"Katharine Hepburn: All About Me" (1993) Is The Best Movie Star Biography Documentary Ever Made...She Was 85 And Hosted It!
Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003) lived past her 96th birthday, and won more "Best Actress" Academy Awards than any performer in movie history.
She won four "Best Actress" Academy Awards, 3 of them after she was 60 years old. Her Academy Award movies included "Morning Glory" (1933), "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" (1967)....her intimate friend of 27 years, Spencer Tracy died 17 days after "Dinner" was completed....., "The Lion In Winter" (1968), and "On Golden Pond" (1981).
She was and is a legend.
Anyone who cares for movies and movie history must see this remarkable autobiography documentary made when Hepburn was 85 years old in 1992, which she narrates and hosts with a lot of on-screen time at her famous beach home in Connecticut.
This documentary movie is a treasure.
Expensive used VHS copies are available from Amazon.Com and so is the same movie available inexpensively with the "Philadelphia Story" (1940) "Special Edition" VHS and also 2 disc DVD presentations.
I own a copy of the VHS version of "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), screened it (as I have many times before), and accidentally discovered this wonderful biography documentary about Hepburn added after the final credits of "Philadelphia Story" ended.
I couldn't believe how good the documentary was, or how electric Katharine Hepburn was, still, at age 85 when she participated in making it.
The attention to relevant details is especially notable. We see her two houses, one in Manhattan and one on the beach of the Connecticut coast, both of which she lived in and visited from the early 30's, and still occupied when the documentary was prepared 60 years later in the early 1990's.
Titles of her many stage plays between her 1928 college graduation from Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, PA (also her mother's alma mater...her father was a physician) and her Hollywood movie star years starting in the middle 1930's. Titles of her Shakespeare stage plays performed all over the world in the 1950's and 1960's are also given, all with supporting still photos.
Her first (and only legal) husband, "Luddy" Smith, is shown in 1928 still photos and others during their 5 year marriage and lifelong friendship which lasted well after their divorce.
Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon are shown in still photos during the late 1940's and early 1950's period when the famous writer couple wrote successful movie scripts tailor-made for Hepburn and Tracey ("Pat and Mike," "Adam's Rib," etc.).
Members of Hepburn's long employed personal home staff are shown working and playing as part of Hepburn's household and de-facto old age family.
Hepburn's wonderful and unexpectedly candid and revealing comments about important people, events, and even money amounts part of her career make the wonderful visuals and writing even better. She talks directly to the camera, and to those watching this incredible story of her incredible life.
In an age when many in America and elsewhere in the world aspired to higher education and an interesting, independent very long adventurous romantic life, Katharine Hepburn provided a marvelous role model and example of how all of that is done when it's done well.
The omission of Philip Barry's "Holiday" (1938) movie starring Hepburn and Cary Grant is the only serious flaw (Barry went on to write "The Philadelphia Story" expressly for Hepburn...it was a hit stage show in NYC first, then a hit movie now justifiably considered a classic. "Philadelphia Story" would not have happened unless "Holiday" (1938) happened before it...."Holiday" is a critical movie in the Katharine Hepburn story.)
This documentary is so complete and so touching, tears came to my eyes as I watched it.
It is one of the very great legacies to come out of Hollywood, and the often tried (and mostly failed) effort people make to explain Hollywood and "the movies," and what they mean.
This is an important documentary movie about one of movie history's most important people. Get it, screen it often, tell people about it, treasure it.
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Written by Tex Allen, SAG Actor.
Email Tex Allen at TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com
Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for movie credits and biography facts about Tex Allen's movie career and life.
