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Katherine Hepburn

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A Brief Biography

      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. Sheold kate 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.

  

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McCarthyism

   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.”

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Katherine Hepburn: More Powerful Than the Film Industry

   After World War II, accusations of support of Communismspreadacross the United States, affecting the lives of the citizens. Dozensof people were jailed, hundreds fled the country and thousands of peoplelost theirjobs as a result of the allegations.  Almost everyone livedin fear ofbecoming publicly condemned and humiliated or losing their jobs. Manylives were ruined at the time, yet some people managed to surpass thetroublesof being blacklisted from their jobs.  In the days of McCarthyismandthe Red Scare, Katherine Hepburn, a leading actress of the 1930’s,wasblacklisted from Hollywood, yet she rose past the accusations of herassociationwith Communism and continued her career, allowing the blacklistto only leavea small dent in her career.
    The Communist fear reached Hollywood in 1940 with investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and remained a topic ofconcern there until about 1961. Untrusting Americans were concerned thatCommunists were keenly slipping their ideas into movies to prey on unsuspectingviewers.   At this time, a person’s ability to take part in themaking of motion pictures greatly depended on whether or not your name appearedon a list of suspected Communist activists and sympathizers. However, theblacklists did not originate at this time; they had been used as a tool byemployersto filter their workers since the beginning of American history(“50Years).  In the McCarthy Era, American people became obsessedwith theidea of stopping the spread of Communism and a craze of punishmentsand blacklistsswept the nation.
   Sadly, most of the people accused had nothing to do with Communism, and their only real “crime” was having liberal ideals or being advocates of free speech.  Katherine Hepburn was one of these people.  She first became a target of anti-Communist threats in 1947 as a result of her outspoken support of liberal causes.  For the first thirty years of her life she had little to do with politics, but in 1947 she held a great distaste for President Harry Truman and in 1948 she became a activist inthe campaign to elect former Vice President Henry Wallace of the ProgressiveParty to the top position in the Unites States government (Klingaman 170).  At an anticensorship and pro-Wallace rally in Los Angelas, Hepburn made a defining speech introducing Wallace and addressing the topic of censorship.  A man named Edward G. Robinson was originally supposed to make the speech, but Hepburn took over for the reasons she describes:
“He’s Jewish and very left of center,so he wouldcertainly be suspected b y that committee [the House CommitteeonUn-AmericanActivities].  My ancestors were ‘on the Mayflower’. There’s nothing that they can tack onto me.  I’ve neverbeena member of any organization of any kind in my whole life.  I’llmake the speech” (Hepburn 220).
Yet the headlines that called out to the people in the newspapers afterherspeech were cruel.  They immediately put Hepburn in the Communist category. The speech became an important aspect of her coming underinvestigation bythose fearing world domination of Communism.  She repliedto the attacksfrom the newspaper journalists by simply pointing out thatthere has beena policy of freedom of speech in American “for years- now, then andalways” (221). 
   After that speech, Hepburn’s name resurfaced numerous times in the House Committee on Un-American Activities trials that were being held to jail people for the alleged Communist involvement, although she was never tried herself.  However, in North Carolina an audience stonedone of her films because her actions and supposed involvement.  Hollywood executives, fearing more adverse public reactions to films involving Communist sympathizers, subsequently blacklisted Hepburn, banning her from the film industry and almost ruining her career (Klingman 171).  As in many cases, their major concern was their audience and the revenue it generated, andin turn, instead of risking loosing their audience, they let go of a majorfilm star (“50 Years”).
   Research indicated that over 500 people were blacklisted from the entertainment industry alone (“50 Years”).  Blacklists such as these ruined the careers of many, yet Hepburn surpassed this setback.  She continued to speak out against suppression of First Amendment rights.  When asked why she made that fateful speech that brought her into the havoc, she nobly explained why she did what she did. 
“I though somebody should make that speech and I though that somebody should be me.  I think the situation is idiotic and out of hand.  People are being crucified who can’t afford it, and I can afford it” (Hepburn 220).
She never wavered in her standpoint on censorship and the freedom of speech and because she was a strong person, she lived past her blacklisting andlater returned to the film industry. 
Interestingly, the film industry had made her as star, banned her and than later accepted her back and made large sums of money due to her acting.  A media that once supported her was quick to abandon her.  AlthoughHepburn in turn could have turned her back on the film industry, she insteadput aside her contempt and put her career first, a wise choice on her part,becauseshe proved to be a successful actress until she was too old to workanymore.
   Katherine Hepburn is still alive today at the age of 94.  She made many more movies after she returned to Hollywood.  While she is frail now, she is in good spirits still (“Kate Hepburn”).  For the rest of her life she remained a strong believer in American freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment.  She is living proofthat although the media can attempt to destroy a person’s career, itis not more powerful than the person is themself.

kate standing   Works Cited
“50 Years: SAG Remembers the Blacklist).  Jan 1998.  22 Apr.2002. 
    http://www.sag.com/blacklist.html

Hepburn, Katherine.  Me: Stories of My Life.  New York: AlfredA           Knopf, Inc., 1991.

Klingman, William K.  Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era.  New York:     Facts on File, Inc.,1996.

Travis, Neal.  “Kate Hepburn: Tell Everyone I’m Doing Fine”  The           New York Post.  16 May 2000.
  
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