A Year with Kate: Rooster Cogburn (1975)
Wednesday, October 15, 2014 at 3:30PM Episode 42 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne star in The African Queen 2: This Time it's a Western!
Growing old in Hollywood sucks. To borrow a line from Goldie Hawn, “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.” And while Hollywood’s ageism is well-documented and well-criticized, for some aging actors, an equally tricky problem can arise: the trouble with becoming a Legend in your own time. What happens when the legend eclipses the actor?
In 1975, Hepburn was arguably more popular than she’d ever been. This was due in no small part to her friend Garson Kanin’s unauthorized, best-selling 1972 “tell all” entitled Tracy And Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir. Though shocked by the invasion of her privacy, Kate used the public interest that the book generated to fuel her career, appearing on talk shows and even the 1974 Academy Awards (in pants, of course). As a result, in the 1970s, while Bette Davis was taking guest roles, Joan Crawford had retired, and Barbara Stanwyck "slummed" it in TV, Katharine Hepburn was as prolific as she’d ever been, starring in seven movies total. However, her popularity came at cost. Kate became in effect the curator of her own legacy, more valuable as a symbol of the past than as a well-respected thespian in the present.
Certainly, it was Katharine Hepburn the Legend that director Stuart Millar and producer Hal B. Wallis had in mind when they paired her with John Wayne in Rooster Cogburn. Five years after Wayne won his Academy Award for True Grit, Wallis’s wife Martha Hyer penned a sequel designed to play to its two stars’ greatest strengths: take the American Odyssey outline for True Grit, fill it with details from The African Queen (including more white water rapids), add a few pounds of nitroglycerin and some extra genre cliches about the death of the American West, and voila! Rooster Cogburn is born.
Westerns, Oscars, and a comparison Meryl Streep after the jump.
I have the strangest sense of deja vu.
The problem is that the movie invites comparisons to earlier Hepburn and Wayne vehicles, but doesn’t have the heft of the films it seeks to emulate. (Although it did prove to me how similar the set ups of True Grit and The African Queen are.) It’s a weak John Wayne movie without the questionable heroics and mournful American spirit that the Duke represented. Likewise, it’s a weak Katharine Hepburn movie that resurrects the tough spinster image, but doesn’t do anything with it. Kate does get two interesting scenes: one reciting Psalms while a badguy fires at her feet, and another where she shoots a man in the back. (Side note: it’s the first time Kate’s killed a man onscreen.)
Nonetheless, Hepburn and Wayne are good. Effortlessly good. Neither is trying very hard, and both are having a wonderful time not doing so. In yet another I-didn’t-think-this-would-work-but-somehow-it-does bit of actorly alchemy, Kate and the Duke have great opposites-attract chemistry as Rose Sayer Eula Goodnight and Rooster Cogburn. Hepburn and Wayne skate through the film on their own charisma and star power. Not bad for two old codgers.
In 1975, Katharine Hepburn was 68 years young, the same age as Glenn Close is now, and only a few years older than Meryl Streep. Usually I avoid comparisons between La Streep and Kate the Great (though I know one is on the horizon), but I think it’s important to note the difference that 40 years make. Though Close may not work as much as we wish she would, in 2014 both she and Streep are still prominent, relevant actresses. In 1975, Katharine Hepburn was being hailed (read: burdened) as a monument from a lost era. This is a moniker that Close and La Streep have so far avoided, with good reason: monuments are by definition immobile.
Finally, since I know you want to see it: here's the clip of Kate at the 1974 Academy Awards, presenting the Irving Thalberg Award to her friend Lawrence Weingarten.
Would you wear slacks to the Oscars? How do you see our current Great Actors and Actresses handling ageism and the burden of being living legends?
Previous Week: Love Among The Ruins (1975) - In which Katharine Hepburn does a TV movie with Laurence Olivier and George Cukor, which might have been disappointing if it wasn't so good.
Next Week: Olly Olly Oxen Free (1978) - In which Katharine Hepburn proves she's not afraid of heights or bad scripts.
Reader Comments (11)
For what it is, a star vehicle for two, the film is pleasantly breezy buoyed by the force of their personalities. It certainly isn't great but it doesn't shoot for that therefore it doesn't become mired in pretentiousness trying to impart LIFE LESSONS.
As far as the Duke goes I'm neutral. I never watch a film because he's in it nor does he keep me from it. Within his narrow range he can be good, sometimes as in The Searchers very good, and he had a unique gift to blend well with a great many actresses that on first glance would seem a poor match. Jean Arthur, Ann Rutherford, Claudette Colbert, Gail Russell, Capucine and perhaps most surprisingly Kate.
They apparently got along like a house afire off-screen and it comes across clearly on. In fact they are so simpatico it's a shame they never worked together again, hardly likely since Rooster Cogburn was almost the end of the line for Wayne.
A little side note on Wayne's chemistry with his co-stars, it wasn't infallible. Both The Sea Chase with Lana Turner and especially Reunion in France with Joan Crawford are examples of completely mismatched co-stars.
