close as we want to come to feeling the same horrid fascination that Shaw felt in the middle thirties for unprincipled men and women who are born to boss the world by sheer force of personality.”

  The London critic to The New York Times, W. A. Darlington, wrote that Kate had “hit London with such a crack that she might have been a thunderbolt generating the sweltering weather.” Nothing like it had been seen in years. Other American actresses could claim British triumphs but none had appeared in a play so overwhelmingly reviewed as bad originally and by sheer personal vitality bludgeoned her way to triumph. And a triumph it was, for even those critics who always had a dissenting opinion applauded Kate’s virtuoso performance, which they wrote had “enormous range” (News Chronicle) and “rhythmic beauty” (The Times); they called her “a human hurricane” (Daily Express), and commented that not only was “opposition impossible” (The Observer) but “One feels as excited as the man who went over Niagara in a barrel” (The Sunday Times). Yet once again Kate was hit with the question of whether her performance was acting or an “exhibition of personality which is not at all the same thing.”

  The Times critic* summed up his comments by saying, “This millionairess, the born-boss, who simply cannot help dominating people, and equally cannot help spreading devastation in her successful tracks, is not a live character. Shaw could not make a woman of her and Miss Hepburn does not try. What she has seen in this part is that it makes a superb vehicle for violence and it is on her ability to be violent in about twenty-five different ways that her triumph depends. Every now and then she is quiet for a space and the effect is that of a sudden shutting off of power in a boiler-factory. This is magnificent in its way, but it is still not acting ” . . . .

  Kate would suffer this kind of criticism in the future as she had in the past. From Eva Lovelace in Morning Glory to Jo in Little Women, Alice Adams, Terry Randall in Stage Door, Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby, Linda Seton in Holiday, Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, Tess Harding in Woman of the Year to Rose Sayer in The African Queen, critics had on the one hand acclaimed her performances and then slapped her down by negating their original praise with versions of—“ah, yes—but Miss Hepburn after all is really not acting but being Hepburn.” Could all these women Kate had played really have been the multiple sides of one woman—herself? Or was it simply that the roles she chose were almost always unique upper-class women, thereby immediately associating herself with what the public knew of her? By now the mannerisms had mostly vanished, but the distinctive voice remained, along with the lithe, athletic body that moved with animal grace. But The Millionairess was as far a cry from Kate’s own personality as Rose Sayer had been. The African Queen, in fact, had just appeared to rave reviews in London and could be seen at the same time as The Millionairess.

  Within a few days of the opening, Kate began to struggle with an obstinate case of laryngitis. With queues outside the theater from five A.M. almost every morning and houses playing to standing room only, Beaumont was fearful he might have to close, for there could be no question of substitutes or understudies in a play that hung on one bravura performance. Kate was ordered to be totally silent offstage and she complied without complaint, conducting all her affairs (including the purchase of some antique furniture to take home) with the aid of scribbled notes. This continued for three months, but her laryngitic trouble never ceased. Onstage the problem was discernible only to the keen ear, “a shade more edge and strain were present in the tones of the verbal tornado in the later performances than in the earlier, but all the familiar, almost overwhelming force was there,” and as Kate’s voice had a slightly cracked quality anyway, the variation was not easily detectable.

  A sizable crowd stood outside the stage door of the New Theatre when, two hours after the ninety-sixth and last London performance of The Millionairess, Kate emerged in slacks, hair pulled back, wearing no makeup. The crowd pressed in close with scraps of paper for her to sign. She pushed them less than gently away as a burly stage-door keeper came to her rescue and helped her to make her way through the unruly gathering to her waiting car. Fans stood in front of it to prevent the driver from moving forward. As Kate stepped in she called out loudly (no need to conserve her voice now) to the chauffeur (a warning to all those in their path)—“Drive on. We’ll sweep up the blood later!” The door slammed, the motor turned and the group quickly dispersed as the car began to roll forward. Then Kate opened the window and waved good-bye.

