are indeed fabulous. This four-time Academy Award winner for best actress made many wonderful films, with and without Spencer Tracy. It is hard to believe that in the late 1930s, she was considered “box office poison” in spite of having won her first “Oscar” in 1933 for Morning Glory, her first film with Cary Grant. Several of our Hepburn favorites made during
that decade include Little Women (1933), with Joan Bennett; Alice Adams (1935), with Fred MacMurray; Stage Door (1937), with Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball; and Bringing up Baby (1938), co-starring Cary Grant, with whom she made four pictures.After her triumphant Broadway appearance in “The Philadelphia Story”, Ms. Hepbu
rn was able to secure the rights to the play and jump-start her Hollywood career when she starred in the film version with Cary Grant and James Stewart. It is The Philadelphia Story (1940) that is in our spotlight today. It is an amusing comedy of high society in the “city of brotherly love” and revolves around the approaching marriage of wealthy divorcee, Tracy Lord (He
pburn) to a self-made man named George Kittredge (John Howard). Hilarious complications arise when her ex-husband, Dexter Haven (Grant) and tabloid reporter, Mike Connor (Stewart) arrive on the scene a day or two prior to the wedding. Both men eventually declare themselves to be in love with her before she can tie the knot to “good old 
George”, causing Tracy endless confusion and doubt about herself and her choice of husband. Which guy gets the girl? You’ll just have to watch The Philadelphia Story to find out if you haven’t seen it before. It is a very amusing comedy and was remade as the musical, High Society in 1956 with Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra. Both versions are quite entertaining. We highly recommend them for your viewing pleasure.Katharine Hepburn went on to bigger and better roles throughout the following decades, not only in the classic string of films with Spencer Tracy, which were covered in
our previous post, but in many other fine screen portrayals. Several of those diverse Hepburn classics are The African Queen (1951), with Humphrey Bogart (check our archives for our Bogart post which features this film); The Rainmaker (1956), with Burt Lancaster; Suddenly Last Summer (1959), with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift; A Lion In 
Winter (1968), with Peter O’Toole and for which she won her third “Oscar”; Rooster Cogburn (1975), with John Wayne; and On Golden Pond (1981), with Henry Fonda in her fourth and final “Oscar”- winning performance.There were also TV movie roles for Ms. Hepburn including The Glass Menagerie (1973) and The Corn is Green (1979). Her final screen appearance was in 1994 in
Love Affair starring Warren Beatty. As she aged and her health began to fail, Ms. Hepburn retired to her home in Connecticut where she died in 2003 at the age of 96. Her star had shone brightly throughout her many decades of acting brilliance on stage, screen, and television. There will never be another like “The Great Kate”.**Trivia Question for Today: How many times was Katharine Hepburn nom
inated for an Academy Award for best actress and what was the other (unmentioned) film she made with Cary Grant? Bonus Trivia: The movie she won her second “Oscar” for and is not listed above is Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), her final pairing with Spencer Tracy.Trivia Answer for Previous Post: In Captains
Courageous, Spencer Tracy's character, Manuel, played the “cranked” musical instrument called a hurdy-gurdy. It was a hand-held version of the box-like instrument that was most often played on the street corners of large cities.
No comments:
Post a Comment