Across the Page: Creating Self
by Heather Aimee O'Neill, December 5, 2006

This month, two books take on two icons of lesbianism: Katharine Hepburn and the coming-out tale. William J. Mann's revealing biography of Katharine Hepburn uncovers the legendary actress' sexuality, while award-winning writer Judy Doenges' first novel grapples with a girl's coming-of-age and coming-out.

Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, by William J. Mann (Henry Holt)

“I was a star before I knew how to be a star,” Katharine Hepburn once said. “And then I thought, well, I've got to learn how to be a star.”

William J. Mann's engrossing new biography, Kate, explores the before and after of Hepburn's rise to fame by systematically challenging many of the myths that surround the American icon, from her family and sexuality to her relationship with Spencer Tracy.

Mann holds many people responsible for the creation and preservation of these myths: Hepburn's agent, Leland Hayward; studio executives; friends and family; the press; and, of course, the public. But though “generations of willing journalists provided able assistance,” Mann alleges, “the Hepburn legend was chiefly maintained by none other than the lady herself.”

Kate traces Hepburn through her various transformations — from a young tomboy who shaved her head and called herself Jimmy to an insecure college student struggling with acne and depression, and finally to the dynamic screen legend she worked her entire life to construct.

By the 1930s, when she was a fledgling actress, Hepburn realized she would have to “change, rethink, [and] reinvent” herself if she were going to make it in the celluloid world of Hollywood, and reconstructing her family was one of the first steps she took. Studio executives did not simply hide unsavory facts about Hepburn's kin; they furnished her with an entirely new set of relatives. In this fabricated family, Hepburn grew up extraordinarily wealthy with a banker father. In truth, Hepburn's father was a doctor and pioneering advocate for the treatment of venereal diseases.

Her mother, one of the more fascinating figures in Kate, was a suffragist and later worked for women's reproductive rights. But, as Mann explains, “rich bankers and their heiresses were far better copy for a Depression-era readership than a venereal disease specialist and radical feminist.”

The real story of Hepburn's clan surfaced finally as she became more famous. But even then, a savvy marketing campaign painted a picture of a Bohemian lifestyle and family that did not necessarily reflect the whole truth.

Hepburn was devoted to her father, but he was a notoriously stern man who “demanded the moon and never seemed satisfied even when it was delivered.” When Hepburn first told him that she wanted to become an actress, he slapped her across the face for her arrogance and vanity. She ultimately forgave her father, though his lack of support served as a constant motivator.

Despite the difficulties in their complex relationship, Hepburn identified more with her father than with her mother. Growing up as a girl was “a torment,” she said, and even as an adult she maintained many of the qualities inherent in her childhood alter ego, Jimmy. Indeed, Mann writes, “she didn't grow up to be her mother's kind of woman. Rather, Katharine Hepburn grew up to be her father's kind of man.”

But if Hepburn shared her father's temperament, it was her mother who ultimately gave her the freedom to explore her gender and sexuality. Traveling with her mother into Greenwich Village for meetings with political groups such as the feminist organization Heterodoxy, and encountering figures like Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger and Amy Lowell, had a profound impact on Hepburn. From an early age, Hepburn was exposed to the fluidity and diversity of sexuality, and her mother “explained homosexuality with a surprisingly modern, nonjudgmental approach.”

It is clear that Hepburn had several intimate relationships with women. This was not a secret in her immediate circle. Mann writes, “To James Prideaux [a friend], a gay man, she declared, ‘You like men. I like women.'”. However, Mann argues, her identity was not necessarily tied up in her sexuality. “Instead, it was defined by her sense of gender — which, as she told Liz Smith, was ‘not female, certainly.'”

Hepburn surrounded herself with a “community of women” from college on, including friends and lovers. Laura Harding was one of the most important relationships in her life, yet they wouldn't dare use the word “lesbian” because at the time the term meant “mannish.” Mann claims that Hepburn “and Laura weren't lesbians because the word meant something very specific to her. Leland Hayward was a beau because beaux were gentlemen escorts, not necessarily men with whom she was in love.”

Early in Hepburn's career, when an RKO official asked Harding to identify herself, she irreverently declared that she was “Miss Hepburn's husband.” The gathering crowd laughed, but Hepburn would soon discover that it was exactly this kind of thing she'd have to avoid. It was a lesson, Mann explains, she was quick to learn.

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