Hepburn's next MGM film brought Spencer Tracy — into her life, with whom she began a relationship that lasted over two decades, until his death in Although separated from his wife, Tracy never divorced her. His romance with Hepburn was a quiet, tender, and private affair.
In the s Hepburn interrupted her career to care for the ailing Tracy. They were a team professionally as well as personally. Not all of these films were commercially or critically successful, but whether comedies or dramas, they were provocative and interesting, especially for their emphasis on the personal interaction between the sexes. Both Tracy and Hepburn played strong characters in these films, but neither was forced to give in to the other. Hepburn had been married in to the social and well-to-do Ludlow Ogden Smith, who had changed his name to Ogden Ludlow because she did not want to be Kate Smith.
The marriage actually lasted about three weeks before the couple separated, but they were not divorced until They remained friendly afterwards. Among her other romantic attachments in the s was the well-known businessman and millionaire Howard Hughes — Hepburn was not particularly lucky in her choice of work after the beginning of the s.
Except for a few notable exceptions, such as On Golden Pond , the roles did not make good use of her considerable talents. Her television debut in as the mother in a version of Tennessee Williams' — moving The Glass Menagerie was not favorable.
While apparently a great deal of fun for the stars on location, a pairing with the rugged action star John Wayne — in Rooster Cogburn proved to be lifeless. She had some success playing the noted French designer Coco Chanel — in a Broadway musical that opened in ; Coco had a long run but did not make impressive use of her capabilities.
Several later Broadway undertakings proved to be failures. Although Hepburn suffered some significant injuries in a automobile accident, and illnesses usual to one of her years, she golfed, cycled, and swam in the sea into her nineties.
And he claims he actually had a sexual relationship with Tracy. In all encounters, Tracy typically drank himself into a stupor. They were not in the bed department together at all. Meanwhile, Bowers also reveals in the film how he would find sexual partners for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor when they visited Los Angeles, according to Vanity Fair. Tracy may not have been comfortable in his own skin, but he certainly appeared relaxed in front of a camera.
Ford, for his part, did everything to put Tracy at ease. Ford was a dark, formidable figure with heavy eyebrows and a large aquiline nose. Her thick black hair was knotted in a huge bun at the nape of the neck.
She wore a slash of crimson lipstick. Ford always seemed a little frightened of Mary. Rough-and-tumble fellows such as John Wayne tiptoed around her. Although Mary had grown up a poor relation shuffled between family members in New Jersey, she made much ado of her aristocratic North Carolina background. She accused her husband of being weak and unmanly. That had made it problematic for them to marry in the Roman Catholic Church, which, to a devout Catholic such as Ford, meant that they were not really married at all.
At times, Ford regarded this as a shame and disgrace to them both; at other times, the lack of a Catholic ceremony offered a ray of hope that someday he might escape the unhappy marriage once and for all. She appeared with a touch of lipstick, her hair parted on the side and pulled straight back off her face.
Ford marveled at her ability to seem sophisticated one moment, like a child of 8 or 10 the next. Years later, Ford and George Cukor would often joke about which director had really discovered Hepburn. Ford may have seen her first, but it had been Cukor who, on the basis of his screen test, persuaded David Selznick to bring Hepburn to Hollywood to make A Bill of Divorcement.
By the time she worked with Ford, on Mary of Scotland in , she had made eight other pictures and was a major star who had already won her first Academy Award, for Morning Glory in With actresses, Ford tended to be courtly. If a man used vulgar language in front of a woman, Ford would instantly banish him from the set. Yet at times he could hardly conceal his lack of pleasure in directing women. Ordinarily at lunchtime he would disappear to a portable dressing room, where he took off his shirt and snoozed for 45 minutes.
Hepburn, in jodhpurs, sat at his side. They joked, sang, told stories, baited, teased, and insulted each other mercilessly. He loved that she was irreverent and violently opinionated. He respected her intelligence and thirst for knowledge about every aspect of filmmaking.
The Araner was very special to Ford; he had grown up around ships in Maine and loved the sea. When a film was done, Ford sometimes stocked the Araner with cases of Irish whiskey and sailed to Mexico. He hired a mariachi band to follow as he made the rounds of whorehouses, where he drank and soaked in the atmosphere.
Eventually, when he was too drunk and sick to go ashore, he would order the band to play continuously on deck or in the mahogany-paneled main saloon. For days on end, he lay alone in a tiny, cramped cabin, preferring that to the master suite, whose ornate fourposter marriage bed he usually assigned to John Wayne or some other pal.
That day, Hepburn wore a white T-shirt under a navy cardigan sweater and brief navy shorts with a white stripe down each side. Except for a trace of lipstick, she wore no makeup. Chin-length hair blew back off her face as she sat cross-legged on the polished deck.
Ford perched in a chair as Hepburn vigorously massaged his feet. Life with Dr. Hepburn had also taught another lesson; watching her mother, Kate had learned to defer to the male.
