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I Know Where I'm Going: Katharine Hepburn, A Personal Biography

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I've always had my doubts about Charlotte Chandler but I'm not that familiar with the subjects of her other biographies. However, I have read both Katharine Hepburn's books as well as all her published interviews and have viewed all her televised interviews. Hepburn had a very distinctive "voice". Much of this book sounds nothing like Katharine Hepburn. It, in fact, reads like bad fan fiction. If Chandler ever interviewed Hepburn, which I doubt, she has dramatically embellished whatever Hepburn told her. This book is simply a fake.

Chandler combines quotes from Hepburn that have been seen elsewhere in Hepburn's own books and published interviews but then expands them with purported quotes from Hepburn that sound nothing like her and which, of course, are sexually and personally revealing because we know that's what sells books.

A good example is the first chapter of the book which is about the death of Hepburn's brother, Tom. Katharine Hepburn wrote about his death in her own autobiography, Me, Stories of My Life. The version in that book bears little resemblence to the over-wrought nattering in Chandler's book. Why would Hepburn have related this version of his death to Chandler but use an entirely different version, in tone and and detail in her own book? As far as I know, Hepburn never used the word "onliness" ever. Its such a idiotic choice of a word and is an immediate tip off that the book is a fraud.

Sometimes, Chandler just makes factual errors. For example on page 3 of the book she has Hepburn saying: "The next day, our uncle Floyd took us out sightseeing. He was my father's brother, and a bachelor. We had a wonderful time with him. . . " Hepburn didn't have an uncle Floyd. She did have an uncle Lloyd Powell Hepburn. He was, however, married to a woman named Harriet Dawson in 1904. He was not a bachelor. So this is obviously a fabricated quote and, needless to say, isn't in Hepburn's own book.

Another example of a factual error in a purported quote from Hepburn. In 1934 Katharine Hepburn obtained a Mexican divorce from her only husband, Ogden Ludlow. Chandler says in her book that "a little more than two months later he remarried." And then she has Hepburn saying: "I had encouraged him not to wait. Why should he? He deserved a real marriage. . . . " In Hepburn's autobiography she tells an entirely different story correctly saying that her ex-husband did not remarry until 1942 after she met Spencer Tracy (8 years after the 1934 divorce). Clearly Chandler just made up the quote from Hepburn about Ludlow's remarriage. She does this sort of thing repeatedly.

On the other hand Chandler does quote Hepburn accurately at times. The reason we know this is that these quotes are in Hepburn's own books or published interviews. These sound like Hepburn because they came directly from her. But most of the purported Katharine Hepburn quotes in Chandler's book sound nothing like Hepburn. What are we to make of "Howard (Hughes) was the best lover I ever had. No doubt about that. Our relationship was sexually charged." In her own book, Me, Hepburn said this about her sex life with Hughes. "I think that I must have been lonely, because Howard and I had supper with one another after the performance that first night. Thus proving that persistence pays. We had supper the next night too --- so . . . . ." Somehow I don't see Hepburn telling even her pal, Charlotte Chandler, that Howard was her best lover. Katharine Hepburn never made statements like that. Its ridiculous to think they she would. She didn't discuss her sex life.

Which comes to to the heart of the matter. Chandler claims that she somehow became close enough to Hepburn to record extended interviews in which Hepburn made statements about her life that she never made to any other interviewer and that she never included in her own books. Why should we believe Chandler? How is it that Chandler ingratiated herself with so many great stars who revealed so much about their personal lives? Why would the notoriously private and un-analytical Hepburn indulge in all the pop psychology that is in this book. The answer is she wouldn't.

I seriously doubt that Chandler ever met Hepburn much less interviewed her. This book is a rehash of the life of Katharine Hepburn with an overlay of fabricated quotes. This book adds nothing to what has been previously written about Hepburn. And by the way, amateur writer that she was, Katharine Hepburn was a much better writer than Chandler. Go read Hepburn's book, Me, Stories of My Life, instead of this. You'll like it a lot more.

"Drawing on a series of recordings made over many years, beginning in the mid-1970's ..." that's the blurb from the inside cover of Charlotte Chandler's "I Know Where I'm Going" and that is the only "proof" she offers that she ever met Katharine Hepburn let alone interviewed her.
I'm sorry -- I'd have to hear those "recordings" in order to believe that one word in this book attributed to Hepburn was actually spoken by her. One would also expect that an author granted the opportunity to speak with Hepburn would have kept diaries listing the dates,times, and circumstance when she spoke with Hepburn -- alas -- that evidence is not presented in the form of Notes.

