P.S. Katharine Hepburn's "Guess Who" Oscar

Andrew here, shining a final light on Katharine Hepburn, a postscript to TFE's generous Katharine Hepburn week despite our host never having been a huge fan. Nathaniel’s write-up on Katharine’s twelve Oscar nominations nailed one of the key oddities of the icon's Oscary career. Her win in 1967 for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was only the second Oscar she picked up, a full 35 years after her screen debut. For perspective, by that time her biggest peers of the day - Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland and Ingrid Bergman had already picked up dual statues.

It must have seemed unlikely by then that Katharine was ever going to get a statue to keep her Morning Glory trophy company, especially since with Spencer Tracy’s declining health she was working less and less. Consider: she'd made 15 films in the thirties, 11 in the forties, 7 in the fifties but Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner  in 1967 was only her second film that decade. I'd argue that this win marks the only legitimate sentimental win for Kate, though Oscar's love for sentiment is not something new to any of us.

Like all of her Oscar wins, Katharine was not there to accept the prize but in Garson Kanin’s memoir of Katharine and Spencer ("Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir") he included a bit about her finding out the news.

She was in France, making The Madwoman of Chaillot when the news came through by telephone. Her housekeepers, Willie and Ida, phoned her from Hollywood, awakening her just before 7. A.M., French time.

“You won, Miss Hepburn!” they shouted. You won the Oscar!”
“Did Mr. Tracy win it, too?” she asked.
There was a pause before Willie replied, “No, Madam.”
“Well, that’s okay,” she said. “I'm sure mine is for the two of us.”
The following day, Gregory Peck received a cable:

IT WAS DELIGHTFUL A TOTAL SURPRISE I AM ENORMOUSLY TOUCHED BECAUSE I FEEL I HAVE RECEIVED A GREAT AFFECTIONATE HUG FROM MY FELLOW WORKERS AND FOR A VARIETY OF REASONS NOT THE LEAST OF WHICH BEING SPENCER STANLEY SIDNEY KATHY AND BILL ROSE. ROSE WROTE ABOUT A NORMAL MIDDLE AGED UNSPECTACULAR UNGLAMOROUS CREATURE WITH A GOOD BRAIN AND A WARM HEART WHO’S DOING THE BEST SHE CAN TO DO THE DECENT THING IN A DIFFICULT SITUATION. IN OTHER WORDS SHE WAS A GOOD WIFE. OUR MOST UNSUNG AND IMPORTANT HEROINE. I’M GLAD SHE’S COMING BACK IN STYLE. I MODELLED HER AFTER MY MOTHER. THANKS AGAIN. THEY DON’T USUALLY GIVE THESE THINGS TO THE OLD GIRLS YOU KNOW.

How ironic that last line seems now considering, as Nathaniel says, she gained two more awards at such an old age. By that age Oscar has always fallen out of love with actresses which is one of the reasons I’ve never much minded that her Dinner win is wrapped in sentiment. Of her twelve nominations it’s the least showy of her roles, a steadfastly reactive role but for that delightful “firing” scene. it’s mere happenstance that her birthday fell on Mothers’ Day this year but even if the performance does not rise to the top in the annals of great Katharine Hepburn performance it takes on a lovely, if sentimental, meaning as a reminder of great mothers everywhere. Kate had no children herself but between domineering mothers in Suddenly Last Summer, drug addled ones in Long Day’s Journey into Night and generally perfect ones in On Golden Pond, Christina Drayton in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is perhaps her best one. True, that stands as little reason to hand out Oscars but who’d have imagined one year later she’d be breaking the record for most Best Actress wins?

In 1967 this second Oscar must have seemed like the ultimate reward to an actress who was already a legend and that acceptance telegram does read as particularly charming. Happy birthday, Kate.

Posterized: How Many Hepburns Have You Seen?

