Motion Picture (Feb-Jul 1934)

Katharine Hepburn Reveals Herself — for the First Time I Scoop! Katharine breaks her long silence and answers that baffling question: What is she really like? You'll remember what she says — and you'll remember, too, how she defies anyone to change her! BY RUTH BIERY This is the first interview that Katharine Hepburn has given in nearly a year. It is the most self-revealing interview that she has ever given. MOTION PICTURE is fortunate — and proud — to be able to present it to you. — Editor. JUST what kind of woman is Katharine Hepburn? That is a baffling question that everyone wants answered. There is no one who can really answer it except Katharine, herself, who hasn't done so — until now. And how does she happen to be breaking her silence now? I'll tell you: When Katharine first came to Hollywood, she saw interviewers. She pitted her wits against theirs as she had pitted them against producers. She would lunch with them, paying the checks cheerfully, and saying absolutely nothing of importance — cheerfully. With her long legs sprawled indiscriminatingly beneath the Radio lunchroom table, she would turn her eyes toward the fly-decorated ceiling and wrinkle her freckled nose tauntingly. "Married? Now, let me see — am I or am I not? — Children? Let me see — have I or haven't I?" It was a game, with Katharine the winner. The onehundred-per-cent winner. She tired of it. She decided that the Press was not equal to the game. She issued her ultimatum, "I will see none of them." And for almost a year she stuck to it. And we, of the Press, huddled behind the excuse, "She is imitating Garbo!" Perhaps! But there was one strong point against that explanation. Hepburn's imitation stopped there. Garbo steals across her own lot incognito. Hepburn stalks across it, dungareed legs taking long, independent strides of defiance. While Garbo is furtively inconspicuous, Hepburn — with a knitted "fascinator" tied with safety pins across her angular shoulders and red-felt bedroom slippers flapping over her large feet — is as conspicuous as Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo at a Hollywood opening. Incidentally, Garbo has eaten exactly three times in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer commissary since her arrival; Hepburn always eats in the public lunchroom — beside the cameramen, electricians and "extras." You can hear her loud, enthusiastic laughter everywhere. The Struggle to Get to Her NO! That Garbo gag might be wrong. Then, what was it? — She was on location for "Trigger" when I decided to get the answer to that question. She was at Idylwild, one hundred and thirteen miles from Los Angeles. Well, I'd corner her on a mountain top and we'd see what influence the top-of-theworld atmosphere had upon her. We'd be two women, alone, with the whisper of pine trees, the closeness of sun and moon and stars to unite us. A communion of souls, inspired by the common embrace of Nature. You get what I mean. I arrived at the location shortly before eleven in the morning. The guard on the dangerouslyrutted mountain road looked at my credentials and shook his head solemnly, when I said I had come to see Katharine Hepburn. "She's not feeling well to-day. She's in a terrible mood." I zigzagged on upwards with the feeling that the very mountain top might tremble in wrath at any moment. A second guard stopped me. "But Miss Hepburn is not feeling well to-day. She has a cold. She's in a terrible mood — " The publicity man on the location approached me. "But — my God, what a day to pick to come up here! Miss Hepburn has a cold. She's in — " I looked across one of those slight, mountain-top valleys to a huge rock on which a figure sprawled, arms and legs outflung, in the sun. "Is that she? I'm going over and talk to her!" I said. "But please! Here comes her stand-in girl. We'll talk to her!" I looked at the publicity man closely. Had he really stuttered? "I'll speak to Miss Hepburn," the girl said. "But she isn't feeling well to-day. She has a cold — " "I know," I interrupted. "I'm sorry. Tell her I have one, too, so it won't bother me a bit. Just ask her when I can see her — " The girl returned. She was very sorry, but Miss Hepburn never gave interviews while she was working. When the picture was finished — There was only one thing left for me to do. {Continued on page 68) 30