Katharine Hepburn

She was voted the 14th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.

Kate Bosworth has said that Hepburn was her primary inspiration for her portrayal of "Lois Lane" in Superman Returns (2006).

On June 2004 Sotheby's auction house hosted a two-day estate sale auctioning personal belongings of the legendary actress to collectors. The 700-plus items included Hepburn's furniture, jewelry (which included the platinum, diamond and sapphire brooch from one-time lover Howard Hughes which fetched $120,000, six times its estimated price); paperwork (such as personal checks, telegrams, birth certificates, letters, film contracts, movie scripts), and nomination certificates from the Academy Awards. Among other items were casual clothes, and gowns that included her unusual wedding dress to Ludlow Ogden Smith in 1928, made of crushed white velvet with antiqued gold embroidery, which sold for $27,000. Also in the lot were house decorations drawings and paintings done by the actress herself, glamour portraits, and a glass bronze sculpture entitled "Angel on a Wave", which sold for $90,000; while a self-portrait entitled "Breakfast in Bed and a Self-Portrait in Brisbane, Australia", fetched $33,000, some 40 times the estimated price. Movie memorabilia included a ring from 1968's The Lion in Winter (1968), and Gertrude, the canoe from the film On Golden Pond (1981) which was bought for $19,200 by entertainer Wayne Newton. The most sought-after piece and the most expensive item was the bronze bust of Spencer Tracy that Hepburn created herself and that was also featured in their Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). The audience cheered when the three-inch sculpture sold for $316,000, compared to the estimated $3,000-$5,000. The only awards won by the actress that were auctioned were her 1958 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, the annual Shakespeare Club of New York City award, the Fashion Desinger Lifetime Achievement, a few Box Office Blue Ribbons, her Hollywood Walk of Fame plaque and the 1990 Kennedy Center Honor. Hepburn's four Oscars were not included due to contract reasons.

On American Film Institute's list of "Top 100 U.S. Love Stories," compiled in June 2002, Hepburn led all actresses with six of her films on the list. (Actor Cary Grant, co-star with her in two of them, led the male field, also with six films on list). The duo's The Philadelphia Story (1940) was ranked #44 and their Bringing Up Baby (1938) ranked #51. Hepburn's four other movies on AFI Top "100 Love Movies list" are: - #14 The African Queen (1951) - #22 On Golden Pond (1981) - #58 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - #74 Woman of the Year (1942)

Was named Best Classic Actress of the 20th Century in an Entertainment Weekly on-line poll, just barely (21.5% to 20.6%) beating out runner-up Audrey Hepburn. [September 1999]

Ranked #68 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]

Did not suffer from Parkinson's disease. She set the record straight in the 1993 TV documentary Katharine Hepburn: All About Me (1993), which she narrated herself. Quote: "Now to squash a rumor. No, I don't have Parkinson's. I inherited my shaking head from my grandfather Hepburn. I discovered that whiskey helps stop the shaking. Problem is, if you're not careful, it stops the rest of you too. My head just shakes, but I promise you, it ain't gonna fall off!".

Turned down the role of Marilla in Anne of Green Gables (1985), but recommended her great-niece, Schuyler Grant for the role of Anne. Schuyler ended up playing Diana instead.

She made more TV-films in the 1980s, and wrote her autobiography, 'Me', in 1991.

Became very fond of Christopher Reeve, both as an actor and as a person, when he made his Broadway debut opposite her in the 1978 production of "A Matter of Gravity". She became so fond of him that she used to tease him that she wanted him to take care of her when she retired. Ironically, his reply was "Miss Hepburn, I don't think I'll live that long".

She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Rooster Cogburn (1975), with John Wayne, and On Golden Pond (1981), with Henry Fonda. This last brought her her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win--the latter currently still a record for an actress.

In the 1970s, she turned to making made-for-TV films, with The Glass Menagerie (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975) and The Corn Is Green (1979).

The next year, she did The Lion in Winter (1968), which brought her her eleventh Oscar nomination and third win.

After a five-year absence from films, she then made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. It garnered Hepburn her tenth Oscar nomination and her second win.

For one of her film appearances in this decade, in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), she received her ninth Oscar nomination.

