"box office poison"
I'm thinking of goin as Katharine Hepburn (in some role or another) for Halloween. I wanted to be Martha Gellhorn, but then I would spend the entire night describing her as "Hemmingway's third wife" to random drunk college students, and that just doesn't seem right. (Let me rephrase: I still want to be Martha Gellhorn, but that is more than a one-night affair.) Everyone I've mentioned Hepburn to has responded with some variation on "Oh my, that's perfect!", and I feel good about that. Especially after three years of living in a town that seems to have internalized everything about Audrey except the poise. I mean, yes, she's darling, but so pale compared to this:
From the author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn: Hepburn’s drive for fame meant she would spend her life struggling between the demands of “the creature” (what she called her public image) and the more bohemian, unconventional life to which she was drawn. She was forced to invent a role for the kind of woman she was - her own kind. Labels - sexual, political, artistic - hold little meaning when talking about her. Sex, love and marriage were only the beginnings of the things she had to learn, re-make and often reject.
From her: What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.
[slideshow]
And from Salon:
Looking at Hepburn's work from the '30s, maybe even especially those movies that she made (circa 1938) when she was so infamously labeled "box office poison," it's not so hard to imagine why she must have seemed odd to audiences. She was "poison," pure and simple, because she didn't ingratiate herself with moviegoers. She demanded that they come to her -- but once they did, once they took the at first awkward step of readjusting their inner clocks to move with hers, they became privy to performances that rank among the most original, and the most purely affecting, of American movies: The young Hepburn gave us true, unvarnished emotion with every drop of sentimentality dried out of it.
Kate’s philosophy, handed down from her grandmother to her mother to her, was: "Don’t give in. Fight for your future. Women are as good as men. Make your own trail. Don’t moan. Think positively." [from films42.com]
From the author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn: Hepburn’s drive for fame meant she would spend her life struggling between the demands of “the creature” (what she called her public image) and the more bohemian, unconventional life to which she was drawn. She was forced to invent a role for the kind of woman she was - her own kind. Labels - sexual, political, artistic - hold little meaning when talking about her. Sex, love and marriage were only the beginnings of the things she had to learn, re-make and often reject.
From her: What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.
[slideshow]
And from Salon:
Looking at Hepburn's work from the '30s, maybe even especially those movies that she made (circa 1938) when she was so infamously labeled "box office poison," it's not so hard to imagine why she must have seemed odd to audiences. She was "poison," pure and simple, because she didn't ingratiate herself with moviegoers. She demanded that they come to her -- but once they did, once they took the at first awkward step of readjusting their inner clocks to move with hers, they became privy to performances that rank among the most original, and the most purely affecting, of American movies: The young Hepburn gave us true, unvarnished emotion with every drop of sentimentality dried out of it.
Kate’s philosophy, handed down from her grandmother to her mother to her, was: "Don’t give in. Fight for your future. Women are as good as men. Make your own trail. Don’t moan. Think positively." [from films42.com]