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Her co-star in Woman of the Year was Spencer Tracy. When they met, on the set, Kate said coolly: "I'm afraid I'm a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy." He replied: "Don't worry, Miss Hepburn, I'll cut you down to my size." In spite of these tough words, both spent the first days studying each other's films—Kate in one projection room, Tracy in another. When shooting started on Woman of the Year, Producer Joe Mankiewicz was puzzled. The strident Hepburn delivery was unaccountably soft and mumbled, the Tracy toughness was strangely polished. "There they were," says Mankiewicz, "imitating each other." Kate and Tracy went on to make five other films together and to become fast friends.
Fiery Speech. Kate's rollercoaster career eased into a second decline. It dipped to the vanishing point when she ran afoul of the Un-American Activities Committee because she made a fiery speech of protest when Candidate Henry Wallace was barred from using the Hollywood Bowl for a campaign address. But, as usual, Kate came back up faster than she went down.
Her friends say that the past ten years have mellowed Kate. She no longer has head-on collisions with producers, reporters and autograph hunters. Director George Stevens thinks she is misunderstood: "She's rude, but no more than any other woman who's definite. She just says things without adding that grace note." Director George Cukor thinks the important thing about Kate is that, whatever she does, she's prepared to take the consequences. "It's a peculiar thing," notes Cukor, "but the movie audience is hostile to Kate at the start of a picture. You can almost feel the hostility. By the middle of the picture they're usually sympathetic and, by the end, they're rooting for her."
That, in a way, is the story of her life. Hollywood, which detested Kate at first sight, now gives her the ultimate compliment of calling her by her first name. In Hollywood, "Darryl" means Zanuck, "Hedda" means Hopper, and "Kate" means Hepburn. And she has a deeper, if quieter, claim to fame. Her strongest boosters have always been the backstage crews and supporting players. She usually knows every technician's name and most of his personal problems.
Bathroom Wall. When she is in Manhattan, Kate lives in a comfortable, eleven-room house in the East 40s. With its narrow, steep stairs, white-painted walls and serviceable colonial antiques, it has a New England look. There are fireplaces on every floor and the house overflows with well-thumbed books. One wall of her bathroom—where she spends much of her time bathing—is covered with photographs of her good-looking family. Her mother died last year. Her younger sisters, Marion and Margaret, are married and live close to Hartford. Her brother Robert is a doctor whose practice is in Hartford, and brother Dick lives part of the year in New York and writes plays. Her brother Tom died in his teens.
The house is run by a stocky Irishman, white-haired, 52-year-old Charles Newhill, a former boxer who has worked for Kate for 20 years. He was Kate's bodyguard in her more strenuous days, and now functions as chauffeur and trusted retainer.