Unheard Tapes Reveal The Insecurities Of Katharine Hepburn

The documentary Call Me Kate hit Netflix in May 2023 to mark the 20th anniversary of Hepburn's death. Among the newly discovered treasures unearthed by the filmmakers were audio tapes, home videos, and photos that the public at large had never seen before. These all cast a new light on the outspoken and bold Hepburn, who attributed her almost unprecedented attitude to the encouragement of her progressive parents. She was the definition of "free-spirited," both as an adult and as a child.

At the age of 9, for example, Hepburn shaved her head, wore her brother's clothes, and only answered to the name "Jimmy". Hepburn never let her beauty or femininity dictate her life or her choices. As a child, she marched to the beat of her own drum. She became even more independent as her fame increased. Not everyone appreciated Hepburn's outspoken personality, though. In fact, mega-producer David O. Selznick didn't want to cast Hepburn in one of her early roles because he thought the audience wouldn't like her.

He wasn't alone in this opinion, either. In 1952 Time magazine ran a story about Hepburn that covered some of the negative reactions she had during her first years in Hollywood. For example, her agent Myron Selznick at first complained, "My God, are we sticking them $1,500 a week for this?!" And playwright Benn Levy once criticized her stage appearances: "She looks a fright, her manner is objectionable, and she has no talent." Then in 1938, a movie exhibitor branded her "box-office poison." As you may imagine, Hepburn had a few thoughts on the matter.

“I strike people as peculiar in some way, although I don’t quite understand why. Of course, I have an angular face, an angular body and, I suppose, an angular personality, which jabs into people,” she told Time. But director George Cukor — who made The Philadelphia Story with Hepburn — said she actually had a "sub-collegiate idiotic" attitude toward Hollywood at first. Time reported that Hepburn went out of her way to insult people and tell outrageous lies to the press. But as a woman in 1930s-era Hollywood, she may have had good reason to be a little "angular."

When Hepburn starred in her first movie, for instance, she worked with John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement. But behind the scenes, the veteran actor invited her to his dressing room... and tried to seduce her. Hepburn turned him down, saying, "There must be some mistake!" before fleeing the room. Fortunately, the pair remained close. "He never criticized me," Hepburn told Time. "He just shoved me into what I ought to do before the camera. He taught me all that could be poured into one greenhorn in that short time." Yet Hepburn had to overcome classic sexism in Hollywood, even when it came to her wardrobe.

When she was working for RKO Pictures, according to the book Katharine Hepburn: Rebel Chic, Hepburn would wear jeans on set. This was seemingly not acceptable behavior for women at the time, so studio representatives apparently stole her jeans from her dressing room. Hepburn reportedly responded — in characteristic fashion — by threatening "to walk around the lot naked." The star apparently did wander out of her dressing room in her underwear — and that was enough to convince the powers that be to give her back her pants.

Hepburn could, of course, be tricky to deal with. Howard Hawks revealed one telling incident in the book Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride. He said that while filming Bringing Up Baby, Hepburn would continue talking while the crew prepared to shoot scenes. And when the actor didn't stop when asked, Hawks eventually confronted her. "You're acting a good part of a parrot, and if you're going to keep on doing it, we'll just sit here and watch you," he told her. The pair had it out and continued to enjoy the rest of the shoot.

Even with this kind of behind-the-scenes drama, Bringing Up Baby is now a beloved classic. Yet it was snubbed by audiences at the time and only began to become a favorite after being aired on television in the 1950s. This was a particularly tough time for Hepburn, as she had already gained that reputation of being “box-office poison.” Afterward, then, she was faced with starring in a movie she didn’t want to do — so she paid her way out of the contract with her studio, RKO.

Yet things changed with The Philadelphia Story. Hepburn happened to own the movie rights to the play, thanks in part to then-boyfriend Howard Hughes. Hepburn then brought the story to a couple of Hollywood’s biggest producers, Louis B. Mayer and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. "Inside I was nervous, but held firm and told them what I wanted," Hepburn once revealed. "$100,000 for the story and script, $100,000 for myself to star in it, and $10,000 for my commission. The room went quiet. They tried to offer me $175,000, but I refused. I held my nerve." Fortunately, then, the film was a smash.

