MSN Movies Legend #5 - Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn was never much enamoured with the Academy Awards. "I can’t say I believe in prizes," she once said. "I was a whiz in the three-legged race; that’s something you can win." Indeed she only made one appearance at the ceremony, and even then on a night when she wasn’t nominated. "It has to be because I’m afraid I’m not going to win," she explained. "If I were an honest person I would refuse to compete."

 

But compete she did, becoming the only Hollywood legend to win four Academy Awards in the best actress category. The first came in 1934 for her turn as a Broadway ingenue in Morning Glory, and over the next 30 years she would be nominated eight more times for movies as diverse as The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, Summer Madness and Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Just when it looked as if her star was waning, however, she landed back-to-back honours for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in 1968 and The Lion in Winter the following year. "They don’t usually give these things out to the old girls, you know," she joked after her Dinner victory. Yet "they" did so again 14 years later, when Kate landed a record fourth gong for On Golden Pond at the age of 74.

 

But there’s more to the Bryn Mawr graduate once dubbed the First Lady of Cinema than her formidable array of accolades. There’s her long relationship, both on and off screen, with Spencer Tracy, a partnership that spanned nine films and 25 years. There’s also the way she refused to soften her spiky personality to court public favour. "A crowd chased me for an autograph," she once remembered. "‘Beat it,’ I said. ‘We made you!’ they said. ‘Like hell you did,’ I told them…"

Finest Moment:
In a career so full of iconic moments, it’s weird to single out a movie in which Hepburn is forced at one point to cover a hole in her dress that’s revealing her knickers. For many cinemagoers, however, the scatty heiress she plays in Howard Hawks’ vintage screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby will always be the quintessential Kate. Blowing into the life of Cary Grant’s meek paleontologist with the force of a tornado, Hepburn’s Susan Vance is a delightful creation who’s as endearing as she is infuriating. Incredibly, the film was a box office failure when it was first released.

 

In Her Own Words:
"Show me an actress who isn’t a personality and I’ll show you a woman who isn’t a star."

 

Gallery: The full list of MSN Movies Legends





The views in this column are those of the author alone and not of MSN/Microsoft