  A few days later, Kate put Constance Collier and Phyllis Wil-bourn onboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, along with the additional luggage they had all accumulated, and she flew with Irene Selz-nick to Jamaica, where they were to vacation for a few days with Noel Coward and his good friend Cole Lesley. Irene, now divorced from David O. Selznick,* was a play producer. The two women arrived in an open sports car—unheard of in Jamaica and apparently shipped in by either Kate or Irene. Up until that time, Noel had been firmly warned of the danger of sunstroke and on the insistence of his Jamaican friends had used a closed car. From that point on, he followed Kate’s lead and always drove about in an open car on the island, where he had a vacation home. Kate relaxed in the sun, parried loving barbs with Noel and helped Cole play midwife to Serena, the men’s much-loved dog of “indeterminate” breed. Serena gave birth to four puppies, Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Bramwell. Emily, “a fat little beige sausage roll,” took to Kate at once, gazing up at her adoringly whenever Kate held her.

  Kate flew to New York just two weeks before The Millionairess was scheduled to open there. The decision had not been easy. Tracy remained on the West Coast and they had not seen very much of each other for the better part of a year. Also, Kate suspected that critical reaction to the play would be no better than in London and that her vitality onstage would not be unique to the American theater. But the Theatre Guild had convinced her she should do The Millionairess on Broadway under their auspices. Michael Benthall mounted the play in New York as he had in London and retained the entire original company.

  The Millionairess opened at the Shubert Theatre on October 17, 1952, and Kate’s suspicions were confirmed. “Miss Hepburn had a lot of physical energy and vocal power,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times review, “and doubtless more endurance than any actress alive. Taking everything at top speed she clears all the hurdles and knocks down anything that gets in her way. No doubt this is one way of concealing the infirmities of an untidy and meandering script. Dressed in the most stunning costumes of the season . . . she hammers away on one note from entrance to conclusion . . . she takes every line in about the same key and tempo. What wit there may be lurking in the lines gets short shrift in this treatment. . . . Miss Hepburn can be understood clearly. Perhaps that is the trouble. As a piece of theatre literature The Millionairess is not worth all the energy she is squandering on it.”

  No matter how hard she tried, Kate seemed incapable of conquering Broadway.

  When The Millionairess closed after a successful ten-week limited engagement, Kate decided the next logical st
ep was to adapt it and star in it for films. This was no easy matter for the rights were controlled by Gabriel Pascal,* who asked for exorbitant terms. Finally, she managed to get Pascal to agree to sell her the rights at an affordable price; and since she could not interest a film company in the production, she put up the money herself. Another few months passed during which she tried to convince several of her old associates—Cukor, Stevens, even Philip Barry—to come to work on this project with her. No one supported her idea that it would make a good film. Finally, she approached Preston Sturges,* who was considered to be Hollywood’s most brilliant satirist. Sturges, down on his luck, had moved into the house in Turtle Bay and the two of them went to work on an adaptation, emerging two months later with a script Garson Kanin says was “beautifully conceived, hilariously written.” The package (meaning Kate as star, the script, and Sturges as director) was then submitted to one major studio after another without success. Kate turned to the independents in both Europe and the States. The answer was no.

  At about this time Kate noticed some rough patches on her skin and on August 6, 1953, underwent surgery in Hartford Hospital for the removal of several skin cancers thought to have been caused by overexposure to the sun during the filming of The African Queen. She went to Fenwick to recuperate and began working again on her plan to film The Millionairess. Finally, by January, 1954, Kate thought she had a deal with the Wolff brothers (the same men who had financed The African Queen). With Sturges as director and Lester Cowan† (who was to produce), she flew to London and then locked herself into her suite at Claridge’s after she realized she had no deal with the Wolffs. She began making frantic calls. In desperation, she offered “to forego reimbursement of her considerable expenditures, work for nothing and pay Sturges” (who had also offered to take a large cut). The answer remained no.

