Katharine Hepburn: A Biography

London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. Very Good/Very Good. 1986. Hard Cover. 8vo 0340337192 Dust jacket complete, price clipped, slight fade to spine. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. 395 pages clean and tight. Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.2 x 3.8 cm. Katharine Hepburn is one of the last of the Hollywood greats. Now in her late seventies, she has been actin; for not far short of sixty years. But unlike many of her contemporaries she has lived a highly idiosyncratic life, much of it far from the public gaze. Now for the first time her story is told in full. Katharine Hepburn's screen r<)lcs include her celebrated partnership with Spencer Tracy that began with Woman (?f the Year in 1942 and went on to number Pat and Mike, Adam's Rib and, finally, with Tracy very near to death, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Off screen Hepburn continued a long-running, deeply affectionate affair with Tracy - a married Catholic and an alcoholic - having previously had relationships with some of Hollywood's finest, among them director John Ford and dashing young millionaire Howard Hughes. She also had a brief marriage, but Spencer Tracy was the one person for whom Kate would sacrifice anything. Anne Edwards, author of definitive biographies of Vivien Leigh and Judy Garland, shows how throughout her life Hepburn has spoken her mind, mixing a native Yankee forthrightness with the social conscience she learned from her parents and her own brand of stubbornness. She blasted McCarthyites and chauvinists, ridiculed the press and snapped at fans who took pictures of her. And she revelled in her own pranks and peculiarities, never performing the expected. Her love, her loyalty, her great courage have known no bounds. Katharine Hepburn is a woman determined and undeniably unique. .