Anyone familiar with Hepburn's actual interviews particularly her classic appearance in the 1970s with Dick Cavett is quite aware of her manner of speaking, her phrasing, her use of language, her wit, etc. Reading her own books, ME:Stories of My Life and The Making of the African Queen or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost Mind, one can see Hepburn's very distinct speaking style transformed to the written word.

In Chandler's "interviews" that style and even Hepburn's wit are missing, instead she sounds trite and banal because the words aren't Hepburn's instead they are the words of a writer attempting to make us believe it's Hepburn.

Chandler has Hepburn speak about her sex life with Howard Hughes by asking the reader to believe that while hiking with a 19 year old boy who was working for George Cukor, Hepburn who was in her 60's blurted to the boy that she'd slept with Howard Hughes in order to get the film rights to The Philadelphia Story. Please -- don't insult the reader with this kind of silliness.

There are also researchable inaccuracies in the book particularly in regard to the plots of some of Hepburn's films: example -- Keeper of the Flame -- the synopsis given is inaccurate because Stephen O'Malley doesn't rescue Christine Forrest as Chandler indicates. He tries to rescue her but ultimately she is shot and killed by her husband's former secretary played by Richard Whorf. Christine dies in O'Malley's arms having told him a few moments before the truth about her husband and his plans for establishing fascism in the United States.

There are other inaccuracies in regard to dates including Chandler stating that Hepburn's husband, Ogden Ludlow, remarried in 1934 two months after Hepburn obtained a Mexican divorce. In reality, Ludlow remarried in 1942 after Hepburn obtained a second divorce in Connecticut.

As usual with a book of this nature, most of the people quoted are dead so words can be put into their mouths without fear of being contradicted. Interestingly, Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's very much alive niece, who also acted with Hepburn in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and who undoubtedly would have known about these numerous "interviews" that Chandler was conducting with her aunt is not among those recognized in the acknowledgements. Could it be that Ms. Houghton refused to speak with Chandler? Director Anthony Harvey who worked extensively with Hepburn and who was also a very close friend is not quoted or acknowledged. Perhaps, he too refused to be involved with this fictionalized version of Hepburn "conversations."

This book is just one more attempt to capitalize on the name and face of Katharine Hepburn. The publisher should be ashamed to be associated with this piece of junk passing itself off as interviews with Hepburn completed over "many years."

As a 50-year plus fan of Katharine Hepburn, my advice is don't waste your money on this bad attempt at fan fiction, instead if you want to hear an interview with Hepburn, buy the DVDs of The Dick Cavett Show in which Hepburn's wit, charm, intelligence, and thoughts on a range of topics are on display for everyone to see and hear. Then if you want more, read the books that she wrote -- those are the places to find Katharine Hepburn.

Of all the books that I have read by Charlotte Chandler, this one is probably the worst. Described as a biography, this book is by no means the all-inclusive story of Hepburn's life.
Chandler and/or her publisher claim that this book was the result of taped interviews with Hepburn conducted by Chandler at the home of film director George Cukor. The text of this book quotes Hepburn verbatim. All of this sounds great, but the accounts as put down in this book do not sound like the often interviewed Hepburn nor do they match up with things she has said in her own autobiography. There are some chronolgical inconsistencies that stand out like gaping holes to anyone familiar with Hepburn's career and personal life via other books written about her or by her.
What does seem apparent is that Chandler has patched together information from a variety of sources that have been out there for decades and has put her own spin on things. There is nothing new or interesting that is related in this book that hasn't been said before in a more cohesive way. For example, she has one scene where Hepburn rants on about what she needs to make brownies. Big deal. Most people who have more than a passing interest in Hepburn know that she liked making brownies, that she had a real aversion to dining anywhere except at her own home, that she wore Spencer Tracy's clothes. Elements like these try to warm up the reader and give the impression that Chandler was a Hepburn insider. The 'meaty' stuff included in the text such as the death of Hepburn's brother Tom(which is used as a continuing thread through the book)gets so personal that it is entirely inconsistent of someone so notoriously private.
Check out the other previous AMAZON reviewers who have given this book 1* ratings.
They've really nailed it regarding why no one should buy this book.

This is an author about whom Jack Ncholson once said "Charlotte Chandler has a tape recorder in her head". The publisher proudly splashes this among the "praise" quotes for Chandler on the back of the dust jacket for this volume. But honestly .. tape recordings do not a biography make. And whether or not we're to take Nicholson's words as being praise or not (and you could take those words many ways), in this case long, uncontextualized sequences about sections of Hepburn's life do not add to the scholarship.