  Although everyone agreed that Sturges had written a brilliant script and that the role was tailor-made for Kate, the same problems existed in the film script as in the play.‡ Even Sturges’s gift for satire could not overcome the lack of a story. With great disappointment, Kate gave up and returned to New York. She had made a costly error; and her father, who still controlled her money and doled out her allowance, had allowed her to proceed much against his better judgment. She felt a terrible failure. Things weren’t going well with her and Tracy. She celebrated her forty-sixth birthday not knowing what the future held. Then, English director David Lean* sent her a script entitled Summer-time,†

  Footnotes

  * Since 1947, Hepburn had been in the habit of staying at Irene Selznick’s house in Beverly Hills whenever she was in California. After her divorce from her husband, Irene Selznick had lived in an apartment in New York at the Pierre Hotel.

  * Edith Evans (Dame as of 1946) (1888-1976), one of the greatest actresses of the twentieth century. During her long career (she first attracted attention in 1912 as Gressida in Troilus and Cressida at the King’s Hall Covent Garden), she appeared in more than five hundred plays and was noted for her Shakespearean performances. Like Kate, she had played Rosalind in As You Like It, as well as Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. Her film portrayals include Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (1953) and the intrepid aunt in Tom Jones (1963).

  * Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont (1908-1973), managing director of H. M. Tennent, Ltd., from 1939 to his death. Known as the Czar of Shaftsbury Avenue, he was a considerable influence on British theatrical taste for nearly forty years.

  † Robert Helpmann (1909– ), knighted 1968, was a principal dancer at Sadler’sWells Ballet from 1933 to 1950; but he had always undertaken dramatic roles and made many film appearances as well, most memorably in The Red Shoes (1948), The Tales of Hojjman (1951) and Don Quixote (title role, 1973).

  ‡ Cyril Ritchard (1898-1977), brilliant actor and revue performer, well known for his portrayal of Lord Fopping in Boucicault’s The Relapse and Captain Hook in Peter Pan (1954). He made only a few films.

  * The Times critic (then, by tradition, anonymous) was known to be A. V. Cookman.

  * David Selznick married actress Jennifer Jones in 1949.

  * Gabriel Pascal (1894-1954) had turned several of Shaw’s plays into films, including Pygmalion (1938) and Major Barbara (1941). Shaw had named him executor of his estate for film rights.

  * Preston Sturges (1898-1959) wrote, directed and produced his own films, among them The Lady Eve (1941), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) and Unfaithfully Yours (1948).

  † Lester Cowan (1904– ) had made W. C. Fields’s classic My Little Chickadee(1940) as well as Ladies in Retirement (1941), Tomorrow the World (1944) and The Story of G. I. Joe (1945).

  ‡ The Millionairess was made in 1960 with Sophia Loren and Peter Sellers. The Sturges script was not used. The film was not successful.

  * David Lean (1908– ), English director. Won Academy Awards for Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He also directed Dr. Zhivago (1965) and A Passage to India (1984).

  † Summer Madness in Great Britain.

  CHAPTER

  21

  In summer a festive atmosphere pervades Venice, that ancient grand survivor of flood, the rise and fall of empires, and centuries of invading tourists. Never mind the aimless, pressing crowds, the stench of the polluted water in the canals and the painful glare caused by the sun blazing like firelight as it hits the water and bounds back and forth between the white buildings of the narrow streets. Venice, sharply outlined against a glowing sky, rose before Kate, Constance Collier and Phyllis Wilbourn as they entered the city by launch and then transferred to one of the flotilla of gondolas that had been hired to taxi the company about. Their final destination—the Bauer Griinwald Hotel—had been chosen because no other hotel in Venice had air conditioning and modern plumbing.