She played more of these types of roles throughout the 50s, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Summertime (1955), The Rainmaker (1956) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the 60s, as she devoted her time to her ailing partner Spencer Tracy.

With The African Queen (1951), Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film.

) Their films included the very successful Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957).

According to Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley's book "Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s", Hepburn was a leftist in her politics in the 1940s. When the Conference of Studio Unions, headed by suspected Communist Party member Herb Sorrell, launched a strike in 1946-1947 against the studios and fought other unions for control over Hollywood's collective bargaining, she expressed support for him (Sorrell was kidnapped, beaten, and left for dead, during the strike, possibly by the Mafia, which up until the early 1940s, had controlled the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which was contesting the CSU for jurisdiction over Hollywood unions.) At a Screen Writers Guild meeting during the CSU strike, She also made a speech which anti-communist, anti-CSU SAG activist Ronald Reagan recognized as being based word for word on a CSU strike bulletin. She ignored lover Spencer Tracy's admonition that actors should stay out of politics ("Remember who shot Lincoln"). Despite their family's wealth, her mother had been sympathetic to Marxism and the Soviet Union. On May 19, 1947, Hepburn addressed a Progressive Party rally at the Hollywood Legion Stadium with Progressive Party stalwart and later presidential candidate Henry Wallace (with a crowd that included the likes of Judy Garland, Edward G. Robinson, Lena Horne, Charles Chaplin, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner and Danny Kaye), the former vice president of the U.S. who had been sacked from President Harry S. Truman's cabinet for being pro-Soviet. Wearing a red dress, Hepburn delivered a speech, written by Communist Party member and soon-to-be indicted Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo. When another Hollywood Ten screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr., (winner of an Oscar for writing her picture Woman of the Year (1942), was jailed, she wrote a letter of support for him. Years later, in 1964, when Lardner was trying to get Tracy to star in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), he thanked Hepburn her support. She told him she didn't remember writing the letter and refused to talk about it.

Had a relationship with Spencer Tracy from 1943 until his death in 1967.

For her next film, Woman of the Year (1942), she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. (She received her fourth Oscar nomination for the film.

The film version of The Philadelphia Story (1940), was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again.

A leading contender for Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), she later served as Maid of Honor at Vivien Leigh's and Laurence Olivier's wedding.

" She decided to go back to Broadway to star in "The Philadelphia Story" (1938), and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights, and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars.

Did not attend Spencer Tracy's funeral out of respect to his family. Instead she went to the home of writer/director Richard Brooks where she watched, and wept, as he screened Tracy 's Oscar-winning performance in Captains Courageous (1937) for her. Later, Brooks and his wife Jean Simmons named their only child, Kate Brooks, after Hepburn.

From the period 1935-1938, she had only two hits: Alice Adams (1935), which brought her her second Oscar nomination, and Stage Door (1937); the many flops included Break of Hearts (1935), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), Quality Street (1937) and the now-classic Bringing Up Baby (1938). With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison.

Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in "The Lake", the critics panned her and the audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better.

For her third, Morning Glory (1933), she won her first Academy Award.

Her fourth, Little Women (1933), was the most successful picture of its day. But stories were beginning to leak out, of her haughty behavior off- screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood Game, always wearing slacks and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews.

She finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Antiope in "A Warrior's Husband" (1932).

The inevitable film offers followed; after make a few screen tests, she was cast in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), opposite John Barrymore. The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract.

She made five films between 1932 and 1934.

Bottle" (1931).

Walked around the studio in her underwear in the early 1930s when the costume department stole her slacks from her dressing room. She refused to put anything else on until they were returned.

Graduated from Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1928, with a degree in history and philosophy.

A resident for most of her life of Manhattan's row of brownstone dwellings renowned as Turtle Bay Gardens, Hepburn lived in the four-story building at 244 East 49th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Avenues). Famous neighbors over the years included, Robert Benton, Stephen Sondheim, Garson Kanin and wife Ruth Gordon.

Katharine Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist and a doctor who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was very close to her brother Tom; at 14 she was devastated to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years afterward, she used his November 8 birthdate as her own. She became shy around girls her age and was largely schooled at home. She did attend Bryn Mawr College, where she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions. After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere. She always attracted attention, especially for her role in "Art and Mrs.