Kate's role requires nothing new from her but it's wonderful to see her kicking western butt with salty determination and the film is immensely better than her next.
As far as the slacks question at this point in her life and career I couldn't imagine Hepburn appearing in anything else. She was who she was, everybody knew, she knew they knew and if they didn't like it that was strictly their problem since she was going to do as she damn well pleased.
For any older actress not named Streep the age struggle will continue as it always has. I mean if Jane Fonda and Glenn Close can't find worthwhile roles what chance do lesser lights have. It's appalling that not even cable provides the kind of opportunities for them that it would seem it could.
Hal Wallis was certainly a master at putting movies together and this was a well produced film. I would like to think ( though I don’t know) that part of it had to do with the fact that his wife wrote the screenplay. And as a 50 something actress with little available to play, the retired Martha Hyer may have originated the treatment that paired our Kate and the Duke together.
This was the 70’s......... smack in the middle of New Hollywood with its youth and unconvential edgy films. Who would think that such old stars could still have a hit? ( a formula hit, but a hit)
Hollywood can be so cruel to older actresses. I was in the audience last night for an Evening with the lovely Kathleen Turner at the Chi Int Film Festival, and she had a lot to say about what women have to go through to maintain a viable career in this industry. She said one of the reasons she did Dumb and Dumber To was that a certain scene served to show the world she realized she wasn't the ingenue anymore--and she was OK with that. Viva La Turner!
Great writeup, Anne Marie!
I know her distinctive drawl has been imitated all to death, but MAN is it immortal. Just the way she stretches "Lawrennnce Weingahhten." Iconic.
I would love to think I'd wear slacks to the Oscars, because all the cool ladies do... but man. I know if given the chance I'd go full embarrassing gown.
"Side note: it’s the first time Kate’s killed a man onscreen."
First and only?
"In 1975, Katharine Hepburn was being hailed (read: burdened) as a monument from a lost era."
Consider that Hepburn's heyday, arguably 1938-1960, corresponds not only to the time of the studio system but also to when she was in her 30s and 40s. The same period in Streep's life (1980-2002) was not exactly glory days in Hollywood, and it doesn't seem as far away now as the 1940s and 1950s felt to audiences in 1975. At least not to me. Or does anyone reading this post think of Sophie's Choice as a classic from a "lost era" the way that The Philadelphia Story might have appeared to audiences of Rooster Cogburn?
I don't think I've ever seen this all the way through though it seems like something I'd enjoy, particularly the on location western scenes and of course the stars.
About wearing pants? Why don't more women stars wear pants? What happened to that trend that almost took off when Julie Christie and Barbra wore pants to accept their Oscars? We're not talking sweatpants here after all.
68 now is just not the same as back then. Blame it on plastic surgery or star vanity, but the aforementioned Barbra and Meryl and others would never be considered "old" in quite the same way. Wasn't Meryl romping around in hippie clothes and having an 18 year old daughter on screen a couple of years back? Isn't Barbra trying to make a movie where she's the mother of a 5 year old?! Kate barely got away with being a Mother of a 20something in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.
Paul Outlaw - That's a good point. The 70s and 80s don't hold the same nostalgic mystique now that the Studio Era did for 70s audiences (or even now). Although, I see a similar problem arise for Robert de Niro, where for the last 10 years or so he's been hired to play Robert de Niro, rather than any varied roles.
Anne Marie: Well, the '70s do. And De Niro is definitely a "relic" of those halcyon days. He'd already filmed Mean Streets, The Godfather Part 2, Taxi Driver, New York, New York and Raging Bull before Sophie's Choice (Streep's real breakthrough as a leading lady) was released in '82.
I have never been a big fan of John Wayne but when paired with Kate Hepburn, they make this film fairly watchable. The script isn't great, but this is just a buddy film and could compare to many of the vehicles that pair up certain aging actors in any decade. In other words aging gracefully is always going to be difficult.
Perception changes with age, back when I was in high school in the 70's I viewed the studio films of the 30's and 40's as very old indeed. This wasn't just the ignorance of being so young, a contributing factor was technical; black and white films, poorer sound quality, and bad print quality on TV. Films from the 70's and 80's have nice high quality remastered blue ray editions that are seen today. Some films age better than others of course, but I think we view the actors differently because we are seeing better quality images of them.
Finally, I think actors should wear whatever they please to the Oscars, including pants, kimonos -whatever. Kate may have worn pants, but I think Cher was even more daring and Fun!
There was an outcry in 1977 when Ellen Burstyn cohosted the Oscars and wore a tuxedo-like pantsuit. I thought she looked very, very cool.
Having recently re-watched Klute I watched Jane Fonda's Oscar acceptance for it on Youtube and she wore a very simple, very smart black slack suit to accept and that was in 1972 so Kate's slacks weren't quite the rule breaker they seem now.
Ingrid Bergman also wore a billowy slacks outfit when she won for Murder on the Orient Express. Of course this was all in the days before stylists bleed all the creativity, good and bad, out of Oscar fashion.