Best of Katharine

[selenak]

My recent watching of The Aviator has reminded me once again of my great, great fondness for Katharine Hepburn. And I wondered that, legendary as she still is, whether there won't be a sizable portion of the audience who comes to the film solely because of Leonardo di Caprio, or Martin Scorsese and has never seen a single Hepburn picture. In the

Comments

[kathyh]

Great choices and great quotes. "The African Queen" and "The Lion in Winter" are two of my all time favourite films. The only film you listed that I haven't seen is Summertime. I wonder if that's because it simply hasn't come my way or because films about middle-aged women in love with younger men play less often on TV?

[selenak]

I strongly suspect the later! Unfair.

[vaznetti]

You know, although I adore Hepburn, and am grateful for the trip down memory lane here, my mind keeps coming back top this: the actress who so magnicently embodied the empress Livia in I, Claudius and was married to Peter O'Toole during the 60s and 70s, and, trivia for BTVS fans, then had a fling with Robin "Ethan Rayne" Sachs.

Because, wow. I always knew there was a reason I admired Sian Phillips.

Sian Phillips

[selenak]

Oh, she's great. And her memoirs are immensely readable. The tale of her long marriage with O'Toole is told with good humour and acerbic affection, and as for Mr. Sachs, he must have been quite a dish in his youth but she's refreshingly clear on the subject that boytoy was all he was to her.

I remember seeing her in How green was my valley, and she was so different there from Livia (the first role I saw her in) that I was stunned by her acting abilities all over again.

[anonymous_sibyl]

The Lion in Winter is such an incredible film. I loved both Katharine and Eleanor before discovering this movie existed and I couldn't be happier with how incredible they are together.

I still can't get over how much that movie touches me. She played Eleanor so well--her pride, her love for Henry, her favoritism of Richard, her jealousy and fear of old age--and every little bit of her portrayal rang true with me.

And? "If you're brittle, it's because you're broken. I've lost you and I can't ever get you back."

[selenak]

He married out of love a woman out of legend. Yes. Great, great film, and I shall never be able to imagine the aged Eleanor embodied by anyone else. It was such perfect casting...

[midnightsjane]

Thank you for reminding us about the marvellous Katherine Hepburn. I have always admired her as an actress, and for her no nonsense approach to fame. She certainly was flawed, as everyone is, but she always seemed to me to have a rock solid sense of who she was.
I loved her and Humphrey Bogart in the African Queen. I remember that scene in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, and the love between Hepburn and Tracey seems so obvious. I also really liked her performance in On Golden Pond, a wonderful portrayel of love and aging.

[selenak]

Oh yes, On Golden Pond was a very graceful swan song, for both her and Henry Fonda. Loved it.

Note to self: must get more DVDs!

[temeres]

noting that the alcohol-swallowing Huston and Bogart made it through Africa without a single day of illness

I might very well be wrong, but my understanding was that the film was shot in Turkey.

Abstruse and picky and irrelevant to any appreciation of KH, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

[selenak]

No, it wasn't. It was shot on location in Kenia. (And some stuff in the London studios, notably all the scenes where our leads are actually in the water, because obviously they couldn't risk that on location.) Look it up. Either of the books I mentioned, or Bacall's memoirs in fact, offer some excellent descriptions of the location shooting.

[temeres]

Then I must have been misinformed somewhere along the way. Apologies.