Katharine Hepburn

Her father taught the public about venereal disease and her mother ran the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and then campaigned for birth control alongside Margaret Sanger. The six Hepburn children were told to argue about anything they liked. She called herself Jimmy, cut her hair short, and took ice-cold baths on the theory that the bitterer the medicine the better it worked. Then, on March 30, 1921, staying in Greenwich Village over the Easter break, the 13-year-old found her 15-year-old brother Tom hanging from a beam by a curtain tie. The family insisted it had been an experiment gone wrong. She left school, was tutored at home, and for the next 70 years gave November 8, Tom's birthday, as her own.

A playwright who cast her in 1931 said she looked a fright, her manner was objectionable and she had no talent — then rehired her because nobody else would take the part. Two years later Morning Glory, her third film, won her an Academy Award. By 1938 the Independent Theatre Owners of America were calling her box office poison, so she bought her way out of her RKO contract, took the film rights to The Philadelphia Story and sold them to MGM on the condition that she play Tracy Lord. For Woman of the Year in 1942 she asked 250,000 dollars, half of it for the writers, and named her own director and co-star. Three more Oscars followed, for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond. Four Best Actress awards is still the record.

She married once, at 21, to Ludlow Ogden Smith, and made him change his name so that she would not have to be Kate Smith. She was having an affair with her agent at the time, and later called herself a terrible pig for using him. The relationship that defined her cost more. Spencer Tracy was married to Louise Treadwell and never divorced her. He drank and he did not sleep, and in the early 1960s Hepburn stopped working for five years, moved into his house and nursed him. She was there when he died on June 10, 1967, and out of consideration for his family she stayed away from the funeral and said nothing in public until Louise Tracy died in 1983. Asked why she had stayed 27 years, she said she honestly did not know.

An aggressive tumor turned up in her neck in May 2003. The decision was made not to intervene, and she died of cardiac arrest on June 29 at the family house at Fenwick, on Long Island Sound, where the Hepburns had summered since her girlhood. She was 96. She had asked for no memorial service, so Broadway dimmed its lights instead on July 1. In 2004, following her instructions, Sotheby's sold her belongings for 5.8 million dollars that went to her family. Bryn Mawr named a center for her and her mother together, Old Saybrook opened an arts center in her name in 2009, and the American Film Institute had already voted her the greatest female star of classic Hollywood.

Katharine Hepburn's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Morning Glory film
  Her third film and her first Academy Award 1933
• Bringing Up Baby film
  Praised, and a failure that got her labeled box office poison 1938
• The Philadelphia Story film
  She owned the rights and sold them on condition she star 1940
• The African Queen film
  The start of her run of independent, unmarried, middle-aged women 1951
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner film
  Her ninth and last film with Spencer Tracy, who died 17 days after his final scene 1967
• Me: Stories of My Life book
  The memoir in which she finally gave her real birth date 1991

• March 30, 1921 aged 13 Finds her brother Tom dead in a Greenwich Village house She was 13, he was 15, and the family maintained it was an accident.
• June 1928 aged 21 Graduates from Bryn Mawr in history and philosophy College roles had been conditional on her grades improving.
• December 12, 1928 aged 21 Marries Ludlow Ogden Smith Divorced in Merida, Yucatan, in 1934. They stayed friends until his death in 1979.
• 1933 aged ~26 Wins Best Actress for Morning Glory
• 1942 aged ~35 Woman of the Year begins the 26-year partnership with Spencer Tracy Nine films together, and a relationship she did not discuss in public until 1983.
• June 10, 1967 aged 60 Tracy dies with Hepburn in the house She did not attend the funeral.
• 1981 aged ~74 Wins a fourth Best Actress award for On Golden Pond At 74 she dived fully clothed into Squam Lake for the part.
• 1991 aged ~84 Publishes Me and reveals that November 8 was never her birthday
• June 29, 2003 aged 96 Dies at Fenwick at 96 Broadway dimmed its lights two nights later.

• Margaret Sanger 1879–1966
  Birth-control advocate who transformed reproductive health access while leaving a deeply contested legacy involving eugenics. her mother's co-campaigner
• Meryl Streep b. 1949
  Most nominated actor in Oscar history, renowned for her chameleon-like ability to inhabit diverse roles. chased her Academy Award record
• Humphrey Bogart 1899–1957
  Studio-era screen actor identified with Casablanca and the hardboiled detective role. co-star, The African Queen
• Sidney Poitier 1927–2022
  First Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, breaking barriers in Hollywood. co-star, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
• John Wayne 1907–1979
  Western star whose screen persona became a durable symbol of American masculinity. co-star, Rooster Cogburn