Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #221911 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-03
• Released on: 2006-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 656 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Mann, a skilled chronicler of gay Hollywood (Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines), says at the onset it doesn't make sense to try to pin down Katharine Hepburn with modern labels of sexual identity. Mann's careful research on the longstanding rumors about Hepburn's lesbianism suggests that the notoriously feisty and tomboyish actress lived her life as a man with little empathy for women's issues. This interpretation also shatters the legend of her romance with Spencer Tracy—instead, Mann establishes a pattern of relationships in which the sex-averse Hepburn played emotional caretaker to a series of alcoholic, closeted homosexuals that, in addition to Tracy, included director John Ford. Yet the portrait is constructed so carefully that it never feels shocking. Mann also devotes significant attention to Hepburn's rocky relationships with Hollywood studios and with the press, revealing that the self-styled renegade wasn't above collaborating to shape her public image, and depicts her final decline into alcoholism and depression with sensitivity. Hepburn's siblings and contemporaries (now free to speak after her death) make major corrections to earlier Hepburn biographies, creating a picture of a complex woman rather than the icon she worked hard to become in the public's eye. This will surely be the definitive version of Hepburn's life for decades to come, as it is an outstanding example of painstaking research matched with splendid writing. (Oct. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
"I think the less said, the better."

That's what Katharine Hepburn told me 20 years ago when, as Gloria Steinem's assistant, I found myself playing go-between in negotiations for Hepburn to be interviewed for Ms. magazine. The answer to the interview request was "No," but what 25-year-old feminist wouldn't be thrilled to speak with that familiar imperious tremolo?

The movie about which Hepburn was being so closed-mouthed was "Grace Quigley," not one of her more auspicious outings. And her response to the magazine's offer bespeaks her careful cultivation of her own image and career, a canniness that biographer William J. Mann shrewdly deconstructs in Kate. Books have already been written about Hepburn, but this is a particularly comprehensive and absorbing account of her life and legend and the way she exerted her ferocious will on creating both.

Reared in Hartford, Conn., by a prominent physician and a mother who was active in political and feminist circles, Hepburn was a tomboy growing up, taking on the persona of "Jimmy" to play with her adored older brother Tom, who died -- most likely a suicide -- at 15. The image of the boisterous, happily sparring family later purveyed by Hepburn when speaking of her early life was marred further by Dr. Hepburn's competitive streak and Mrs. Hepburn's absence. The near constant pressure to perform and prove herself to these distant paragons, Mann posits, was just one spur to Hepburn's burning ambition as an actress. And her alter ego, Jimmy, was just the beginning of the androgynous sexuality that would define her appeal.

Of course, Hepburn always insisted that she didn't hew to the ways of typical Hollywood careerists; to hear her tell it, the celebrity and success (a record four Oscars) were simply born to her, like her cheekbones. But Mann meticulously makes the case that Hepburn wanted very much to be famous, took a close interest in even the tawdry details of the movie business ("We've got to cook it up," she would say when she wanted to punch up her publicity) and cared deeply about her image.

The latter concern, Mann writes, led to Hepburn downplaying her relationships with other women, which in the case of such companions as Laura Harding and Phyllis Wilbourn, were ardent and long-lasting. It led her to unceremoniously drop her husband, Ludlow Ogden Smith, whom she had married before going to Hollywood. And it led her even to manipulate the public profile of her most famous liaison, her long-running relationship with Spencer Tracy.

Indeed, the big news in Kate isn't about Hepburn's sexuality but about Tracy's, which Mann suggests ranged just as far. (The most frequently cited source in this regard is a mysterious man named Scotty, who worked at a garage and apparently served as a homosexual procurer.) What's more, the author suggests, it was Hepburn herself who portrayed their relationship as an epic love affair long after it had settled into friendship, realizing how that romantic fairytale burnished her own persona.

His more controversial suggestions about Hepburn and Tracy aside, Mann delivers a close and astute reading of how their on-screen roles reflected their off-screen alliance, which the author maintains was predicated more on an emotional and temperamental connection than on sexual heat. Of the verbally sparring couple in "Pat and Mike," he writes: "After they finally admit their love for each other, this is the payoff we get: they shake hands."

Though Hepburn emerges as a willful fame-seeker in Kate, Mann is never less than respectful and even-handed when discussing aspects of her life she may have preferred stay in the shadows. The sexual peccadilloes of Hepburn, Tracy, director George Cukor and their cosmopolitan circle could certainly be fodder for a more salacious account, but Mann handles the material with clear-eyed equanimity. Some of the most revealing passages of this biography have to do with Hepburn's remarkable third act, when in later life she exerted her indomitable determination to create yet another version of herself: not headstrong ingénue or glamorous star, but cherished American treasure. Mann offers a corrective to the hagiography that has often passed as her personal history (up to and including her own memoirs), but nonetheless manages to keep intact her image as rebellious icon, screen goddess and American original.