  Venetians, it seemed, had seen almost everything but a company of film players. From the time of Kate’s arrival, groups gathered to gawk at her. The most persistent comment was “how old and gaunt she was, as compared to Sophia Loren.” In fact, Kate did not look well in the summer of 1954. Dysentery still plagued her and some small surgical scars that remained on her face could be seen when she went without makeup. Rumors that Summertime was a story about an illicit love affair and that it contained indecent scenes had preceded Kate’s arrival. Of more concern to director David Lean was the Venetians’ fear that the filming of it would disrupt the tourism necessary for their economic security. In the first few days there existed a possibility that the gondolieri might go out on strike if the company did not move elsewhere. These problems immediately evaporated after a generous contribution by the film company to the fund for restoring the Basilica of San Marco and a guarantee to the cardinal that there would be “no bare arms or short skirts in and around holy places.” This last had been prompted by a scene shot of Kate in a sleeveless dress standing outside San Marco, which was then reshot with her in a long-sleeved blouse tucked demurely into a full skirt.

  Summertime had been adapted from Arthur Laurents’s successful play, The Time of the Cuckoo.* Jane Hudson, the middle-aged American spinster Kate portrays, comes to Venice to fulfill a lifelong dream. She meeets and falls in love with a charming, married antique dealer (Rossano Brazzi).† The affair is brief and one of great delicacy, but when Jane leaves Venice less than two weeks later she carries with her a memory to light up her lonely future. One of the major scenes in the highly romanticized film version is the one where Kate, while attempting to take a photograph of Brazzi’s shop, steps back and falls into a canal.

  The water in Venice’s canals is a polluted mixture of garbage, ordure, mud and putrefaction. Despite Kate’s insistence that she not chance further damage to her skin or a rare disease, David Lean was not willing to compromise with realism. Finally, Kate agreed to go ahead when Lean arranged to barricade an area of the canal with plastic sheets lowered from barges and then to flood the enclosed area with disinfectant.


  On the long-awaited day, the company all stood by. Kate was poised for action when suddenly the water began to foam like a bubble bath, the result of the density of the chemicals.

  “If you think I’m going into that, you’re crazy,” Kate stated.

  Vincent Korda,‡ the Hungarian art director, suggested “vind machines” and “soon a pair of garbage scows arrived in tow, each carrying a wind machine rather like an old-fashioned airplane propeller and engine with a protective grill around it. A team of technicians anchored them and soon the engines were howling at high speed, producing a gale-force wind and sending the foam down the canal like a tidal wave.” Kate, her face and all exposed sections of her body covered in Vaseline as further protection from the water, fell in backward the moment the water cleared. Lean was not happy with the take and Kate, after being pulled out of the water by a gondolier, had her hair dried and replaced her wet dress with an identical dry one before trying again.

  “It tastes lousy . . . like a swimming pool in California with all that chlorine,” she complained as she stood ready for the next take. Three more takes were to follow before Lean was satisfied.

  That night Kate’s eyes began to itch and tear. She had infected them with a form of conjunctivitis that would always stay with her, causing the constant teary look that would become so much a part of her performance that no one would suspect the moistness was not induced purposely.

  Toward the middle of production, Constance Collier’s health grew worse and she and Phyllis Wilbourn returned to New York. Noël Coward visited Kate for five days early in August and Tracy managed a short reunion, fraught with tension. There had been some rumors in the European press of a growing romance between Tracy and Grace Kelly. Tracy had been seen with Hollywood’s newest beauty and she had agreed to appear with him in a future project, Tribute to a Bad Man, but Tracy claimed the friendship was more business than pleasure. The fact that Kelly had a penchant for married men (Ray Milland, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby and Clark Gable had all been enamored of her) did not do a great deal to reassure Kate. Uncomfortable in the muggy heat that settled on Venice that summer, upset by the growing discord between Tracy and herself, Kate had not been too gracious to any of the members of the company. After Tracy’s departure, she complained, “Nobody asked me to dinner. They went off and left me alone. I felt rather angry about that. I wandered off by myself through Venice feeling very lonely and neglected, and sat down by the canal and looked in the water, and while I was sitting like that a man came over to me and said, ‘May I come and talk to you?’ Only it wasn’t Rosanno Brazzi. It was a French plumber.