Katharine Hepburn

They called her “box office poison”, so she made Hollywood beg for a script she owned, then won more Oscars than anyone, ever.

Katharine Hepburn was raised on feminism, philosophy, and complete freedom of speech.

Her mother was a suffragist and birth control activist.

Her father educated the public on venereal disease.

Katharine was fired from more roles than most actors ever book.

“She looks a fright,” one playwright said.

But she never stopped.

Her big break came in 1932.

On Broadway, she leapt down a flight of stairs carrying a dead stag over her shoulder in The Warrior’s Husband.

A Hollywood scout saw her and brought her to RKO.

George Cukor gave her a screen test.

She asked for $1,500 a week.

An outrageous sum for an unknown actress.

She got it.

Her first film, A Bill of Divorcement, was a hit.

Her third, Morning Glory, won her an Oscar.

She starred in Little Women, one of the highest-grossing films of the decade.

Then came a crash.

Spitfire. Sylvia Scarlett. Mary of Scotland.

One flop after another.

She refused to play the game.

Wouldn’t smile for press.

Refused interviews.

Wore trousers to meetings.

Then came 1938.

A trade ad ran with her name under a brutal headline: “Box Office Poison.”

Studios stopped calling.

She didn’t beg for roles.

She bought them.

She left L.A., returned to Broadway, and starred in The Philadelphia Story.

The role of Tracy Lord was written for her.

A brash, vulnerable, high-society woman. Just like her.

The play ran for 417 performances.

But she wasn’t done.

Howard Hughes, her on-and-off partner, bought her the film rights.

She sold them to MGM on the condition that she star and chose her co-stars and director.

The movie was a hit. She got her third Oscar nomination.

In 1951, she spent months filming The African Queen in the Congo, vomiting between takes from dysentery.

But the performance brought her a fifth Oscar nomination.

She became one of the few stars to win an Emmy, a BAFTA, and four Oscars. Three of them after the age of 60.

She played tennis every day, even into her 80s.

She gardened, baked brownies, painted, and climbed stairs two at a time.

She gave her final performance in Love Affair at age 87.

When she died at home in 2003, at 96, the lights of Broadway were dimmed in her honor.

She once said, “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
Katharine Hepburn obeyed nothing. Except her own ambition.