Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn [Hardcover]

William J. Mann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2006

The first major Katharine Hepburn biography independent of her control reveals the smart, complicated, and sophisticated woman behind the image

Onscreen she played society girls, Spencer Tracy's sidekick, lionesses in winter. But the best character Katharine Hepburn ever created was Katharine Hepburn: a Connecticut Yankee, outspoken and elegant, she wore pants whatever the occasion and bristled at Hollywood glitter. So captivating was her image that she never seemed less than authentic. But how well did we know her, really? Was there a woman behind the image who was more human, more driven, and ultimately more triumphant because of her vulnerability?

William J. Mann--a cultural historian and journalist, a sympathetic admirer but no mere fan--has fashioned an intimate, often revisionist, and truly unique close-up that challenges much of what  we think we know about the Great Kate. Previous biographies--mostly products of friends and fans--have recycled the stories she hid behind, taking Hollywood myths at face value. Mann goes deeper, delivering new details from friends and family who have not been previously interviewed and drawing on materials only available since Hepburn's death.

With affection, intelligence, and a voluminous knowledge of Hollywood history, Mann shows us how a woman originally considered too special and controversial for fame learned the fine arts of movie stardom and transformed herself into an icon as durable and all-American as the Statue of Liberty.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Mann, a skilled chronicler of gay Hollywood (Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines), says at the onset it doesn't make sense to try to pin down Katharine Hepburn with modern labels of sexual identity. Mann's careful research on the longstanding rumors about Hepburn's lesbianism suggests that the notoriously feisty and tomboyish actress lived her life as a man with little empathy for women's issues. This interpretation also shatters the legend of her romance with Spencer Tracy—instead, Mann establishes a pattern of relationships in which the sex-averse Hepburn played emotional caretaker to a series of alcoholic, closeted homosexuals that, in addition to Tracy, included director John Ford. Yet the portrait is constructed so carefully that it never feels shocking. Mann also devotes significant attention to Hepburn's rocky relationships with Hollywood studios and with the press, revealing that the self-styled renegade wasn't above collaborating to shape her public image, and depicts her final decline into alcoholism and depression with sensitivity. Hepburn's siblings and contemporaries (now free to speak after her death) make major corrections to earlier Hepburn biographies, creating a picture of a complex woman rather than the icon she worked hard to become in the public's eye. This will surely be the definitive version of Hepburn's life for decades to come, as it is an outstanding example of painstaking research matched with splendid writing. (Oct. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

When Katharine Hepburn's movie career began in the 1930s, people didn't know what to make of her. It didn't matter; she formed her own image: an iconoclast and a feminist, yet a woman who found her greatest happiness caring for--some would say subjugating herself to--her longtime love, Spencer Tracy. Since her death, there has been some revisionist history. In Kate Remembered (2003), author and friend A. Scott Berg seemingly confirmed rumors of Hepburn's bisexuality. Mann goes further, exploring Hepburn's liaisons with numerous women and even suggesting that the Hepburn-Tracy relationship was never really a romance, except perhaps at the beginning. Moreover, he posits that Tracy had sexuality issues of his own, which may have been the root of his excessive drinking. This gossip has been whispered about in the past, but Mann has done his homework, digging up sources who have never before spoken, finding new facts, revealing how both press and public played their parts in upholding Hepburn's carefully crafted persona. He also avoids the pitfalls of so many biographers: although he puts his subject on the couch, he lets her do the speaking. Rich and vivid, this will garner great attention--and deservedly so. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (October 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805076255
• ISBN-13: 978-0805076257
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #988,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #28 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( H ) > Hepburn, Katherine

More About the Author

I live in two of the most beautiful places on the planet ' Provincetown, Massachusetts, with its exquisite light and ever-shifting dunes in the summer and the fall, and Palm Springs, California, with its majestic mountains and invigorating desert air in the winter and the spring. I am indeed blessed.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Really rather boring as well as pointless, December 18, 2006

By 

Loribee (Western New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Hardcover)

Unless the purpose of the book was only to "out" Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and, apparently, everyone else Kate knew, in which it tries very hard to achieve its objective.

I found the book to be difficult to read, and often difficult to believe. So many things didn't add up, and I often found myself thinking "now, how did the author know that?" Mann uses a lot of innuendo, and in order to actually KNOW the things he claims, he would have had to have been in the bedrooms of the people involved.

I read a lot of good reviews before purchasing the book, and can only say I was disappointed. After the first chapter I GOT the idea - Kate was gay or bisexual, at least in the author's opinion - so much paper could have been saved without the rest of the book.

When I was about 10, I was a tomboy. I wanted to be a boy. I buy and wear men's jeans because they fit better. I played with my brothers and their friends, not my sister or "dumb dolls". God only knows where the author could go with that information. When I was older, I had close female friends, and close male friends - with that information, the author could write a similar book about me, I think. Except I've never been sexually attracted to other women, and I'm happily married.

My real problem with the book, aside from the fact that it was not interesting reading, is that I couldn't understand why someone would write a book trying to prove a person was gay or bisexual. It just got tedious after a while.

One can always find "someone" who said "something", and the author did have an agenda. Whether or not Kate was bisexual or gay does not a book make. Speculation about it makes even less of a book.

This was not the definitive bio of Kate that people claimed it was. The author started with a thesis, or opinion, and set out to prove it - to me, not very successfully. Perhaps one day there will be a definitive biography of Hepburn. Possibly her sexuality will be part of it - the small part that it should be when one writes about a life. I look forward to that book.

44 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Very Credible, March 24, 2007

By 

Rachael Crawley "Slim" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Hardcover)

Hi, the account-holder's daughter here. I do not reflect the opinion of the person who has this account.

I will not talk about Hepburn's sexuality, because the only person who knew for sure is dead. Instead, I will point out that this book makes many factual errors. It claims that Hepburn had a hysterectomy, ignoring the fact that Hepburn mentions having her period in 1951, eighteen years after the supposed surgery. It gets Spencer Tracy's drinking habits entirely wrong- he was a binge drinker, not a regular drinker. The author uses a witness, Scotty, who has said before that he has lied to biographers. Mann also takes comments out of context and manipulates them to suit his own purposes. An example here:

Mann told an interviewer that Hepburn told Dick Cavett she was a "missing link" between the genders, to support his theory that Hepburn was transgender. Wrong! Though she did say "missing link", it was to refer to her position in the family (her younger siblings were all much younger than she- thus a "missing link" between children and parents), not her gender at all.

Maybe Hepburn was bisexual, or lesbian. Maybe her relationship with Spencer Tracy was exaggerated. And perhaps she was, in fact, transgender. There's no problem in that. However, I personally would need a more credible source than what Mann has provided.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It is way too easy, December 30, 2008

By 

C. Holden - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Paperback)

for a biographer to come up with a 'theme', i.e. homosexuality/asexuality and run with it - in this case run with it far beyond any possible interest. Mann repeats his point about everyone in Hepburn's world being one or the other so often it is truly tedious. Spencer Tracy arrives on the page and you are simply waiting until he is outed too, which, of course, is not a long wait.
I do wonder , too, whether Mr Mann has ever taken care of a sick person for a long period of time, as Hepburn took care of Tracy. My guess is not, because if he had, he might not have dismissed the feelings she subsequently expressed about their relationship with such seeming triumph.
He has mined the sexual vein of all connected with Hepburn to such a degree, the book is bloodless and boring.