After her bright entry into the firmament of Hollywood in the early Thirties, including an Oscar for Best Actress in Morning Glory (1933). Katharine Hepburn's career took a dramatic plunge. Commercial failures such as Sylvia Scarlett, Mary of Scotland, A Woman Rebels (all 1936) and Quality Street (1937), left her and RKO producer Pandro S. Berman despondent. Despite the overwhelming popularity if Stage Door (1937) and the critical acclaim the delightful comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938) received, Harry Brandt, Presitent of the Independant Theatre Owners of America, pronounced her 'box-office poison'. Hepburn decided that her career needed a new direction, so she bought herself out of her contract at RKO.

The Forties, despite a 'flat' period in the middle of the decade, were to re-establish her position as a top-rank performer, defining the two major qualities which may be seen as informing both her films and her status as a star - her image as an 'independant' lady and her commitment to left-of-centre politics.

A mind of her own

Her independant image dates back to 1933 and her second film, Christopher Strong; the compromises which her roles in this and subsequent films demanded were often wholly subverted by her strong, vivacious personality. Bringing Up Baby, however, was the first of her films to show that her headstrong independance could be a major asset; she and Cary Grant went on to make Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), which confirmed her comic talent.

men of boys town
(1941)

Her next film, Woman of the Year (1942), turned out to be crucial both for her career and her private life. It marked the beginning of her long relationship with the picture's co-star, Spencer Tracy, and was a forerunner of the pair's later and better known comedies on the equality of the sexes, Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952).

The meaning of love

These two films, together with The African Queen (1951) in which Hepburn starred with Humphrey Bogart, are her most interesting explorations of women's place in society. Not only do they directly confront the issue of the potentialities and role of women as the equals of men and the possibilities for heterosexual relationships under those circumstances, but they do so without unduly compromising their heroines' struggles for self-fulfilment with lame 'male-chauvinist' endings.

In addition, Pat and Mike and The African Queen cast Hepburn as a woman who does not have any advantages of wealth, education or social position - elements which had coloured her earlier roles as an independant woman in films like Christopher Strong (1933), Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelhia Story with a fantastic quality. In Pat and Mike Hepburn plays a sportswoman whose confidence is completely destroyed by her fiance. A small-time sports promoter (Tracy) treats her as an individual and builds up her belief in herself; eventually they fall in love. In The African Queen, a rough, alcoholic, Canadian steamer captain ( (Bogart) finds himself fleeing the Germans with a virgin spinster (Hepburn). Their growing love and respect are intelligently and movingly represented. The film avoids any suggestion that her sexual awakening is a 'gift' bestowed on her by Bogart, but represents each of the protagonists as giving and learning in equal measure.

Hepburn's nine films with Tracy seem to form a central and seperate part of her career, to the point where her other work appears peripheral. After Woman of the Year they made Keeper of the Flame (1942), in which Hepburn played her first directly political role. As Christine Forrest, the widow of a national figure, she tries to protect her former husband's good name from the investigations of a journalist (Tract) who correctly suspects him of having been a fascist. The film was aimed at alerting the USA to fascism at home, but sadly it is melodramatic and liberal in the worst sense. Frank Capra's State of the Union was another political film, in which Hepburn helps her husband, a presidential candidate (Tracy), recognize that he is being manipulated by crooked politicians.

dr. jekyll & mr. hyde
(1941)

Rude awakenings

After Pat and Mike, Hepburn's career was largely a matter of fine performances in mediocre films. In Summer Madness (1955), she plays a repressed spinster who finds love with Rossano Brazzi in Venice; in The Rainmaker (1956) she plays Lizzie, another unhappy, small-town spinster who meets Starbuck (Burt Lancaster). In his biography of Hepburn, Kate, Charles Higham wrote that Starbuck's:

'...physical assurance and powerfully masculine charm break through her protective shell. Starbuck promises to bring rain to the parched soil of the southwestern state, and his promise is metaphorically fulfilled when he enriches Lizzie's sterile and sexless existence.'