Trivia of Katharine Hepburn

Trivia of Katharine Hepburn

*Her maternal grandfather; her father's brother, Charlie; and her older brother, Tom, all committed suicide. These tragedies were never talked about in her family. Hepburn said of her parents, "There was nothing to be done about these matters and [my parents] simply did not believe in moaning about anything."

*She once dumped a cup of water on co-star Ginger Rogers.On the set of Stage Door (1937), Ginger Rogers was flaunting a new mink coat when Hepburn appeared and poured her cup of water on it, explaining that if the coat was, in fact, real mink, it wouldn't shrink. The media speculated that the behavior was brought on by jealousy, since Hepburn’s then-beau Howard Hughes had reportedly shown interest in Rogers. But Rogers herself wouldn’t play into the rumors. “Don’t ask me, I haven’t the foggiest notion why [she did it],” Rogers later said in an interview.

*Hepburn wed Philadelphia businessman Ludlow Ogden Smith soon after graduating from Bryn Mawr in 1928, but they divorced after six years. Much more significant was her affair with fellow actor Spencer Tracy, with whom she lived for 27 years (though Tracy, who was Catholic, never actually divorced his wife). Over the course of their relationship, Hepburn and Tracy starred in nine films together, including 1942’s Woman of the Year, 1949’s Adam’s Rib, and 1952’s Pat and Mike. They wrapped production on their last one, 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, just a few weeks before Tracy died of a heart attack at age 67.

*Spencer Tracy wanted her to play his wife in Father of the Bride (1950), but it was felt that they were too romantic a team to play a happily domesticated couple with children, so Joan Bennett got the part.

*Katharine Hepburn is a legendary performer who has won an impressive four Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Film. Her first award was for her role in the 1933 movie Morning Glory, and it would take an incredible 34 years before she won her next Oscar for her performance in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. She went on to win two more Academy Awards for her roles in On Golden Pond and The Lion In Winter, cementing her place as one of the most talented actresses of all time.

*Thought very highly of the acting talents of Jeremy Irons and John Lithgow. She particularly disliked Meryl Streep, claiming she could recognize Streep's constant search for tactics during a performance.

*She and Joan Fontaine both appeared in productions of The Lion in Winter; Hepburn in the 1968 film version, Fontaine in a 1979 Viennese stage production. Both women made their last acting appearances in 1994 and both passed away at the age of 96.