Me: Stories of My Life. Katherine Hepburn. (Hardback) BCA 1991

 ME: STORIES OF MY LIFE by Katherine Hepburn.

In ME, her long awaited memoir, Katherine Hepburn tells us about her two personalities: her performing personality - which she refers to as 'the creature' - and her real self. Her humour and intelligence, and the inimitable cadences of her voice, translate with extraordinary vividness to the printed page to make a uniquely funny, moving, provocative and unforgettable book.

Speaking directly to the reader, Katherine Hepburn tells us the stories of her life. As she reflects on her childhood and on her family, whose importance has remained central to her existence these memories - like all of her stories - encompass both comedy and tragedy as we learn, for example, about the hurricane that literally swept her beloved country home downstream and about the sudden death of her brother Tom. She tells us about the ups and downs of her career, her early experiences in the theatre, the making of her forty-three films and her relationships with other actors, writers and producers, including her long and fruitful collaboration with George Cukor and the redesigning of her country garden by David Lean. She describes selling THE PHILADELPHIA STORY to Louis B. Mayer, his reaction when she made a speech against censorship to the House Un-American Activities Commitee and a long journey with Willie Rose, author of GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER to collect his new Maserati. She tells us about ageing, about eye surgery and a leg fracture and the other symptoms of passing time but also about her early-morning swims and helping a stranger change a tyre, much to the amazement of a passing truck driver. And she tells us about love.

This book is pervaded with love. Love of parents, love of family, being loved and loving. Katherine Hepburn's husband, Luddy, loved her devotedly, just as later she was to love Spencer Tracy. There were passioinate affairs with Howard Hughes and with Leland Hayward, but it is her long and profound relationship with Spencer Tracy that resonates through ME. When first asked to work with her, he reportedly asked, 'How can I do a picture with a woman who has dirt under her fingernails and who is of ambiguous sexuality and always wears pants? Yet their relationship was to become her most important story.

With vibrant wit and humanity, Katherine Hepburn recounts the life of a great actress that is also a great love story.

 

A BCA Hardback published in 1991