Product Details

• Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Mpi Home Video
• VHS Release Date: May 15, 2001
• Run Time: 58 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305151784
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #502,507 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A look at the intensely private life of Katharine Hepburn, August 21, 2003

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Katharine Hepburn [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Originally seen on the Lifetime channel in 1996, "Women of Substance: Katharine Hepburn" focuses a bit more on the late actress's intensely private life than on her movie career. Primarily this means that if you are looking for choice film clips from Hepburn's career this is not the video biography you want to pick up. There are plenty of clips from Hepburn interviews given during the last two decades of her life, when she wrote her autobiography "Me" and was actively engaged in publicizing it. Consequently, you will learn more about her marriage to Odgen Ludlow Smith and her affairs with Howard Hughes and Spencer Tracy, and her friendship with Humphrey Bogart, than about her movies. In fact, the documentary makes an error in discussing her film career, contending that she actively went after the leading role in "Morning Glory," for which she received her first Oscar, after enduring the filming of "Spitfire." But the latter was her fifth film, made in 1934, and "Morning Glory" was her third, made the year earlier. Fortunately, Hepburn does almost as much talking on her own behalf as does the narrator, talking over the clips and stills from Hepburn's private and professional life.

This 58-minute documentary does not offer anything new, although it does try to make something from the fact Hepburn found the body of her brother after he committed suicide, her mother when she died, and Tracy when he dead. What you will get are the biographical details of Hepburn's personal life with brief mentions of some of her key films. The idea is to present Katharine Hepburn as being spirited, unconventional, and a recluse, but only the first of those three qualities is sketched out with any sort of conviction. Clearly the assumption is that you already know why Hepburn was an American icon and this documentary tells of the woman behind the actress. If you can find a copy of "All About Me," Hepburn's personal video biography, you will get most of what is here and the proverbial whole lot more.

5.0 out of 5 stars "She was simply the best in her profession", December 24, 2009

By 

Rick Valentine - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Katharine Hepburn [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I love everything about Katharine Hepburn, the way she looked, the way she could act. If Spencer's wife didn't mind, why should we?. Missing you Kate.