OMEN
10-31-2007, 09:14 AM
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RACKED BY DOUBTS: Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn was sometimes insecure about her abilities, particularly in the Broadway musical Coco.
A peek inside the private world of legendary actress Katharine Hepburn reveals a woman resembling the strong-willed characters she often portrayed.
A trove of personal documents being displayed in February at the New York Public Library shows her as a woman who would call the Oklahoma policeman who once arrested her a "moron" to his face and take a stand in defence of a vulgarity uttered in a stage production.
But she could also be insecure about her acting ability, documenting how hard she worked. Copious notes were used for help with intonation, cadence or pitch.
The library acquired thousands of pages of notes, journals, annotated scripts, contracts and letters pertaining to Hepburn's stage career through the executor of her estate, journalist Cynthia McFadden.
The collection will be accessible to the public in February. It spans the late 1920s to the early 1990s, including a handwritten letter of introduction to producer/director George Tyler calling the soon-to-be star "a young actress of possibilities".
The four-time Oscar-winner, who died in 2003 aged 96, is shown as determined and witty, sometimes arrogant, often imperious. Yet the collection reveals little about her personal life. One leather scrapbook from the play Coco bears the monogram "S.T.", presumably that of her most famous lover, Spencer Tracy.
The catalogue includes dog-eared scripts with her notations in the margins, pristine photos and well- worn correspondences. Apparently she saved pretty much everything.
Responding to what is in essence a fan letter from Charlton Heston during her final Broadway play, The West Side Waltz, she writes, "What a nice letter. Many, many thanks."
One text details a speech to an audience on the 1970 campus killings of four youths at Kent State University during an anti-war demonstration. Hepburn, who generally eschewed politics in her public life, asked for a minute of silence.
Other papers reveal she sometimes doubted her abilities. "She was very nervous about doing Coco,"' said Bob Taylor, curator of the library's Billy Rose Theatre Division, referring to the 1969 Broadway musical about Coco Chanel. "She'd never done a musical ... She worked very hard doing these vocal exercises."
She also fought successfully for the right to use the word "shit" in the Los Angeles production of Coco, arguing for its artistic merit.
A 1950 journal entry from her tour in As You Like It recalls her arrest by an Oklahoma policeman, "handsome in a dull sort of way".
She says she "slammed the door in his face" at a lawyer's office, declaring: "I have been arrested by this moron."
Reuters
RACKED BY DOUBTS: Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn was sometimes insecure about her abilities, particularly in the Broadway musical Coco.
A peek inside the private world of legendary actress Katharine Hepburn reveals a woman resembling the strong-willed characters she often portrayed.
A trove of personal documents being displayed in February at the New York Public Library shows her as a woman who would call the Oklahoma policeman who once arrested her a "moron" to his face and take a stand in defence of a vulgarity uttered in a stage production.
But she could also be insecure about her acting ability, documenting how hard she worked. Copious notes were used for help with intonation, cadence or pitch.
The library acquired thousands of pages of notes, journals, annotated scripts, contracts and letters pertaining to Hepburn's stage career through the executor of her estate, journalist Cynthia McFadden.
The collection will be accessible to the public in February. It spans the late 1920s to the early 1990s, including a handwritten letter of introduction to producer/director George Tyler calling the soon-to-be star "a young actress of possibilities".
The four-time Oscar-winner, who died in 2003 aged 96, is shown as determined and witty, sometimes arrogant, often imperious. Yet the collection reveals little about her personal life. One leather scrapbook from the play Coco bears the monogram "S.T.", presumably that of her most famous lover, Spencer Tracy.
The catalogue includes dog-eared scripts with her notations in the margins, pristine photos and well- worn correspondences. Apparently she saved pretty much everything.
Responding to what is in essence a fan letter from Charlton Heston during her final Broadway play, The West Side Waltz, she writes, "What a nice letter. Many, many thanks."
One text details a speech to an audience on the 1970 campus killings of four youths at Kent State University during an anti-war demonstration. Hepburn, who generally eschewed politics in her public life, asked for a minute of silence.
Other papers reveal she sometimes doubted her abilities. "She was very nervous about doing Coco,"' said Bob Taylor, curator of the library's Billy Rose Theatre Division, referring to the 1969 Broadway musical about Coco Chanel. "She'd never done a musical ... She worked very hard doing these vocal exercises."
She also fought successfully for the right to use the word "shit" in the Los Angeles production of Coco, arguing for its artistic merit.
A 1950 journal entry from her tour in As You Like It recalls her arrest by an Oklahoma policeman, "handsome in a dull sort of way".
She says she "slammed the door in his face" at a lawyer's office, declaring: "I have been arrested by this moron."
Reuters