Customer Reviews

Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

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.

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.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Kate." I went into this biography with very little previous knowledge of Katherine Hepburn. I found it interesting that Mann took the approach of debunking all previous accounts of Hepburn's life and portraying how the legend was built. Mann does a great job of showing Hepburn's ability to recreate her career many times and stay relevant in order to sustain a permanent presence in American culture. While many actresses of her generation settled for unfulfilling roles, Kate somehow did things on her terms with her career and personal life until close to her death.

However, there were parts of the book that became increasingly redundant. For all Mann's talent and obvious research, when it came to proving a point that I felt was his agenda, he used some unreliable sources and pure speculation. I could accept the fact that Katherine Hepburn and everyone around her was gay or bisexual with sufficient evidence. When Mann found research to prove his point he considered it valid. However, when anyone was quoted suggesting otherwise from his point, he completely discounted the source. For such a well versed writer, he could have been more objective. Many times he goes off about things such as gay hollywood or the lack of physicality in Hepburn's relationships so much so that his agenda comes across very clear. In trying to prove that Hepburn is a unique and uncatagorical person, he does just the opposite and puts her in a box. He is unable to think that she could simply have close friendships with women or a physical relationship with anyone. In trying to prove his point on Hepburn's sexuality, he sinks to using what comes across as unreliable sources such as "Scotty, the hustler." He often times speculates about what things in Hepburn's life really meant to her or what her motives were without giving anything concrete to back it up. He assumes that every action Hepburn took has a motive behind it or is not representative of her true self.

Overall, despite Mann's flaws in proving his agenda, the book only makes Katherine Hepburn more facsinating. By the end of the book, it seems that Mann is even amazed by how sucessfully she built her legend. He does a great job with his writing and keeping the reader interested, but because of his specualtion in so many areas I had to take the book with a grain of salt.

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.

Overly wordy and far too long this bio is often too speculative to be considered really credible. It's more about the author and his agenda than it is an honest, clear-eyed look at Hepburn's life and work.

More often than not I wanted to abandon this book. Reading it through to the end was a project not a pleasure.

I have only read the first 100 pages so far and at times I do find it enjoyable. But most of the time I find that it is easy to put down. I guess my big question is "Does sex and who and what gender you may or may not be having sex with really that important?" Every person in Katharine's life Mann must surmise whether or not the person has had homosexual relations. I just don't find the topic or the qestioning all that interesting. Maybe sex sells and that is why it is peppered throughout the book. But is it really Mann guessing rather than knowing? I think sex and who you choose to have relations with does color who you are and who you become. But it is certainly not the be all end all. I just find the question of who Katharine Hepburn was to be more interesting than who she may or may not have had physical relations with.

Can't recommend the book. Ultimately I just don't find the author delving into what I find interesting in general or about Katharine Hepburn. I will have a hard time finishing the book because it just doesn't make me care enough to turn the page.

Having bought this with great anticipation as a Hepburn fan, I have found it frustrating to get through. The disappointment is not that the author wishes to expose a different reality than the popular perception about Hepburn (the very reason for reading a biography), it is the mean-spirited way in which he does it. At every opportunity, every motive she has is placed in a negative light, with circular conjecture and malice. And the unending obsession with her sexuality becomes incredibly tedious. She was evidently gay or bisexual: we get it. But the author comes back to this again, and again, but never with new insight. That a Hollywood legend is self-interested is not a revelation, nor should it be cause for over 500 pages of condemnation. Page by page, I keep wondering why the author is so angry with her.

Maybe Katharine Hepburn was bisexual -- there's cicumstantial evidence to make that case. But where Mann loses his credibility with me is that, really, nearly every other person mentioned in this book has to be gay or bisexual as well. How does he know this? Well, there ARE anonymous sources to go by -- as well as the sources who go on record, but who died years before the book was published and thus cannot cry foul if he misquoted, etc. Check out Mann's other books and it immediately becomes apparent that his topic is gay issues ... hmmm. Could there be an agenda here? Any evidence that contradicts his claims is ignored or misrepsented. I understand that the gay community craves acceptance and must be frustrated with public figures who are homosexual, but who choose not to come to their aid for fear of harming their careers. However, Mann appears to be one of those writers who specializes in appropriating dead celebrities as gay in a bid to win acceptance. And of course, his approach immediately sets it apart from all those other Hepburn biographies out there, so it certainly got him attention and sales ... that justifies everything, right?

