Modern Screen (Dec 1937 - Nov 1938)

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Forhan's Does Both Jobs CLEANS TEETH • AIDS GUMS Dentists advise daily gum massage to help prevent gum trouble and to help keep teeth brilliant. Use Forhan's Toothpaste and massage twice every day. Forhan's is different. It contains a special ingredient for the gums. wasn't quite good enough in it. This fall ? The Theatre Guild already has Broadway designs for her. "I still have to keep my fingers crossed," 'she confesses. She can grin now about her first onslaught on Broadway. Kate remembers how she started by making the rounds of the producers' offices, and it was as hot a summer as this one has been. Hotter, she maintains. She was far too nervous and bashful. Quite soon she was perspiring dreadfully, her clothes and hair sadly mussed. She was anxious to repair these damages of the heat, but ashamed to inquire for the ladies' rooms. That's the real reason why she was never chic ! And because she wasn't chic, if you want to know all, she never once got to talk to a single solitary stage producer ! "But I had red hair, freckles and a temper, and the only solution was to live up to them!" Thoroughly ignored in the New York that now gossips about her plans, she heard that a stock company in Baltimore wanted an actress. Kate attempted her first bluflF. Outstanding in campus dramatics, with no stage record in a theatre, but needing only a break, she talked so long and fast that down there they gave her the job that was open. ONE of her self-imposed drawbacks has been her insistence upon interpreting all her roles absolutely as she herself visualizes them. She almost never got to Hollywood because of this trait. She was fired from a succession of Broadway shows, even losing a lead opposite Leslie Howard when she was still a nobody because she refused to change her mind about how his leading lady should be characterized. What if he was famous and she was a rank amateur? She didn't care ! She knew, instinctively, what was best for her. As a small child Katharine Hepburn was given to either crying until she got what she wanted, or she'd refuse to participate in the back-yard dramas until her rules were accepted. Luckily she became a star overnight in Hollywood, so she hasn't had to give in to any movie director on points of interpretation. She wouldn't have a director who'd subdue her slant on a role. She thinks it's quite a coincidence that, exactly _ ten years ago, she understudied the original stage star of "Holiday." When Hope Williams was creating the role that Kate has recently clicked in, the fiery Hepburn gladly joined the troupe as stellar understudy. "Hope Williams was the healthiest star I ever met!" But standing in the wings every night, praying for a miracle so that she could go on, imprinted this particular drama in her mind. When she was offered a screen test she chose a sequence from this play to display her acting. Kate has the talent and the desire to ultimately reign as one of Broadway's enduring queens. So she thinks she'll keep on with her stage yen. But now what of her as a woman? She was married from the jolly house in Hartford ten years ago. She was all ecstatic hopes about love then. Hollywood wasn't even a glint. He was tall, gallant, and so sympathetic towards her stage leanings. He'd graduated from college and had put himself into the brokerage business in Philadelphia. But he moved his firm to New York so that she could go into the theatre and they could be modern and skyrocket in two careers together. It was young romance rampant. As Mrs. Ludlow Smith in private life, she fixed up an apartment, and they were very determined to get ahead. But she grew more and more devoted to her career, and less and less devoted to Ludlow. When she went to Hollywood she denied her marriage. Later she secured a Mexican divorce, hoping for secrecy in the break-up. In Hollywood she has managed her career battles herself, has never gone with any studio powers. Love's been out. George Cukor and Leland Hayward, her agent, have been her closest men friends. Laura Harding, her chum from Bryn Mawr days, has been her companion in her rented hilltop mansion in the West. But Kate, of course, is very emotional. So when she met Howard Hughes, who is adventurous and a sophisticate and a millionaire besides, she remembered she could be just a woman after all. Now — should she be? He is fascinating, and being with him is so stimulating. But he'd never play second fiddle to any woman's career. He's Loretta Young poses for us with one of her special friends. Who said something about a dog's life being hard? 88