A symbol of American cinema and women’s emancipation, a star who will probably hardly come out again, holder of the elusive record of four Oscars, extremely unconventional for her time and most importantly a real beast of acting. The reason for Katharine Hepburn, who proved that a woman’s will, her unyielding attitude to life, her confrontational behavior, can lead to the top. Something that was accepted in 1999 by the American Film Institute, evaluating her first in the list of the best actresses of all time.

Hepburn went against all the stereotypes of the American film industry, she always did her own thing, found herself in cyclones, fell into the basement of popularity and found the strength to climb back to the top, to climb the podium of a film legend.

Hepburn in the 1940 film “The Philadelphia Story”

Katharine Hepburn, in the seven decades of her film career, will mark world cinema with her performances, playing everything – even westerns alongside John Wayne – under the guidance of great directors and alongside all the stars of her time. Many times overshadowing them, with her high acting skills, her incomparable style, her non-conformist character.

Katharine Hepburn, of four Oscarswhich he never went to pick up and had abandoned in a cupboard in her kitchenof the 12 nominations and dozens of other awards, of Spencer Tracy, of the fight for women’s emancipation, of the battle against ultra-conservative America, will leave this vain world in 2003 at the age of 97, having lived three lives and with the belief that ” when you follow all the rules, you lose all the fun…”

Completing 20 years since her death (June 29, 2003), it is an opportunity to remember the most important moments of her 63-year career in cinema, her unruly character, the fictional adventures of her life, which made her an insurmountable legend of the spectacle and at the same time a steel female personality.

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Katharine Hepburn with Humphrey Bogart on the set of John Huston’s 1951 film The African Queen

Wealth, intellect and tragedy

Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut on May 12, 1907, to wealthy and particularly progressive parents. Her father a famous surgeon and her mother the heiress of a huge fortune but also a dynamic suffragette of the time. Having five more siblings, she will grow up in a sheltered and intellectual environment, while her father insisted that the girls play sports, swim, ride horses. Catherine, wanting to please her father, excelled in sports, while she enjoyed swimming in the frozen sea in front of their house. A habit she continued into her old age.

In her teenage years, she will be faced with the first tragedy of her life, as she will discover her older brother Tom, who she had as an idol, hanging in the attic from a rope, dead, The shock is big and the question marks are even bigger. The family behind the shiny storefront showed her disharmony. Little Katherine sank into depression and became suspicious of people. She was isolated and reserved with other children, to receive most of her education at home.

Swimming naked in the college fountain

Hepburn will go to Bryn Mawr College, from which she was expelled for her unruly character, while also doing other things not allowed for women of the time, such as swimming naked at night in the college fountain. Finally, she will receive a degree in History and Philosophy in 1928, although the germ of acting had entered her from an early age. So in the same year she will make her debut on Broadway, with a small role.

The unhappy marriage

In the same year, Hepburn will make the first and only marriage in her life, with the worldly and wealthy businessman Ludlow Ogen Smith, whom she had met in college. A marriage, which showed from the beginning that it will not go far, as they quickly became estranged. Despite this, Smith would financially and morally support Hepburn’s acting endeavors, something she acknowledged even after they split in 1934.

Uncompromising

In her first theatrical steps, she will not settle for anything, she will not bow her head. She would crash and drop out of four shows until she landed a role that fit her like a glove, that of the Amazon queen in The Warrior’s Husband, where her costume showed off her slender athletic frame, which a Hollywood agent spotted Leland Howard – and almost her second husband – who introduced her to the then mighty RKO.

From her very first film, in the early 1930s, Hepburn showed that she possessed that divine grace, to magnetize the camera, to bathe the screen in her own light. Tall, thin, with strong cheekbones, sparkling eyes, a big mouth, she burst onto the big screen like “a breath of fresh air”.

Playing alongside John Barrymore in the film “The Tragedy of a Father”, she will emphatically show her unique characteristics, a combination of elegance, inner strength and talent. The filming will put her in the world of Hollywood for good, as she will accept Barrymore’s sexual harassment.

Dawn of Glory

In 1933 and in just her third film, “Dawn of Glory”, alongside Douglas Fairbanks Jr., she will win her first Oscar. An incredible start that will be accompanied by other huge successes of the era. The successes will leave her unaffected and she will continue to have her own beliefs, remaining a militant feminist, a fighter against ultra-conservative Hollywood. A star, who wore trousers, men’s suits, smoked and fearlessly spoke her mind about everything. Characteristics that she will highlight in her films, either in “Sylvia Scarlett”, or in “Maria Stewart” (center photo), in the excellent biographical drama of John Ford.

“Box office poison”

Hepburn, ahead of her time and with films that were not well liked by critics and the general public, would go on to lose her contract with the RKO studio, even after Howard’s classic witty comedy Hawkes’ The Woman and the Leopard, a film far advanced for its time, which went unheralded at the time, has since been re-evaluated and is rightly considered one of the iconic screwball comedies of Hollywood’s golden age.

It will be called “box office poison”

Although she was close to the darkness of failure, Hepburn, as a true fighter, did not flinch, did not compromise and did the opposite of what a star of the time would do. He returned to Broadway and broke the box office with the show “The Philadelphia Story”. A romantic comedy, which combines witty comedy with satire and which will be transferred to the big screen in 1940 as “Social Scandals” by her favorite director George Cukor, placing next to her Cary Grant and James Stewart.

The triumphant return, the ultimate but illicit love affair with Spencer Tracy and the Oscars

A triumphant return to Hollywood, which will bring her in the arms of mentally disturbed billionaire Howard Hugheswhose follies she will not endure and will leave him, to land safely in the steely personality and warm heart of Spencer Tracy. The great love of her life, the man who will transform her from a savage into a complete woman.

Together they will live “underworld” until the end of Tracy, as well the leading actor, was married and as a catholic he never wanted to get a divorce. Hepburn, always unconventional, never asked for anything more from him, while she struggled to stop drinking, his great weakness that will torment him until the end.

Together they will make one memorable movie couple -one of the most loved by the public-, starring in nine films, most of them now classics. One of them will be the masterpiece “Guess Who’s Coming Tonight” by Stanley Kramer, with which Hepburn will win her second Oscar. In fact, the following year, in 1968, she won her third golden statuette in the historical drama “Lion in Winter”, with Peter O’Toole alongside her. In 1989, he won his fourth and final Oscar for the dramatic “Blue Lake”, alongside Henry Fonda and his daughter Jane.