The author starts out with text, as if dictated by Kate, on the subject of what many biographers take as the most provocative and perhaps instrumental event in Kate's young life .. the death of her older brother, perhaps as a suicide perhaps as an accident during a stunt involving a noose, while the two children were visiting family friends in New York City. This particular biographer's choice should be the first hint: the author is not selecting for understanding but for prurient interest. And then there's the style itself: the author jumps in between quotations we're to believe are coming directly from Kate (with no context about where or when these quotes were delivered, and to whom), and sequences where the author places herself in the middle of the action, during a visit to Cukor's home, for example. Sloppy.

The style of the writing is confusing. Muddled. The author neglects a primary biographer's role: to contextualize. We're not simply resorting note cards here. The biographer must order, and select a voice and stick to it.

I am a veteran of Hepburn biographies and memoirs, and this piece does not stack up. It does not add to the scholarship. It is hard to discern what the author felt she was adding by writing the book at all.

A disappointment.

I must add my voice to the chorus of negative comment about this latest exploitation of the great actress. In a lifetime of reading books about Katharine Hepburn - from the good (exceedingly rare) to the bad (exceedingly common) to the ugly (those that amount to the equivalent of supermarket tabloid junk) one would be hard pressed to come across a publication that was more dishonest than this exercise in bad fan fiction. The book purports to be a record of conversations that took place between the author and the actress in the 1970's. It's 2010. What, I ask myself, took her so long to reveal these bon mots? The long, verbatim quotes sound like the author TRYING to sound like Hepburn speaking about any number of topics that could have been swiped from numerous other sources. But that's not all, dear reader. We also get the exclusive on Hepburn's thoughts about ... sex with her husband, sex with Howard Hughes, etc, etc, etc. As a previous reviewer here stated, not only is the syntax screwy but the content is completely questionable. The idea that Hepburn would have spoken about some of these topics in the manner put forth here rings patently absurd to anyone who knows anything about her. There are easily avoidable factual errors in the movie synopses - added for no discernibly good reason other than to pad the length, no doubt - and buried in Hepburn's "quotes." Did Hepburn have an uncle Floyd, as Chandler quotes in the chapter where she claims Hepburn unloaded about her deceased brother Tom? Or was it uncle Lloyd? Well, maybe Chandler couldn't decipher the difference on her taped recordings. What taped recordings, you ask? Yes, I have the same question. The book is devoid of sources but thanks every famous person the author says she knows. I'm, frankly, astonished at the chutzpah it takes for a writer to put words into someone's mouth - many, many long passages of quoted words - and try to pass them off as authentic. Smart readers with an affection for Hepburn can see through this sort of thing. I would say you have to read it to believe it - but if you're a Hepburn fan I'd advise against it.

I recently read that popular novel - the Potato Peel Literary Society [the exact title escapes me right now]. I really enjoyed that book, but at one point I realized I could not tell which letters were written by who because they all had identical syntax and 'writing' styles. The same thing happened to me here. When I picked up the book and randomly opened it, Hepburn's distinctive syntax - which is noteworthy for being nearly identical in both her spoken and written verbal communications - was gone. Who's speaking now? Hepburn? Jack Cardiff? Who???

Add into that the crazy inaccuracies and I cannot understand how this got published.

It's one thing to be incompetent, and another to be dishonest. This book veers into the dishonest by clearly manufacturing quotations. Hepburn didn't speak like that and she didn't talk to strangers about stuff like that. It's that simple

I went into this book not knowing a thing about the author and hadn't been here to scout it. I found it in a bookstore and bought it. To my great regret.

Seriously. It's an open secret that she makes up all her "interviews," she is a laughingstock in the film-history community--no, actually, real historians are too angry and disgusted to laugh at her. Don't publishers have any standards? Any fact-checkers or editors?

This was a good book. Charlotte was a personal friend to Kate and so she had written this book based off the conversations she had with her. She gives a lot of great information on a lot of Kate's films and the behind the scenes. It was a great read and I would recommend it to all.

I'm not sure how helpful my review of this book will be, but I'll try. Like most others who have reviewed it, I've been a huge fan of Hepburn's for ages - I've read all the books, seen all the movies, clipped all the magazine interviews. Then I read the scathing reviews on Amazon of this book, people insisting it was a hoax, sure that it was a fake. I was daunted but read it anyway. I found it an enjoyable read and I could hear Hepburn's voice throughout.

That said, unless someone can produce incontrovertible proof that it is a hoax, my advice to potential readers would be to read it for yourself and make up your own mind. Or don't. I still don't know if the author ever spoke with Hepburn or not, but I guess it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book.