Riding on the back of that success, Hepburn offered Mayer another property: Woman of the Year. Again, she brought the script to the studio, and again, she got $100,000 for the screenplay and a $10,000 commission. She also apparently urged the producers to hire Spencer Tracy to play her co-star in the rom-com. And this time, he was given the part. The two of them had never met before, but once they did, the sparks flew... well, kind of.

Hepburn was often criticized for being indelicate, as we've seen, but she seemingly saw this as being one of the many "compromises" she had to make to have a thriving life and career. "I put on pants 50 years ago and declared a sort of middle road," she told Barbara Walters in a 1981 interview. "I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to and I ain't afraid of being alone.” And when she worked with Tracy in Woman of the Year, Hepburn did not immediately win over her co-star.

A few years older than Hepburn and with something of a reputation as a philanderer, Tracy wasn't immediately impressed by her. According to the biography Katharine Hepburn by Barbara Leaming, the actress put it to him in their first meeting, "Mr. Tracy, you’re a little short for me." Producer Joseph Mankiewicz replied, "Don't worry. He’ll cut you down to size." Hepburn later said that she "knew right away that I found him irresistible" — but it seemed that Tracy needed some convincing.

As irresistible as a relationship between the two may have seemed to Hepburn, their road to romance was anything but smooth. You see, both Tracy and Hepburn had plenty of baggage. Spencer Tracy wasn't the first man to catch Katharine Hepburn's eye, after all. She'd met businessman Ludlow Ogden Smith when she was only 21 years old. He was so enamored with her that he changed his name to S. Ogden Ludlow because she didn't want a boring name like Kate Smith if they married — and marry, they did.

Hepburn found marital bliss to be elusive, however. After her honeymoon in Bermuda, Hepburn briefly considered buying a farmhouse in Philadelphia. Hepburn eventually came to her senses: "What am I doing? I couldn't live here." She realized that she belonged in New York City and on the stage, and her husband was willing to go along with it. But after six years of marriage, the pair decided to go their separate ways. Ludlow remained close friends with the Hepburn family after the split.

According to the biography Katharine Hepburn, the marriage between Ludlow and Hepburn had been on rocky ground from the beginning. Her mother thought that Hepburn — and the whole Hepburn family — would "run roughshod" over the well-connected young man. Hepburn's brother similarly figured he couldn't cope with his "natural boss" of a sister. And apparently, even Hepburn herself hoped that Ludlow would react more "strongly" to her behavior. But the end only came after Hepburn moved to Hollywood and reportedly began an affair with Leland Hayward.

After her first marriage ended, Hepburn seemingly decided she never wanted to marry again. A particularly memorable quote of hers is, "If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married." She reportedly turned down proposals from various suitors throughout her life, including one from millionaire Howard Hughes. But as Hepburn was an especially private person, very few of her romances off the screen ended up in the gossip columns.

Early in her career, Hepburn reportedly often refused to do press or sign autographs for fans. This earned her the arguably-harsh nickname "Katharine of Arrogance" by members of the media and around Hollywood. But, as the new documentary Call Me Kate revealed, she was also privately insecure. Her nephew, Mundy Hepburn, told The Guardian in May 2023 how she would be wracked with nerves before stage performances: "Now and again she'd puke in the wastebasket because she was so wired and scared and 'Oh my God, what'll they think? I've got to do a good job.'"

And despite a long and lasting career, she apparently saw audiences as her "natural enemy." Yet Hepburn and Tracy starred in nine films together — and the public couldn't get enough of them. And although they kept it quiet, the two stars did have a loving relationship. Not that it was that much of a secret! Most of Hollywood knew that they were a couple. The pair just didn’t acknowledge their love in public despite it being so widely understood.

