2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This book is rubbish but not for the reasons the prior reviewer cites, July 29, 2009
This review is from: A Remarkable Woman: A Biography of Katharine Hepburn (Hardcover)
The prior reviewer claims that William Mann's recent book convincingly 'outs' Hepburn. Of course it doesn't. Its just another in a long line of gay celebrity biographers claiming that conveniently dead golden age Hollywood stars were homosexual. In general, none of them were and Kate Hepburn is no exception.
Edward's book is lousy because it is riddled with factual and chronological errors. She repeatedly misstates when Hepburn made films, did theatrical appearances, etc. And when Edwards wasn't getting the chronology wrong, she was plagiarizing the few prior books about Kate that were out by 1985. Any one who has read the Tracy biography by Larry Swindell or the Charles Higham biography of KH or Garson Kanin's book will see that Edwards lifted huge sections from all of them frequently without any attribution.
Unfortunately as an early biography of Kate, this book has been used as source material by many subsequent biographers, even Scott Berg, and many of her errors have been repeated over and over again. To date, no good biography has been written about Hepburn which is amazing considering just how many books there are out there about her. Hopefully with the release of her papers by her estate, a responsible and skilled biographer will do an accurate and exhaustive biography of Hepburn. This isn't it.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This...is Katharine Hepburn? Not according to her Auto-bio, March 26, 2004
This review is from: A Remarkable Woman: A Biography of Katharine Hepburn (Hardcover)
Edwards rewrote this book with supposed corrections. HA! Then why is Kate birthday listed as November 8, 1909 in the Oct. 1999 edition? Kate wrote her auto-bio 8 years early. Maybe Edwardss should READ, RESEARCH THEN, snd ONLY THEN, Write.
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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
That Was No Closet, February 5, 2007
Anne Edwards's "A Remarkable Woman: A Biography of Katherine Hepburn," was published in 1985, while the iconic Hepburn was still very much alive. A remarkable book, it shares the virtues of Edwards's biographies of Vivien Leigh and Judy Garland. Many people were interviewed, it's bursting with footnotes, and it offers thorough, almost day to day coverage of the performer's career. It is also more than discreet, perhaps a touch sentimental.
Edwards gives the reader an insider's view of the making of many of Hepburn's outstanding movies, from her first Oscar winning "Morning Glory," through the screwball comedies, to the great films made with Spencer Tracy, to some of the late triumphs of her career: "The African Queen," "Summertime," and the Oscar-winning "Lion in Winter." She offers you-are-there coverage on the last of Hepburn's Oscars, the touching "On Golden Pond," made with Henry Fonda-- it was his last picture-- and his daughter Jane, who produced it. The author is particularly strong on Hepburn's long struggle for stage success-- she quotes the famous critic Dorothy Parker's crack about an early Hepburn performance: the actress ran the emotional gamut from "A" to "B."
However, the Hollywood Hepburn found when she first went out was a small town of artistic bohemians. In those pre-code, pre-Hays days it was a laissez-faire town. Hepburn's open, extremely close relationships with women were gossiped about among her peers, frequently hinted at in print. Only later, when the climate changed, and Hepburn became more determined to acquire stardom and hold it did she hide that aspect of her personality. Edwards takes us over and over to the door of Hepburn's particular closet, while never opening it. She tells us of the critically important early relationship with Laura Harding, American Express heiress, who willingly devoted her resoources to Hepburn's career. She tells us of Hepburn's flight to Europe after a galling stage defeat. Hepburn took off with Suzanne Steel, a woman tabbed with an 'interesting' life: that escapade sure angered Harding. She tells us at significant length about Hepburn's late life relationship with Phyllis Wilbourne; it lasted until Wilbourne's death. It's enough to remind me of a crack once heard about the coming-out of an indiscreet gay acquaintance of some note: that was no closet you were in, that was a warehouse.
In the matter of Hepburn's personal life, then, Edwards follows exactly the party line set forth by the actress and her advisors. The author charts Hepburn's heterosexual relationships, with the husband of her youth, Ludlow Smith; the Hollywood studs Leland Hayward, John Ford, Howard Hughes, and, above all, Spencer Tracy exactly as the actress wished them to be known. Well, we loved Hepburn's work, then and now, and we loved, too, the charming tale she told. Only now, thirty years later, in "Kate," does William Mann say explicitly what Edwards, who saw much of it, would not say.
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