Katherine Hepburn died yesterday. She was 96. As James Leer would say, "She was good." She was very good.
My personal favorite Hepburn moment is halfway through Bringing Up Baby, where she cheerfully forces an uncomfortable Cary Grant into singing, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby," in an effort to calm her trained leopard. (There's something refreshing about the utterly arbitrary plots of 1930s screwball comedies.) She's the picture of blissed-out conviction, as much a force of nature as a character: "There is a leopard on your roof and it's my leopard and I have to get it and to get it I have to sing."
June 2003 was a sad month for classic cinephiles. First we lost Gregory Peck, and now Ms. Hepburn is gone; I think my favorite role of hers was Rose Sayer from The African Queen. Not many women could go head-to-head with Bogey like Lauren Bacall, but Hepburn certainly did.
Posted by: gosey at June 30, 2003 03:34 PMI grew up in Madison, Connecticut, and 15 minutes away you could literally drive right up to Katherine Hepburn's house. Many a time we would drive by and see her on the beach or working in her yard. Not bad for an old lady. I would say she had a good life.
Posted by: Bill Colrus at July 1, 2003 09:22 AM