Katharine Hepburn [Paperback]

Barbara Leaming (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2004

"Not often is a book about a film star more gripping than anything the star has played on the screen, but Barbara Leaming's biography has that distinction...Katharine Hepburn is Ms. Leaming's penetrating look beyond Ms. Hepburn's acting career and into the forces that shaped such an emblematic figure...Prodigious research has yielded a family history that is both revealing on its own terms and a necessary backdrop to any consideration of Ms. Hepburn's career." -Janet Maslin, The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hollywood biographer Leaming presents a detailed account of the professional and personal life of Hepburn, the only star to ever win four Oscars for best actress.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

One might rightly wonder what there is left to say about actress Hepburn, since she has already been extensively written about and interviewed and has written her autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life (Knopf, 1991). But biographer Leaming (If This Is Happiness, LJ 9/1/89) has managed to add a whole new perspective to what is already known. Leaming starts this biography not with Hepburn's birth and early life but with her mother Kathy (known later as Kate). Kathy's mother, Carrie, was forced to take charge of her three girls after the suicide of her husband, Fred. Carrie's courage, strength, and fervid desire for her daughters to be educated led Kathy to become a leader in the early women's movement. These role models together helped shape the woman we know as Katharine Hepburn. Leaming hypothesizes, however, that Hepburn was also driven by the shadow of suicide, which took her brother Tom as well. This is less a gossipy, glitzy celebrity bio and more an exploration of the New England social mores that shaped this living legend. Highly recommended.?Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Bay Area Cooperative Lib. Sys., Cal.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 550 pages
• Publisher: Limelight Editions (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879102934
• ISBN-13: 978-0879102937
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #559,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( H ) > Hepburn, Katherine

More About the Author

Barbara Leaming is the author of two New York Times bestselling biographies and three New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent book, a biography of John F. Kennedy, focused on the influence of British history and culture on the thirty-fifth president. She was the first to write extensively about the extraordinary influence of Winston Churchill on Kennedy's intellectual formation and political strategies. Her articles have appeared in many publications in the United States and Europe, including the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and the Times of London. She is married and lives in Connecticut.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Well-Written, June 3, 2001

By 

A. Eby (Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Katharine Hepburn (Paperback)

I found Barbara Leaming's biography of Katharine Hepburn to be unique in that it does not begin immediately with Hepburn's birth. Instead, it starts with her mother and grandmother, and her father and uncles. In doing so, Leaming allows the reader, throughout the course of the book, to come to a better understanding of Hepburn psychologically, as opposed to just presenting facts related to career and private life. The bulk of the biography is devoted to Hepburn's relationships, including those with Howard Hughes, John Ford, Leland Hayward, and, of course, Spencer Tracy. For one more interested in details of Hepburn's historic career, this is not the most insightful book. But for those wanting a peek into the mystique that is the Great Kate, Leaming's biography is tantalizing and absorbing.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aren't all these reviews absolutely fascinating, December 4, 2006

By 

Suspira (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Katharine Hepburn (Paperback)

In light of the fact that Ms. Hepburn has now been revealed as a lesbian whose affair with the gay Spencer Tracy was a big beard for the public, I find all these reviews objecting to any love relationship with John Ford because Spencer was her great love fascinating.

Barbara Leaming is a brilliant biographer. She somehow missed what William Mann et al. picked up on once Ms. Hepburn died - that is, that she, like everyone else in Hollywood's golden age was gay. If Hepburn was a lesbian, then Tracy was definitely gay. Gee, I wonder how Barbara missed that. Tsk tsk all that research, all that work and somehow that just never came up. She must not have talked to the right anonymous and inside sources. She probably depended on things like interviews with people who knew Hepburn, her private papers, studio documents, etc. She didn't know that in order to get info on Spencer Tracy, for instance, you have to go to secret gay flop houses.

As for John Ford - in a recent documentary about John Ford, we hear a tape recording between Ford and Katharine Hepburn made while he was very ill in which he tells her he loves her. Dan Ford was taping an encounter with them, went to get something in his car, and left the recorder running. The documentary states that Ford worshipped her (of course, you have to realize that Ford has now been outed as well). Since I head the tape recording, why should I believe any of you that there was no relationship? Was it love on Hepburn's part? I don't know. There was something, though.

Why people find all this endlessly fascinating, I have no idea, especially when one book contradicts the other. I'm supposed to believe that she and Spencer were gay, that Spencer was the only love of her life, that she was a big fat phony. Frankly, it's hard to believe anything.

I do, however, believe that Barbara Leaming is a wonderful writer and biographer. Her bios of Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles were excellent. I have no respect for James Robert Parrish, who is third rate, or people like William Mann who push forward their own agenda - as long, of course, that the person is dead. Wouldn't want a lawsuit now, would we.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Katharine Hepburn's Family History, October 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Katharine Hepburn (Hardcover)

Being a big fan of Katharine Hepburn, I was really looking forward to reading this book. Although it was very interesting to read about her family history, which was hardly mentioned in Ms. Hepburn's autobiography "Me", I was hoping to get more information about Ms. Hepburn, her career and social life. The author, Ms. Leaming, apparently had enough diligence to research as far back as 1892 that researching information from the 1920's through the present on Ms. Hepburn should not have been so difficult. The material on Ms. Hepburn's past did give new insight on her personality. Now it is easy to see why she did not mention this information in her autobiography--she was raised never to speak about such things. It was also amazing to read how such a powerfully independent personality could submit herself to such degredation and humilation as she did with Spencer Tracy. This book does shed new light on Katharine Hepburn but, most of that new light is focused on other members of her family.