We end our Katharine Hepburn theme week on The Great Kate's birthday, today! Katharine Hepburn made 43 motion pictures in her 62 years on the big screen. How many have you seen? I've collected the posters here of only her Oscar nominated roles, 12 of them in total, because 43 is too many for an episode of posterized. Let's get all the Hepburn/Oscar talk out of our systems. Starting now...

Two things are thrown into sharp focus when looking at that sprawling Oscar track record stretching from 1932 to 1981. First, that though only Meryl Streep has ever bested her for Most Lead Actress nomination (14 versus 12) at least a couple of Hepburn's nominated roles would probably have been considered "Supporting" by today's much looser non-definition of the category (i.e. anything goes). Second, though four Oscars is still the record for any actor, male or female, her reputation as an Oscar magnet is arguably over stated since AMPAS weirdly didn't become OBSESSED until after she'd passed the age by which they usually start ignoring great actresses! A full 2/3rds of her nominations came after she turned 40 and 75% of her wins were after the age of 60! This is rather shocking considering that only 8 Best Actress Oscars have been handed out to women over the age of 60. Three of those eight times the name being read out was "Katharine Hepburn".

10 more films and mucho Oscar history after the jump

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May Flowers: Stage Door

The Calla Lilies Are in Bloom Again... 

Such a strange flower. Suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day and now I place them here in memory of something that has died.

That line, uttered by Katharine Hepburn in 1937's Stage Door, quickly became synonymous with the actress. One need only adapt that clipped, upper crust voice and mention the bloomin' of those calla lilies for people to know exactly who you're impersonating. No other line is as popular in conveying what a unique star she was. (Well, a strong case could be made for some from On Golden Pond, you old poop. But by then even she seemed to be doing a Katharine Hepburn impression. And none of those have the history of this one.)

The line was used in the film for the play that Hepburn's character makes her theatrical debut in. It came from an actual Broadway flop that Hepburn starred in called The Lake. Just how bad was the show? In Dorothy Parker's review of it, she said, "Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." The play was so wildly atrocious that Kate herself paid the director to halt production. But, it was a learning experience for Hepburn.

When they decided to use it in the film, Hepburn proved that despite the seeming haughtiness and snobbishness people perceived in her, she was still able to laugh at herself and poke fun at her previous failings --–especially in the rehearsal scenes where she mechanically goes though the motions. Later in the film, when she says the line on opening night, she surprises everyone with how great an actress she actually is. The public, like her fellow actresses in the film, had underestimated her. (By the way, if you haven't seen Stage Door–you must! You owe it to yourself as an Actressexual. It's all about a theatrical boarding house and co-stars Ginger Rogers, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, and Ann Miller!)

So, the next time you're doing your Katharine Hepburn impersonations for your movie-loving friends (and, really, who doesn't love a good Kate impression. Hell, Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for it...), remember those calla lilies and make Kate proud.

Visual Index ~ Summertime (1955)

When I scheduled Summertime for the "Hit Me..." series I admit I expect a huge drop off in participation due to its lack of any significant or least still-discussed reputation in the careers of David Lean and Katharine Hepburn. So I was pleasantly surprised to see such a crowd hopping on the water buses in Venice with Kate as Jane Hudson (hee. no, not that Jane Hudson).

What a difference a year has made in this series. Last year, I couldn't get a crowd for Bonnie & F'in Clyde. I almost retired the series. So thank you to the many new participants and the very reliably regulars who have stuck with this series through its popular and fallow episodes. There are only three episodes left before a June hiatus and I hope you'll stick around and get reenergize from a month of No Viewing Assignments. I am a taskmaster I know... but a benevolent one! I bring you good movies.

5/15 The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) 
5/22 Fantasia (1941... special instructions)
5/29 Hud (1963) 50th Anniversary!

But for now, let's look at the selected Best Shots from Summertime in narrative order (though I fear my order is off here since the film isn't very plotty). It's like watching a slide show of your neighborhood spinster's summer vacation!