The fact that that image now co-exists with another, perhaps less noble one -- the desperate-to-please daughter who grew up into an ambitious, sometimes ruthless manipulator of her own myth -- does nothing to threaten Hepburn's enduring fascination. In this case, at least, the more said, the better.

Reviewed by Ann Hornaday
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
When Katharine Hepburn's movie career began in the 1930s, people didn't know what to make of her. It didn't matter; she formed her own image: an iconoclast and a feminist, yet a woman who found her greatest happiness caring for--some would say subjugating herself to--her longtime love, Spencer Tracy. Since her death, there has been some revisionist history. In Kate Remembered (2003), author and friend A. Scott Berg seemingly confirmed rumors of Hepburn's bisexuality. Mann goes further, exploring Hepburn's liaisons with numerous women and even suggesting that the Hepburn-Tracy relationship was never really a romance, except perhaps at the beginning. Moreover, he posits that Tracy had sexuality issues of his own, which may have been the root of his excessive drinking. This gossip has been whispered about in the past, but Mann has done his homework, digging up sources who have never before spoken, finding new facts, revealing how both press and public played their parts in upholding Hepburn's carefully crafted persona. He also avoids the pitfalls of so many biographers: although he puts his subject on the couch, he lets her do the speaking. Rich and vivid, this will garner great attention--and deservedly so. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Really rather boring as well as pointless
Unless the purpose of the book was only to "out" Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and, apparently, everyone else Kate knew, in which it tries very hard to achieve its objective.

I found the book to be difficult to read, and often difficult to believe. So many things didn't add up, and I often found myself thinking "now, how did the author know that?" Mann uses a lot of innuendo, and in order to actually KNOW the things he claims, he would have had to have been in the bedrooms of the people involved.

I read a lot of good reviews before purchasing the book, and can only say I was disappointed. After the first chapter I GOT the idea - Kate was gay or bisexual, at least in the author's opinion - so much paper could have been saved without the rest of the book.

When I was about 10, I was a tomboy. I wanted to be a boy. I buy and wear men's jeans because they fit better. I played with my brothers and their friends, not my sister or "dumb dolls". God only knows where the author could go with that information. When I was older, I had close female friends, and close male friends - with that information, the author could write a similar book about me, I think. Except I've never been sexually attracted to other women, and I'm happily married.

My real problem with the book, aside from the fact that it was not interesting reading, is that I couldn't understand why someone would write a book trying to prove a person was gay or bisexual. It just got tedious after a while.

One can always find "someone" who said "something", and the author did have an agenda. Whether or not Kate was bisexual or gay does not a book make. Speculation about it makes even less of a book.

This was not the definitive bio of Kate that people claimed it was. The author started with a thesis, or opinion, and set out to prove it - to me, not very successfully. Perhaps one day there will be a definitive biography of Hepburn. Possibly her sexuality will be part of it - the small part that it should be when one writes about a life. I look forward to that book.

Not Very Credible
Hi, the account-holder's daughter here. I do not reflect the opinion of the person who has this account.

I will not talk about Hepburn's sexuality, because the only person who knew for sure is dead. Instead, I will point out that this book makes many factual errors. It claims that Hepburn had a hysterectomy, ignoring the fact that Hepburn mentions having her period in 1951, eighteen years after the supposed surgery. It gets Spencer Tracy's drinking habits entirely wrong- he was a binge drinker, not a regular drinker. The author uses a witness, Scotty, who has said before that he has lied to biographers. Mann also takes comments out of context and manipulates them to suit his own purposes. An example here:

Mann told an interviewer that Hepburn told Dick Cavett she was a "missing link" between the genders, to support his theory that Hepburn was transgender. Wrong! Though she did say "missing link", it was to refer to her position in the family (her younger siblings were all much younger than she- thus a "missing link" between children and parents), not her gender at all.

Maybe Hepburn was bisexual, or lesbian. Maybe her relationship with Spencer Tracy was exaggerated. And perhaps she was, in fact, transgender. There's no problem in that. However, I personally would need a more credible source than what Mann has provided.

The defender of Mann

I found this (see below) in the Comments next to Mann's NYT birthday article about Hepburn. I've since googled George A. Hodgman. It appears that he is the editor at Holt who edited the Hepburn book. Hodgman has posted repeatedly on this site over the past year defending the book and bashing anyone who posted a negative review of it accusing us of being homophobes, conservatives, and using multiple ID's or of being a Hepburn relative or another writer who is doing a book about Spencer Tracy. While he was blasting us for criticizing the book, he neglected to tell us that he was the book's editor and obviously has a vested interest in the book selling.
If other book editors are doing this -- which I very much doubt -- then they should tell the readers of the site who they are so we know why they are so adamant in defending against even a shred of criticism.

This is the posted Comment:
This seems as good a place as any to express my congratulations to George A. Hodgman on his new job at Houghton Mifflin!

Speaking on behalf of the folks here, I want to take this opportunity to wish him well. I hope that his new employer won't expect him to protect his clients from negative reviews on Amazon. How maddening!

Best of luck!