What a Beaut!: KATHARINE HEPBURN (1907-2003)

Star. Icon. Fighter. Lover. Ferociously feminine actress. In her movies and by her example, she defined what a woman could dare and do

One afternoon in the early '70s, Katharine Hepburn and two friends entered a loge box in the London theater where Harold Pinter's Old Times was playing. Hepburn soon went prone on the floor of the box to get a closer view of the play--her chin in her cupped hands, her eyes rapt as a schoolgirl's on Christmas morning. That day the laser beam of Hepburn's gaze outshone the spotlights and, nearly, the actors onstage. Did people notice her? Oh, yes: Hepburn was the show, and she knew it. Not for nothing was her autobiography titled Me.

She always had that imperious...

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