Ford was a profoundly unhappy man—and stubbornly self-destructive. In his doctor had diagnosed an enlarged liver and other symptoms attributable to alcohol. Ford drank in search of oblivion. He was a periodic alcoholic who exercised control over when he hit the bottle: never during a picture, always after. Ford religiously went on a binge when he finished a movie. But Mary of Scotland would be different. By the time the day trip on the Araner ended, Hepburn and Ford had discovered another shared passion, the sea.
Hepburn wanted Ford to experience the Fenwick, Connecticut, waterfront where she had spent her summers growing up. Vowing not to disappear to Mexico with the boys, he promised to accompany her. John Ford was in love. When Ford completed work on Mary of Scotland on April 23, he and Hepburn headed to New York, where she met with the Theatre Guild to discuss appearing in a stage version of Jane Eyre in the —37 season. When Hepburn signed a contract, she anticipated that after a Broadway run Ford might do a film of the play with her in the starring role.
Hepburn were charmed by the dashing director. But he did not sleep with her. From the first, he made clear that he was not interested in an affair. He wanted marriage and a life together. Before he returned to California, Ford wanted to stop in Portland, Maine, to see his ailing year-old father, a retired saloonkeeper.
John Ford until I die. Kate revered Ford as a filmmaker; Mary never gave up hope that he would find a manlier occupation. Ford responded to the threat of divorce with a threat of her own. Jack could take Patrick, 15, but Barbara must remain with her.
Ford and Hepburn saw each other nearly every day at the studio, and he spent many happy evenings with her at her home on Angelo Drive. Yet Ford, veering wildly between euphoria and despair, showed no sign of moving out of the house he shared with Mary and the children. Hepburn, for her part, appeared certain that the postponement was only temporary. Mary turned her down. Ford had always seemed most at peace when he was working, but his next picture at RKO, The Plough and the Stars , starring Barbara Stanwyck and Barry Fitzgerald, was a profoundly unhappy experience.
Ford did something he had never done while he was working: he went on a bender. Mary and the children were away when Cliff Reid, the producer, discovered Ford in a drunken stupor at home.
Reid appealed to Hepburn. There was no one else Ford would listen to. Hepburn rushed to Odin Street. Usually the home behind the white picket fence would have been off-limits, but Mary was gone, so she let herself in. She found Ford in dismal condition.
With difficulty she got him up and out of the house. She drove to RKO, where she spirited Ford into her dressing room. There she forced a potentially lethal mixture of whiskey and castor oil down his throat.
He became very ill, and said he felt as though he were going to die. Had she, with the best will in the world, driven him to a new pitch of self-destructiveness?
Ford was desperate to get away when he Finished The Plough and the Stars. This time there was no suggestion that Hepburn accompany him. When he sailed the Araner to Hawaii, no doubt he sincerely hoped to reach some decision on what to do about his marriage.
And there is every evidence that he kept hoping to find a way for them to be together. Hepburn had serious problems of her own at the studio. Although RKO regarded her as one of its most valuable properties, her career had begun a distinct downward slide.
Hepburn provoked powerful responses. In films such as Morning Glory, Little Women, and Alice Adams, she had a strong appeal, but when audiences responded negatively, as they did to Spitfire, The Little Minister, and Break of Hearts, they did so with passion. Margaret Sullavan took the stage role Hayward had promised Hepburn.
On the rebound, he began an affair with her. When Sullavan became pregnant, Hayward proposed marriage. Hepburn, even at the height of their relationship, had shown no sustained inclination to marry Hayward.
This contrasted markedly with her attitude toward John Ford. You could have married him if you had wanted to. It was true. Hepburn, for her part, was too protective of Ford to suggest otherwise. In Boston on tour with Jane Eyre in January , Hepburn, out of loneliness, accepted a dinner invitation from Howard Hughes, 31 years old but already a millionaire film producer and daredevil aviator.
Hepburn had known Hughes was after her since he landed his airplane on a field near the Sylvia Scarlett location. Cary Grant introduced his friend to Hepburn. But she had encouraged the Casanova neither then nor when he landed on the golf course of the Bel-Air Country Club, where she was playing. Hughes emerged with his golf bag and insisted on finishing the nine with her.
His persistence paid off in Boston, where Jane Eyre played for two weeks. Hepburn dined with Hughes several nights in a row. Tall, stooped, and rawboned, Hughes had dark hair, pale skin, and gleaming white teeth. Hepburn, then 29, joked that he looked rather like John the Baptist. He was as taciturn as Hepburn was talkative. She attributed his shyness to the fact that he was partially deaf. Only when Hughes talked of airplanes did his eyes bum and his language verge on the sensual.
He was weeks away from an attempt to break his own transcontinental air record. He called his sleek silver-and-blue racer the Winged Bullet. Knowing how easily wounded Ford was, Hepburn had to have realized that newspaper accounts of her romance with Hughes would provoke a powerful response. Whether Ford would show his feelings was another matter.
While touring the play, she wrote many drafts of a letter to him. Hepburn made more than 30 films from up until her death in Hepburn still dabbled in theater after becoming a movie star and once took on the role of Coco Chanel in a Broadway musical. She earned a Tony nomination for her performance. As far as her personal life, she never had any children as she believed having a family would interfere with her career obligations.
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