The stars' not-exactly-secretive relationship lasted for about 27 years. Their relationship wasn't without its problems, however. There's a reason why the couple was so quiet about their romance, and it's partly because Tracy was married throughout their entire relationship. As a strict Irish Roman Catholic, Tracy felt that divorce was out of the question. Throughout Tracy’s career, the star remained married to an actress whom he’d met in the early 1920s. She was Louise Treadwell, who would become the mother of his son John in 1924 — the year after they married.

Soon after the boy turned one, though, his parents found out that he was deaf. Tracy took this to be a sign of divine disapproval of his adultery — but not at that time of his adultery with Hepburn. Before his son was born, Tracy had reportedly been known to stay out all night and visit brothels. He'd caught STIs, it seems, he'd gone on long drunken binges, and he'd had a long affair with actor Loretta Young. Yet he still wouldn't divorce his wife — even for Hepburn.

But he didn't cut things off with Hepburn, either. This is despite their relationship taking a long time to warm up. On the set of Woman of the Year, for instance, Tracy complained to director George Stevens, "I sure as hell walked into a fine situation. Here I find myself doing a picture with a lady and her director." He also used to call Hepburn "the woman" and nothing else. But on screen, the stars were demonstrating the elusive magic of "chemistry."

The two actually starred in nine films together between 1942 and 1967. In several of them, Tracy would take the role of a man full of common sense and decency, with both feet firmly on the ground. Hepburn, conversely, would be a little flighty — hugely intelligent but with emotions that betray her. In these cases, the Tracy character does indeed cut Hepburn's character down to size — and she doesn't seem to mind it. In real life, though, their relationship was not so simple.

When The New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby described the not-so-secret couple, he said that they “so beautifully complemented each other” that their friendship never appeared to involve Hepburn just giving in to Tracy. Instead, he said, it came down to “a matter of understanding and acknowledging each other’s boundaries.” And even though Tracy could be drunken and incredibly mean, people still held affection for the stars. Tracy and Hepburn's contemporaries picked up on their chemistry, too.

Dancing superstar Gene Kelly reminisced on one occasion about Tracy and Hepburn meeting in breaks. According to People, he once said, “They’d just meet and sit on a bench on the lot. They’d hold hands and talk – and everybody left them alone in their little private world.” And in Hepburn's 1991 autobiography, Me, she confessed to undying affection for him. “I loved Spencer Tracy,” she wrote. “I would have done anything for him.” (She only publicly admitted to the affair after Tracy's wife, Louise, passed away in 1983.)

At one point, Hepburn’s biographer A. Scott Berg asked her whether she’d thought of quitting the relationship, and she flatly said that wasn’t an option. The actor responded, “What would be the point? I mean, I loved him. And I wanted to be with him. If I had left, we would both have been miserable.” You might have thought that the studios would fuel the rumors of Hepburn and Tracy’s love affair. But instead, they actually helped keep it quiet.

Perhaps this was done because they felt that the movie audience of the day wouldn’t approve. In any case, the two weren’t a public couple at all. Many may not have known the demons that Tracy was wrestling with, either. Hepburn once called him “tortured,” while his wife, Louise, reportedly said he had “the most volatile disposition [she'd] ever seen … when he’s low, he’s very, very low.” But Hepburn didn't seem to mind: “I wanted him to be happy, safe, comfortable. I liked to wait on him, listen to him, feed him, work for him. I tried not to disturb him."

So despite the strength of their emotion — certainly on Hepburn's side of the equation — the couple kept it away from the public. They did reportedly have a home together, but it was nestled on Cukor’s estate, where he maintained a guesthouse. On paper, the couple retained their own addresses so that it wouldn’t become public knowledge that they were together. They would also ensure that they would never be photographed together, outside of their working commitments.

Besides, Hepburn and her outspoken personality were controversial enough at a time when conservative values reigned supreme. But people did grow fonder of Hepburn, especially as the times changed and her independent ways became more acceptable. Even her pants stopped being quite so objectionable! And with the benefit of hindsight, a lot of her work in the 1930s is now viewed favorably, perhaps thanks to her unique acting style. For one, Hepburn was famous for her use of the American-British hybrid which was the popular mid-Atlantic accent.

