The Real Kate by Charlotte Chandler

Drawing on a series of recordings over many years, beginning in the mid-1970s, acclaimed biographer Charlotte Chandler has written the most intimate and personal biography ever published of Hollywood legend, Katharine Hepburn. Introduced by George Cukor, who directed Hepburn in films such as The Philadelphia Story, and Adam's Rib, Chandler socialised with Hepburn at the Cukor estate, allowing Chandler to tape their conversations, during which Hepburn spoke candidly about her personal and professional lives: finding the body of her adored older brother, an apparent suicide at fifteen, and assuming his birthday, even his name, as her own; intimate details of her marriage and divorce from Ludlow Ogden Smith, ‘ Luddy’ ; and her affair with Howard Hughes. She said that she enjoyed diving nude off the wings of his seaplane when they went swimming together. Her warmest recollections were of her twenty-seven-year affair with Spencer Tracy. Including the huge family influence that shaped Hepburn’ s personality, and including interviews with many of the stars that worked with Hepburn over the years, Katharine Hepburn: A Personal Biography is a fascinating, delightful, and personal book that brings readers as close as possible to the real Katharine Hepburn. Charlotte Chandler is the author of several biographies of actors and directors, including Groucho Marx, Alfred Hitchcock and Bette Davies all of whom she interviewed extensively.

Charlotte Chandler, 2011

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Paperback

349 pages

13.8 x 2.5 x 19.9 cm