Katherine Hepburn
Katherine Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907, in Hartford,
Connecticut. She was the eldest of six children of Thomas Hepburn, a successful
doctor, and Katharine Houghton Hepburn, a feminist and activist of women’s
rights. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania in 1928.
After college, Hepburn decided to pursue an acting career. Within a short
period of time she made her stage debut in the production of The Czarinain
Baltimore. Shortly after, she landed a small part in the short-lived Broadway
play Night Hostess (1928). After a few years of starring in supporting roles,
she earned the lead role as Antiope in the play The Warrior’s Husband
(1932). Her career took off from there. She was cast opposite JohnBarrymorre
A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and later went on to star in LittleWoman
(1933), Morning Glory (1933). She won her first Academy Awardfor Best Actress
for her portrayal of Eva Lovelace in Morning Glory.
Hepburn returned to Broadway in the 1934 production The Lake.
In the 1930’s she acted in the successful Alice Adams (1935) and the
box-office disasters Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and Mary of Scotland (1936).She
later collaborated with screenwriter Philip Barry to create the playThe Philadelphia
Story, a Broadway play in which she starred in the leadrole in the 1938 production.
Two years later, she reprised the role in thefilm version, which costarred
Cary Grant and James Stewart. The movie wassuccessful at the box office,and
it earned Hepburn an Academy Award nomination.
In 1942, Hepburn acted in the film Woman of the Year.
This was her first film with Spencer Tracy, and man she had a long running
affair with and acted in many more movies with, including Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner? (1967) with showed Tracy in his final dramatic performance
and won Hepburn another Oscar for Best Actress. She
later won a third Academy award for the A Lion in the Winter (1968).
The next year, she returned to Broadway, performing in
the musical Coco.
In the 1970s, Hepburn starting working in television, appearing in many projects,
including The Glass Menagerie (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975), and The
Corn is Green (1978). In 1981, the then 74-year-old actress earned her fourth
Academy Award for her performance in the drama On Golden Pond. To this
day she holds the record for the most Academy Awards in this category.
In 1991, she published her autobiography Me: Stories of MyLife.
After a 13-year absence from the film industry, Hepburn returnedto the movie
set in the 1994 story Love Affair
In 1991, Hepburn published an autobiography — Me: Stories of My Life.
Today she lives on the beachfront in Connecticut. Although frail, she isstillalive
at the age of 95.
Between 1946 and 1954 the United
States lived in fear of the spread of Communism. At the time,
the government led a crusade against the influence of Communism on the American
lifestyle. On of these leaders was Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy
made himself known to the country in 1950 when he made his infamous speech
making accusations against the Truman administration for harboring Communists
and Communist sympathizers within the local government. When the Republican
Party gained control of Congress in 1953 McCarthy was allowed the power to
make reckless accusations against whomever he classified as a Communist.
He used unidentified sources as evidence and many people were tried because
they were thought to be Communist or a Communist sympathizer. People’s
careers were ruined by cases that contained no valuable evidence. Americans
lived in fear of loosing their jobs if they became one of the accused.
Eventually his tactics began to go under the investigations. In 1954
the senator accused Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens and his aides
of spreading Communist influence. The army in turn accused McCarthy
of making irresponsible accusations. From then on his credibility began
to decline and when the Democratic Party gained control of the Congress in
1954, McCarthy’s influence on the Senate began to decline. He
continued to make accusations, but his power declined steadily until hisdeath
in 1957.
The term “McCarthyism was first used by Herbert Block
in an editorial cartoon in 1950. McCarthy’s continued attacks
gave rise to the popularity of the word. The term was first officially
defined in the American College Dictionary in 1954 as “(1) public accusations
of disloyalty… unsupported by truth, (2) unfairness in investigative
technique.”
Katherine Hepburn: More Powerful Than the Film Industry