Much has been written about the legendary actress Katharine Hepburn, including the recent offerings KATE: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, by William J. Mann, and KATE REMEMBERED by A. Scott Berg. Even the woman herself couldn't resist telling her own story, and did so in a wonderful autobiography simply titled ME: Stories of My Life. So do we really need another book about Katharine Hepburn? The answer is a resounding "yes," but only if it's written by Charlotte Chandler.

Chandler is the author of numerous Hollywood biographies, including THE GIRL WHO WALKED HOME ALONE: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography, and SHE ALWAYS KNEW HOW, about larger-than-life actress Mae West. She culled this latest work from a series of recorded conversations she had with Hepburn starting in the 1970s, when she first met her through director George Cukor. Although a fiercely private person, Hepburn opened up quite candidly about her life, her loves and her career, and in Chandler's quick and breezy style, it feels like having a conversation with Hepburn herself.

It's only fitting that such a remarkable actress be born of a remarkable family. Hepburn was the first daughter of a doctor and a women's rights activist, a highly controversial figure in their conservative Hartford, Connecticut community. Raised with a healthy respect for herself and others, "Kathy," as she was known then, thrived in the highly athletic and competitive environment of Fenwick, the family home on the Long Island Sound. Always marching to the beat of her own drummer, she cut her hair short and demanded her family refer to her as "Jimmy" because she felt only boys were getting to have all the fun.

It would be in this idyllic childhood that Hepburn experienced a most painful loss, which proved a defining moment in her young life: the death of her older brother, Tom, by apparent suicide when he was not yet 16. She spent her remaining years at home striving to be the perfect child to please her parents, who would not tolerate any talk of Tom after his tragic death. Following her mother's lead, Hepburn headed off to Bryn Mawr College, hoping for the same wonderful experience her mother had, but academics failed to excite her. What she did gain was a new interest in theater, and this became her mission in life. She began working steadily on the New York stage right out of college, and it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.

Right before embarking on her stage career, Hepburn married for the first and only time. Ludlow Odgen Smith, or "Luddy" as she called him, became her staunchest advocate, fan and lifelong friend despite the brevity of their marriage: "The marriage didn't survive, but the friendship truly survived, and that was what was so important." He was the first in a series of smart and driven men who captured her fancy. Howard Hughes was another high-profile suitor who, in addition to being the "most purely passionate relationship" of her life thus far, proved himself to be professionally invaluable, as he secured the film rights to the hit Broadway play The Philadelphia Story (which she was starring in) and gave it to Hepburn as a gift, a fact she liked to joke about: "I slept with Howard Hughes to get The Philadelphia Story....well, not exactly, but that's the way it worked out...He was a brilliant man and going to bed with him was very pleasurable. But the pleasure of owning The Philadelphia Story lasted longer."

Lovers were not the only men who left a huge imprint on Hepburn. Her father, a successful urologist, is responsible for her athleticism and nerve. He taught her to strive to be the best and never to give in to fear. Director George Cukor also played an important part in her life: "If I had chosen anyone in the world to be my father except my own father, it would have been George...He was the person in my life I was most comfortable with, besides Spencer."

Of course, the "Spencer" she's referring to is none other than Spencer Tracy, the love of her life, whom she met in those early days of Hollywood. Despite his being married (Tracy was separated from his wife, but as a Catholic would never pursue divorce), the two enjoyed a 27-year love affair that lasted until his death in the late 1960s. Their chemistry was captured onscreen in films like Adam's Rib, Desk Set, and their final collaboration, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Tracy died of heart failure a mere 17 days after filming was completed. His death began a new chapter in Hepburn's life. After some time, she moved from the little guest cottage that Tracy used to rent on Cukor's property back to her beloved New York City and Fenwick, the family home. She continued to act into her eighth decade, her last project being 1994's TV movie One Christmas and lived out the rest of her days with friends and family until her death in 2003 at age 96. And what a legacy she left behind. Her life had been filled with family and fun adventures, and her career had already moved into legendary status. In all, she won a record four Academy Awards and was nominated 12 times, a record only surpassed by Meryl Streep, who has garnered 16 nominations.

Charlotte Chandler's strong suit as a biographer is her ability to pull back and let the subjects of her books tell their own stories, in their own words, thus giving the reader a more intimate portrayal of the star. Although many of the stories included in I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING have been featured elsewhere, there are still many more frank observations from Hepburn herself. And for a breezy, well-paced and sensational read, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better biographer than Chandler. In her hands, even the most complex, rarified person becomes accessible, and their stories start to feel less like your standard biography and more like a juicy conversation over lunch between good friends.