Y'all packed? Let's go...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Summertime"

For this week's episode of Best Shot, the collective series in which bloggers are invited to choose their favorite image from a pre-selected movie, we went to Italy for David Lean's Summertime (1955) starring Katharine Hepburn. The film won both of them Oscar nominations, for Direction and Acting respectively, and since I'd never seen it it fills in two Oscar gaps in my 1950s cinema.

It's a relatively modest picture all told, concerned not with big sweeping travelogue beauty (though the travelogue beauty is accounted for) but with an internal flowering. Spinster Katharine Hepburn goes to Italy, goes a little wild (well, wild for an American spinster from Akron Ohio), and then -- spoiler alert -- leaves Italy again. It's all very E.M. Forster really! (See A Room With a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread).

She was coming to Europe to find something. It was way back in the back of her mind was something she was looking for, a wonderful mystical magical miracle. I guess to find what she'd been missing all her life."

My runner up shot comes early in the picture and I include it because I love the way it dialogues with my favorite image at the movie's end. Jane Hudson has just arrived at her summer home, and she has a conversation with her landlady about a girl she met on the way to Italy. She describes in detail the reasons the girl is travelling abroad. Jane is too guileless to be talking about herself in the third person but she is, in essence, talking about herself, whether or not she knows it. She's also prophesying her own journey including an amusing a "let loose a bit" comment that Katharine waves off with prudish modesty.

I find the light in this sequence quite astute. The women are not in silhouette exactly -- the scene is about Jane, after all, rather than Italy -- but Italy is bright and beckoning anyway. She's not really looking at Italy... not yet at least... wrapped up as she is in connecting with other people (she hopes to make friends) and her own internal possibilities. 

I often find Hepburn a little too fussy as an actress -- particularly in her later work -- but I think she's marvelous in key scenes here really capturing Jane's internal battle between her desire to connect and her own internal nature. Even in the scenes which are very much about her attraction to Renalto (Rosanno Brazzi) she's often just looking off into space and, one assumes, her own thoughts. Jane's just not very good at connecting for as much as she'd like to. She has too many fussy walls up.

I think that's why I found the final scene so moving, despite not particularly caring for the movie. My choice for best shot comes with the film's ending. Jane has opted to leave Italy and Romantic Love behind. She likens it to leaving a party before she's worn out her welcome. It's common sense really given the circumstances of the affair but you hurt for her for giving up the thing she's always wanted and you have to wonder if it isn't partially fear and retreat to a safer lonelier home. Whether or not Jane will be more open to love after the movie is up for debate. Yet in that sudden alarming lurch outward to wave goodbye one last time to Renato (but really, to Italy and Love) I think Hepburn's gestural performance provides a marvelous clue. If returning to Ohio is, in fact, a comfort zone retreat why does her body move with such spirited abandon? 

Next Week
We're staying in Italy for The Talented Mr Ripley (1999). You know you want to sound off on that one. So join us, will ya?

14 More People Summering in Italy with Hepburn
Amiresque is overwhelmed by architecture
Encore's World on the quintessential 'spinster' performance from Hepburn 
Antagony & Ecstasy wants to talk about Aspect Ratios... and perceptions of "low points"
The Film's The Thing a Cinderella of a certain age 
Cinema Enthusiast goes to a real ball with gardenias
We Recycle Movies on David Lean's undeniable obsession with trains 
Pussy Goes Grrr this is how you stage a breakup 
Cinesnatch really goes all out with shot commentary, contrasts and travelogue beauty 
Film Actually has coffee -- or doesn't rather -- with Hepburn 
She Blogged By Night picks the first shot I think we've ever seen in this series devoted to an extra. It's beautiful! 
Los Mejores Planos gives out gold, silver and bronze medals for his favorite shots 
Cal Roth sees Jane's secret sensuality
Dancin' Dan on the scene that makes the movie 
My New Plaid Pants memories of Italy come flooding back