Katharine Hepburn
Books / Hardcover
Books › Biography & Autobiography › Rich & Famous
ISBN: 0517592843 / Publisher: Crown, April 1995
Drawing on interviews with friends, family, and colleagues, a portrait of the actress provides a study of Hepburn's troubled youth, romances with Spencer Tracy and Howard Hughes, and her theatrical and film career
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At last, the definitive biography of Katharine Hepburn - the story she herself has never told. Hollywood has produced many stars, but no one compares to Katharine Hepburn. She is the last of the great ones: a celebrated actress, a brilliant personality, an original. In more than sixty years of public life, countless men have fallen in love with her, women have admired her, and yet only a handful have ever known the real Kate.What drove Katharine Hepburn? Why was she so loved? How could such a fiercely independent woman have given up her life to one man - Spencer Tracy - to the point of curling up on the floor outside his hotel room while he drank himself into unconsciousness behind a locked door?Barbara Leaming has discovered thousands of never-before-seen documents that finally illuminate the mystery of this enigmatic, fascinating woman. Growing up in a family shadowed by suicide and madness, young Kate was unaware of her family's tragic history until the day - she was thirteen - she discovered her brother hanging dead in an attic. His death - and the heritage that might have explained it - was never talked of again, leaving Kate with unresolved questions that have haunted her ever since.It is a love story - though not the one you would expect. It is also a family story that brings alive three generations of fearless women, personal and political crusaders who shaped the history of women in our century.
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