For years I have been fascinated by Katherine Hepburn and have read every book, article, magazine and pamphlet that I could get my hands on that had any kind of mention about her. I've watched every movie and interview she ever filmed. Studied every nuance of every character, including the one she played in real life.

To say that this book is an excellent accounting of The Woman Who Was Hepburn would feel like a betrayal to me. This book lacks the charm and vivaciousness that I would expect from any definitive work on her life.


On the surface it looks well researched and extremely authoritative. Mr. Mann wields his perceptions with an iron fist, always completely positive that no matter what he might find to be contrary to his own beliefs and opinions about her, that he can in some way manipulate it to fit his own agenda.


Which brings me to my main issue with this work. It feels like it was agenda driven in every possible meaning of the term. But he does it so gradually that if you aren't looking closely you could easily miss it.

Did Mr. Mann set out to right a Who's Gay of Golden Hollywood??

Or did he set out just to prove that Ms. Hepburn herself was indeed homosexual??

He makes a distinction several times between the real woman and the legend that she created, so determined to prove that all the lore surrounding the paragon was just a spellbinding story and yet he focuses intensely on something that for all intents and purposes is a part of the legend itself. Mystery surrounding Kate's sexuality has existed for as long as she has been famous. The pants wearing, dominant, independant woman was always such an anomaly that people wondered, even at the time that she was in her prime, what the truth was. It doesn't prove anything conclusively. In fact none of the supposed evidence that Mr. Mann presents can prove anything conclusively. No matter how much he shoves it down our throats.

If I were to copy his modus operandi I would insist that all of my assumptions about this book were correct and go through and pick out passages that suit my purpose in order to prove my point. Except that I don't know Mr. Mann and rather than manipulating the evidence to serve my opinions I willingly leave him with the benefit of the doubt so that everyone can form their own opinions about what this book really is.


If only he had given Ms. Hepburn the same consideration.

In writing a biography, there ought to be some aspect of your subject that is appealing to you, that you admire, or that one finds stimulating. Lacking this, one should consider not making the attempt....for readers will then necessarily be subjected to an unremitting tedium...and set the book aside. This is what here happened to me.

Add to this ennui, is William J. Mann's real enthusiasm: His agenda for "outing" his subject and her friends. If supported by fact, his so called homosexual "sensitivity", could awaken some interest. Unfortunately for the reader, he fails on this too. Mann plays a game of smoke and mirrors. There are no demonstrable facts to back up his assumptions. His skills as a writer are employed in the pursuit of the non-existent. It's a fatuous and boring game. What remains, is a book about Mann himself, and this is not an interesting enough subject, for readers to spend all the time to plow through 532 pages. The book mistitled as "Kate", should honestly and logically be retitled "Mann".

Much is made about Hepburn's statement about "living as a man". What she meant of course, was the Hollywood of the era...and in fact the nation...was "a man's world". A world to which, women were relatively new. In fact, women were new to most workforces outside the home...and society was still stacked against their success. To succeed, women had to display many characteristics...of courage, self discipline, self value, and strength...once thought to be sole preserve of men. For women, this was a great and historic challenge. It's not for no reason, that Bette Davis had inscribed on her grave: "She did it the hard way".

Women had to fight for their rightful places, and for recognition, within the male dominated studio system. That Mann should have such a shallow and limited perspective on this reality, shows a significant mental dullness. To have such little empathy for the human beings engaged in this effort, shows a human failure of noteworthy proportions. But further, to so blindly smear Katharine Hepburn for doing so, indicates virulent malevolent intent.

Movie stars are human beings too, as Ginger Rogers implored in her autobiography. False "exposes" like this book, obscure, not reveal, all the truths of this fundamental observation. William J. Mann had an opportunity to make a real contribution to human understanding, and he squandered it. It's sad, but it will not be the first time that a writer, surrenders his ethics, and truth, for his self interest in creating a sensation.

I'll give Katherine Hepburn the last word...just as history will...."You can say anything you want about me, as long as it isn't true.". This is Kate's answer to the likes of William J. Mann.