Truth be told, she worked tirelessly with a famed New York vocal coach called Frances Robinson-Duff. There was even an article in a 1935 edition of The New York Times that was dedicated to the work Duff did, and how she trained Hepburn to perfect this accent — known as Mid-Atlantic English — early on in her career. But even though the accent may have been partly artificial, her acting risks were all too real...

Over the span of her 60-year career, she demanded to do most of her own stunts. This included the scene in On Golden Pond when she dives into the freezing water — without the use of a wetsuit! The actress was 74 years old at the time and seemingly indestructible. Age couldn't slow her down! Hepburn was always game for risk — even if it ended up hurting her later on. Such was the case with her and Tracy's relationship.

The rumor mill churned for over 25 years with very little information to go off of. One of these rumors claimed that despite her many romances and years-long relationship with Tracy, many people believed that Hepburn was homosexual. In 2015 activist and author Larry Kramer made the following claim to The Hollywood Reporter: “Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were both gay. They were publicly paired together by the studio. Everyone in Hollywood knows this is true, but of course, I haven’t seen it printed anywhere.”

Whatever the truth is, when Tracy got sick later in life, Hepburn helped take care of him until the very end. “I virtually quit work just to be there so that he wouldn’t worry or be lonely,” she once said. And she was there when he finally passed away in 1967. After his death, out of respect for his legal wife and children, she didn't attend his funeral. And when she tried to make amends with his wife, Louise, Hepburn got a surprise.

Hepburn approached his wife and apparently tried to see if the two women could clear the air. But Louise allegedly said, "I thought that you were a rumor!" and the two women never spoke again. Although Hepburn remained respectful to Louise by keeping quiet about her feelings for Tracy while she was still alive. She said in one interview, “I honestly don’t know [why I never left him]. I can only say that I could never have left him. [We] just passed 27 years together in what was to me absolute bliss.”

In 1991, 24 years after Tracy died, Barbara Walters had a conversation with 84-year-old Hepburn, who was promoting her autobiography, Me. The chat queen explained that the actress hadn’t attended Tracy's funeral, and Hepburn admitted that it was because she had not been married to the man. She also admitted, after being prompted by Tracy, that she had never been interested in any other man than Tracy. "I was old, so it didn't matter," she joked.

Hepburn had more to share with Walters, too. The actress told her that she’d never viewed the film that they finished shortly before he passed, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. The star explained to Walters, “The memories were too painful.” It's even been said that when Tracy delivers a moving speech toward the end of the film, Hepburn can be seen shedding real tears in the background. But with the painful memories came joyful memories, too, as Hepburn later revealed.

Hepburn left no doubt about her feelings for Tracy when she penned her autobiography later in life. She wrote in Me, “It was a unique feeling I had for [Tracy].” She also revealed that she knew from a young age that she never wanted to have children. In her own words, she was a “very selfish human being" and she was sure this quality would've made her a terrible mother. And so, Hepburn picked up the pieces left by Tracy's death on her own.

And she had plenty of time to do so! Hepburn lived well into her 90s, but she didn't always see her longevity as a blessing. Hepburn had to witness the death of most of her family and friends. She is quoted as saying, "They’re all dead... It’s amazing how many of them have died, isn’t it?” But Hepburn's record-breaking career proves how she wasn't just a survivor, but a trailblazer. You see, Hepburn won four Best Actress Oscars during her years as an actor.

She holds the record for most wins of all time. However, she never showed up to a ceremony to accept an award, instead saying, "My prize is my work." Illustrious career aside, some would say that Hepburn's best years were spent with Tracy. The actress said as much as she entered the final months of her life. Just before she passed in 2003, she shared with Berg her last word about it, saying, “We just loved each other. [There is] nothing more to say.”

But the new documentary about Hepburn, Call Me Kate, revealed that there was still plenty of footage and audio of the star that the public had not seen or heard before. It should come as no surprise, however, that the new bits of information are not scandalous accounts of her affair with Tracy but more modest admissions about things the public already knew. Still, it's always fascinating to hear first-hand from the people who made headlines for all of their lives.