The first major Katharine Hepburn biography independent of her control reveals the smart, complicated, and sophisticated woman behind the image.

Onscreen she played society girls, Spencer Tracy's sidekick, lionesses in winter. But the best character Katharine Hepburn ever created was Katharine Hepburn: a Connecticut Yankee, outspoken and elegant, she wore pants whatever the occasion and bristled at Hollywood glitter. So captivating was her image that she never seemed less than authentic. But how well did we know her, really? Was there a woman behind the image who was more human, more driven, and ultimately more triumphant because of her vulnerability?

William J. Mann — a cultural historian and journalist, a sympathetic admirer but no mere fan — has fashioned an intimate, often revisionist, and truly unique close-up that challenges much of what we think we know about the Great Kate. Previous biographies — mostly products of friends and fans — have recycled the stories she hid behind, taking Hollywood myths at face value. Mann goes deeper, delivering new details from friends and family who have not been previously interviewed and drawing on materials only available since Hepburn's death.

With affection, intelligence, and a voluminous knowledge of Hollywood history, Mann shows us how a woman originally considered too special and controversial for fame learned the fine arts of movie stardom and transformed herself into an icon as durable and all-American as the Statue of Liberty.

"Mann, a skilled chronicler of gay Hollywood (Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines), says at the onset it doesn't make sense to try to pin down Katharine Hepburn with modern labels of sexual identity. Mann's careful research on the longstanding rumors about Hepburn's lesbianism suggests that the notoriously feisty and tomboyish actress lived her life as a man with little empathy for women's issues. This interpretation also shatters the legend of her romance with Spencer Tracy — instead, Mann establishes a pattern of relationships in which the sex-averse Hepburn played emotional caretaker to a series of alcoholic, closeted homosexuals that, in addition to Tracy, included director John Ford. Yet the portrait is constructed so carefully that it never feels shocking. Mann also devotes significant attention to Hepburn's rocky relationships with Hollywood studios and with the press, revealing that the self-styled renegade wasn't above collaborating to shape her public image, and depicts her final decline into alcoholism and depression with sensitivity. Hepburn's siblings and contemporaries (now free to speak after her death) make major corrections to earlier Hepburn biographies, creating a picture of a complex woman rather than the icon she worked hard to become in the public's eye. This will surely be the definitive version of Hepburn's life for decades to come, as it is an outstanding example of painstaking research matched with splendid writing." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"'I think the less said, the better.'

That's what Katharine Hepburn told me 20 years ago when, as Gloria Steinem's assistant, I found myself playing go-between in negotiations for Hepburn to be interviewed for Ms. magazine. The answer to the interview request was 'No,' but what 25-year-old feminist wouldn't be thrilled to speak with that familiar imperious tremolo?

The movie about... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) which Hepburn was being so closed-mouthed was 'Grace Quigley,' not one of her more auspicious outings. And her response to the magazine's offer bespeaks her careful cultivation of her own image and career, a canniness that biographer William J. Mann shrewdly deconstructs in 'Kate.' Books have already been written about Hepburn, but this is a particularly comprehensive and absorbing account of her life and legend and the way she exerted her ferocious will on creating both.

Reared in Hartford, Conn., by a prominent physician and a mother who was active in political and feminist circles, Hepburn was a tomboy growing up, taking on the persona of 'Jimmy' to play with her adored older brother Tom, who died — most likely a suicide — at 15. The image of the boisterous, happily sparring family later purveyed by Hepburn when speaking of her early life was marred further by Dr. Hepburn's competitive streak and Mrs. Hepburn's absence. The near constant pressure to perform and prove herself to these distant paragons, Mann posits, was just one spur to Hepburn's burning ambition as an actress. And her alter ego, Jimmy, was just the beginning of the androgynous sexuality that would define her appeal.

Of course, Hepburn always insisted that she didn't hew to the ways of typical Hollywood careerists; to hear her tell it, the celebrity and success (a record four Oscars) were simply born to her, like her cheekbones. But Mann meticulously makes the case that Hepburn wanted very much to be famous, took a close interest in even the tawdry details of the movie business ('We've got to cook it up,' she would say when she wanted to punch up her publicity) and cared deeply about her image.

The latter concern, Mann writes, led to Hepburn downplaying her relationships with other women, which in the case of such companions as Laura Harding and Phyllis Wilbourn, were ardent and long-lasting. It led her to unceremoniously drop her husband, Ludlow Ogden Smith, whom she had married before going to Hollywood. And it led her even to manipulate the public profile of her most famous liaison, her long-running relationship with Spencer Tracy.

Indeed, the big news in 'Kate' isn't about Hepburn's sexuality, but about Tracy's, which Mann suggests ranged just as far. (The most frequently cited source in this regard is a mysterious man named Scotty, who worked at a garage and apparently served as a homosexual procurer.) What's more, the author suggests, it was Hepburn herself who portrayed their relationship as an epic love affair long after it had settled into friendship, realizing how that romantic fairytale burnished her own persona.

His more controversial suggestions about Hepburn and Tracy aside, Mann delivers a close and astute reading of how their on-screen roles reflected their off-screen alliance, which the author maintains was predicated more on an emotional and temperamental connection than on sexual heat. Of the verbally sparring couple in 'Pat and Mike,' he writes: 'After they finally admit their love for each other, this is the payoff we get: they shake hands.'

Though Hepburn emerges as a willful fame-seeker in 'Kate,' Mann is never less than respectful and even-handed when discussing aspects of her life she may have preferred stay in the shadows. The sexual peccadilloes of Hepburn, Tracy, director George Cukor and their cosmopolitan circle could certainly be fodder for a more salacious account, but Mann handles the material with clear-eyed equanimity. Some of the most revealing passages of this biography have to do with Hepburn's remarkable third act, when in later life she exerted her indomitable determination to create yet another version of herself: not headstrong ingenue or glamorous star, but cherished American treasure. Mann offers a corrective to the hagiography that has often passed as her personal history (up to and including her own memoirs), but nonetheless manages to keep intact her image as rebellious icon, screen goddess and American original.

The fact that that image now co-exists with another, perhaps less noble one — the desperate-to-please daughter who grew up into an ambitious, sometimes ruthless manipulator of her own myth — does nothing to threaten Hepburn's enduring fascination. In this case, at least, the more said, the better.

Ann Hornaday is a film critic for The Washington Post." Reviewed by Ann Hornaday, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"[A] compelling look at a larger-than-life film figure." Library Journal

"Tapping into a wellspring of sources, the author has managed to reanimate with great skill and dexterity this shrewd, sophisticated woman. A sprawling salute to an awe-inspiring, world-class actor." Kirkus Reviews

"[T]his is a particularly comprehensive and absorbing account of her life and legend....Mann is never less than respectful and even-handed when discussing aspects of her life she may have preferred stay in the shadows." Washington Post

"A dishy, needy book somewhat unworthy of its subject....[R]ather tiresome." Newsday

"Mann is less interested in Hepburn's career than in the private arc she traveled alongside it, insisting, reasonably enough, that it is 'time to take off the blinders'..." New York Times

"'Who was she?' Mann asks in the preface to Kate, his fascinating and provocative new look at the legend....Mann has made Kate a page-turner and a revelation." USA Today

"In the end, the book is just gossip-mongering with high-end aspirations." Los Angeles Times

The first major Katharine Hepburn biography independent of her control reveals the smart, complicated, and sophisticated woman behind the image.

William J. Mann has written for the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant, Salon, and other publications. He is the author of Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger; Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood; and Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.