Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn's career as a leading lady on stage and screen ran for six decades, and the persona was fixed almost immediately: headstrong, sharp-edged, faintly aristocratic, and entirely unbothered by whether you approved. She was playing that woman from the start, in Morning Glory in 1933 as an actress convinced of her own destiny, and in Little Women the same year as Jo March, a part the persona might have been designed for.
The late 1930s nearly finished her. The films got stranger and the audiences got smaller, and the recovery came through The Philadelphia Story, which she had first played on stage and which put her back at the top of the industry in 1940.
What she is best at is a particular kind of collapse. Hepburn plays formidable women who are certain of themselves, and the great scenes are the ones where the certainty cracks and she declines to let it fall apart tidily. Watch her in The Lion in Winter, conducting a family Christmas as a military campaign and then playing a moment alone with no armour at all. Or The African Queen, where a missionary's sister spends the film discovering that she likes danger.
She had a long professional partnership with Spencer Tracy, and those films are close to their own genre: Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib, State of the Union, Keeper of the Flame, Desk Set, and finally Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The comedy works because neither of them ever conceded anything.
The late career is unusually strong. Long Day's Journey Into Night gave her the hardest part she ever took, The Trojan Women had her as Hecuba, and On Golden Pond paired her with Henry Fonda in 1981. Her accolades include a record four Academy Awards for Best Actress, two British Academy Film Awards and a Primetime Emmy, plus nominations for two Tony Awards, two Grammys and eight Golden Globes.
Movies (37)
- The Philadelphia Story (1940)
- The Lion in Winter (1968)
- The African Queen (1952)
- Love Affair (1994)
- On Golden Pond (1981)
- Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
- Bringing Up Baby (1938)
- Adam's Rib (1949)
- Quality Street (1937)
- Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
- Little Women (1933)
- Rooster Cogburn (1975)
- The Trojan Women (1971)
- The Sea of Grass (1947)
- Undercurrent (1946)
- Stage Door (1937)
- The Rainmaker (1956)
- Broadway's Dreamers: The Legacy of the Group Theatre (1989)
- Morning Glory (1933)
- State of the Union (1948)
- Holiday (1938)
- Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962)
- Woman of the Year (1942)
- Alice Adams (1935)
- Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2018)
- Summertime (1955)
- Happy 100th Birthday, Hollywood (1987)
- The Iron Petticoat (1956)
- Hannibal Hopkins & Sir Anthony (2021)
- James Stewart: A Wonderful Life (1987)
Where to start with Katharine Hepburn
There is a correct first film here and it is The Philadelphia Story, because it uses every register she had inside a single part: comic timing, snobbery, humiliation and recovery, in that order.
Then Bringing Up Baby, the fastest comedy of the 1930s, which requires her to be maddening for the entire running time without losing the audience for a second. Holiday, from the same year, is the underrated companion piece to both.
If you want the dramatic case, The African Queen and The Lion in Winter make it unaided. The first is her most physical performance and the second her most verbal, and in both she is opposite an actor who could match her.
The loyalists head for the late work. Long Day's Journey Into Night is punishing and extraordinary. On Golden Pond is far more sentimental than it needs to be, though she is not. Adam's Rib is the best of the Spencer Tracy comedies, and Little Women shows where the whole persona began.