INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

At first Spencer Tracy simply called her "That Woman" or "Shorty."  Over the years his list of pet names for her grew to include Olive Oyl, Zasu Pitts, Madame Defarge, Madame Curie, Dr. Kronkheit, Molly Malone, Carry Nation, Mrs. Thomas Whiffen, Laura La Plante, Flora Finch, Miss America, and Coo-Coo, the Bird Girl. When he wasn't needling her affectionately, it was simply Kath or, most often, Kathy.

Her first picture was A Bill of Divorcement (1932), starring aging matinee idol John Barrymore. Some accounts of the film's production insist that Barrymore was quite patient with the jittery newcomer as she adapted to the new medium. Others relate that the alcoholic man invited Kate to his dressing room, stripped naked, and tried to seduce her. Yet another report says that when filming ended, Hepburn told Barrymore, "Thank goodness I don't have to act with you anymore," to which a nonplussed John replied, "I didn't know you ever had, darling."

She was almost a professional tennis player. Every morning of her life when she was in Hollywood, at 6:00 A.M., Katharine took a lesson at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The American Film Institute voted her the greatest American female screen legend of all time.

The occasion of Hepburn's 90th birthday, on May 12, 1997, was marked by the dedication of the Katharine Hepburn Garden in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at the United Nations. The garden is in the New York City neighborhood of Turtle Bay, where the actress lived for six decades.

She never regretted her association with Louis B. Mayer, whom she considered one of the most honest and trustworthy persons she had ever met. When he was squeezed out of M-G-M, she left the studio out of respect for her friend. Mayer, on his death bed, asked to see Kate and she was there for him.

"We're all in a serious spot when the original bag lady wins a prize for the way she dresses," Katharine remarked when the Council of Fashion Designers of America gave her its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986.

Won a figure-skating bronze medal at Madison Square Gardens in New York at fourteen years of age.

Her parents were radicals. At home there were open discussions about sex. Her father's favorite place to hold court was in his dressing room where, in the nude, he expounded on the problems of the world.

Her angular, bony features and tomboyish body made her the precursor to the lanky runway model.

Her marriage to Ludlow Ogden Smith lasted only six years. She insisted that he change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow so she wouldn't become known as Kate Smith.

Had such a phobia about dirty hair she used to go around movie sets sniffing people's hair.

During her 60-year career, she was nominated for Academy Awards a record 12 times - an achievement equalled only by Meryl Streep. She has won Best Actress Oscars for Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968) and On Golden Pond (1981).

Walt Disney immortalized her in cartoon form, as a haughty Little Bo-Peep in his animated short subject Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

She was very close to her brother, Tom, and was devastated at age 14 to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years after this, Katharine used his birthday, November 8, as her own. She would not reveal her true May 12 birth date until she herself turned 84, in 1991.

Does not suffer from Parkinsons disease. She inherited her shaking head from her grandfather.

Has never watched Guess Who's Coming to Dinner because it was Spencer Tracy's last film.

Always wore slacks and no makeup. Walked around the studio in nothing but silk underpants in the early 1930s when the costume department had stolen her jeans from her dressing room. She refused to put anything else on until they were returned.

Her 1991 autobiography, Me, was a best-seller, as was her more specific 1987 memoir, The Making of The African Queen or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind.

Patterned the personality of the missionary she played in The African Queen after Eleanor Roosevelt.

Her third Oscar for The Lion in Winter (1968) was a tie with Barbra Streisand who won for Funny Girl.

When she came to Hollywood she wore only skirts until she found a good tailor to make suits for her.

Used to carry a white monkey around the studio lot and tie it to the desks of people she wanted to plague.

Her father, Thomas N. Hepburn, was a surgeon-urologist who attempted to educate the public about venereal disease.

Howard Hughes reportedly purchased the film rights of The Philadelphia Story (1940) for her.