Remembering Katharine Hepburn: Stories of Wit and Wisdom About America’s Leading Lady by Ann Nyberg, a veteran Connecticut television anchorwoman, highlights Hepburn’s ties to her native state. And, it’s about time the Connecticut side of Hepburn’s life got some attention.
Most biographies of Katharine Hepburn deal with her career and her loves, which often played out away from Connecticut. All grapple with essential questions of who she really was and what propelled her to greatness. Hepburn has proved an elusive target. Even her own 1991 autobiography, Me, proved to be ultimately disappointing because she never really, truly opened up.
Nyberg’s book offers info on Hepburn’s movies, plays and romances – one does have to explain four Academy Awards and Howard Hughes, after all. But it is here on this most familiar of ground that she trips – and in the first 10 pages too. In referencing The Philadelphia Story, the 1940 movie that resuscitated Hepburn’s career, Nyberg writes that the movie’s co-stars were Cary Grant – true – and Henry Fonda – false, that was Jimmy Stewart. (Hepburn co-starred with Fonda in 1981’s On Golden Pond.) A few pages later, talking about Hepburn’s unconventional look, Nyberg has the actress arriving in Hollywood in the 1920s. In fact, Hepburn arrived in 1932 – July 4 according to Me – to begin production of her first movie, A Bill of Divorcement.
Minor errors, true, but major to any Hepburn fan (or movie buff). Such obvious errors in connection with such easily checked facts always make me wonder if there might be less noticeable mistakes that the proofreader missed.
Nyberg mostly keeps the focus local in her book. She doesn’t dive particularly deeply but does offer insights shared in stories from people like Gene Heiney, the now-retired Old Saybrook police officer who served as a protector; longtime resident Viola Tagliatela, who was 11 when she first encountered Hepburn, and who later offered her book suggestions; and even Hepburn’s great niece, Schuyler Grant, who found acting lessons with “Aunt Kat” not to her liking.
Locals never made a fuss about Hepburn. They did not gawk or point or hoot as she went about her business in Fenwick, where she could often be spotted on the tennis courts; or in town, in Old Saybrook, where she shopped at Walt’s Food Market and scooped her own ice cream at James Pharmacy. They protected her privacy right up to her death, at age 96, in 2003.
Nyberg’s book is made up, as she writes in the preface, of “vignettes” shared by people who knew or worked with Hepburn. These interviews, she notes later, were incorporated into a film titled A Star Among Us, which plays continuously at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (aka “The Kate”) in Old Saybrook. Nyberg, a founding member of The Kate, also weaves into the book stories shared by Ellsworth Grant, the perceptive Connecticut historian, author and former mayor of West Hartford, Conn., who was Hepburn’s brother-in-law. All good – but I wish the material had been more seamlessly woven together.
While locals such as Heiney and Tagliatela don’t have the lasting name recognition of, say, Spencer Tracy or Hughes, I don’t think it necessary to repeatedly re-identify them with each new story, especially when the stories are laid out side by side.
Still, I appreciate this book. My first journalism job was in Old Saybrook, and most of the residents I knew treasured their Hepburn memories and stories. I certainly did too. Hepburn once told me I was lazy and should be shot. She was right, I should have been. But Hepburn let me, a young, still-green reporter at one of the local weeklies, get my story. And she gave me a singular piece of advice.
“Don’t live in fear,” Hepburn declared stoutly.
It took me years to fully grasp what that meant. As Nyberg’s book points out frequently, Hepburn was a perceptive teacher whose words fell on many an appreciative (if, in my case, not totally comprehending) ear.
Connecticut was lucky to have her. – Chicago Tribune/TNS
