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CNN Live At Daybreak

Remembering the First Lady of Cinema

Aired June 30, 2003 - 05:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Family, friends and fans are remembering the so-called first lady of cinema today. Katherine Hepburn has died. She died at her childhood home in Connecticut on Sunday. She was 96 years old.
As CNN's Bruce Burkhardt reports, Hepburn personified the modern woman, on and off screen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "MORNING GLORY")

KATHERINE HEPBURN: I'll play any part that appeals to me for $20. But I'll never, under any circumstances, play any part with which I don't feel a sincere congeniality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 1933, it was Katherine Hepburn's third movie in Hollywood, "Morning Glory," and it won her the first of her record four Oscars. In it, she portrays a naive but confident young actress who has no doubts about her future stardom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "MORNING GLORY")

HEPBURN: You're talking to the greatest actress in the world and I'm going to prove it to you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Though she would later astound us with her range, this was typecasting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "MORNING GLORY")

HEPBURN: Just watch me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NATASHA RICHARDSON, ACTRESS: Here she was, this sort of very independent, strong woman striding around Hollywood in pants. And at the same time she was, you know, intensely feminine.

BURKHARDT: In a town where the pants in the family had always been worn by men, Katherine Hepburn, in her own charming way, took charge. BARBARA LEAMING, HEPBURN BIOGRAPHER: She's important, yes, as an actress. But her significance goes way beyond whether or not this performance was good or that performance was good and whether she was a good actress or not. She became the symbol of the modern woman who believed that she could do anything, that everything was possible.

ROGER EBERT, FILM CRITIC: Echoes of her legacy can be seen in the work that was done a little bit later by people like Jane Fonda or some of Cher's roles, Sally Field, where you have women who go in and change the system or challenge the system. Katherine Hepburn helped to popularize that kind of woman, as opposed to just the romantic or the passive woman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "BRINGING UP BABY")

HEPBURN: Will you get off my running board?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my running board.

HEPBURN: All right, honey, stay there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Her independence, her feisty spirit, traits that she came by honestly. Born in 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, she was one of six children in a well-to-do New England family. Her father, a doctor of urology, and her mother, a pioneering leader in women's rights, fighting for the vote and later for birth control. It was an unorthodox upbringing. Of Hepburn's mother, "Life" magazine wrote in 1939, "Mrs. Thomas Norval Hepburn believes in the control of children before birth and nothing thereafter."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "LITTLE WOMEN")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You love those arms stealing around you.

HEPBURN: I'd like to see anybody try it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Growing up with three older brothers, Hepburn was something of a tomboy, which may explain why her favorite movie was "Little Women," in which she played the tomboy, Jo March.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "LITTLE WOMEN")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now I've got you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: But her childhood was not without tragedy. It was she who discovered her older brother hanging dead from a rafter, a suspected suicide. But the family always said it was a prank gone bad. Hepburn went on to graduate from Bryn Mawr in 1928, not a college known for turning out actresses. And this scene was America's first glimpse of Katherine Hepburn, in the movie "Bill of Divorcement." She went on to make another 42 movies, winning four Oscars and 12 nominations, playing a diverse range of characters, from costarring with a leopard and Cary Grant in a movie that helped put the screwball into comedy --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "BRINGING UP BABY")

HEPBURN: Oh, oh, oh. Do something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: "Bringing Up Baby."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "BRINGING UP BABY")

HEPBURN: Well, get behind me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am behind you.

HEPBURN: Well, get closer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't get any closer. Now are you ready? Now be calm. Left foot first.

HEPBURN: All right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: To portraying an uptight minister's sister in "African Queen."

LEAMING: I think probably the closest to what she actually was is the character she plays in "The African Queen." There's a kind of clumsiness and vulnerability and incredible grace that Houston captured. He got her bravery, he got her courage, he got her hunger for experience.

BURKHARDT: But it wasn't all successes. The Hollywood Critics Association at one point called her "box office poison" and there were complaints about her tinny voice. She lost the part of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind" because producer David Selznick thought she lacked sex appeal. As usual, she fought back and bought the rights to "The Philadelphia Story" so she could play the lead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "THE PHILADELPHIA STORY")

HEPBURN: Now, I'm to be examined, undressed and generally humiliated at 15 cents a copy. And you, you -- you're loving it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: In an era when studio moguls controlled everything, Katherine Hepburn fought them tooth and nail, even negotiating her own contract. But it was her next film, "Woman of the Year," that proved to be the most pivotal of her life. It was in this film that she met Spencer Tracy, an intense love affair that her biographer believes had its roots in her brother's suicide.

LEAMING: And the rest of her life, if you look at it, she finds one man after another who needs her, men who are bent on destroying themselves. And that's, first of all, John Ford, and then probably most famously, Spencer Tracy.

BURKHARDT: During their 27 year affair, Hepburn and Tracy made nine films together, a perfect on screen match that ended with "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?"

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?")

SPENCER TRACY: And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that your son feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Tracy, a Catholic, would not divorce his wife, and at the time their affair was kept relatively quiet. Two weeks after finishing this film, Tracy died. Hepburn never watched the movie.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "THE LION IN WINTER")

HEPBURN: How dear of you to let me out of jail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: To deal with her grief, Hepburn immediately jumped into another project, costarring with Peter O'Toole in "The Lion In Winter." It won her a third Oscar, with a fourth and final one still to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "ON GOLDEN POND")

HEPBURN: You know, Norman, you really are the sweetest man in the world, and I'm the only one who knows it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: "On Golden Pond" paired her with Henry Fonda. Amazingly, they had never met before this movie, two legends facing their own mortality, onscreen and off.

Hepburn claimed that death did not frighten her. Not much did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "THE AFRICAN QUEEN")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hope we never die!

HEPBURN: So do I.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think there's any chance of it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Hepburn liked to tell people about her family's motto. She said her parents lived by it and so did she. Listen to the song of life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Katherine Hepburn dead at the age of 96.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired June 30, 2003 - 05:02   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Family, friends and fans are remembering the so-called first lady of cinema today. Katherine Hepburn has died. She died at her childhood home in Connecticut on Sunday. She was 96 years old.
As CNN's Bruce Burkhardt reports, Hepburn personified the modern woman, on and off screen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "MORNING GLORY")

KATHERINE HEPBURN: I'll play any part that appeals to me for $20. But I'll never, under any circumstances, play any part with which I don't feel a sincere congeniality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 1933, it was Katherine Hepburn's third movie in Hollywood, "Morning Glory," and it won her the first of her record four Oscars. In it, she portrays a naive but confident young actress who has no doubts about her future stardom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "MORNING GLORY")

HEPBURN: You're talking to the greatest actress in the world and I'm going to prove it to you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Though she would later astound us with her range, this was typecasting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "MORNING GLORY")

HEPBURN: Just watch me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NATASHA RICHARDSON, ACTRESS: Here she was, this sort of very independent, strong woman striding around Hollywood in pants. And at the same time she was, you know, intensely feminine.

BURKHARDT: In a town where the pants in the family had always been worn by men, Katherine Hepburn, in her own charming way, took charge. BARBARA LEAMING, HEPBURN BIOGRAPHER: She's important, yes, as an actress. But her significance goes way beyond whether or not this performance was good or that performance was good and whether she was a good actress or not. She became the symbol of the modern woman who believed that she could do anything, that everything was possible.

ROGER EBERT, FILM CRITIC: Echoes of her legacy can be seen in the work that was done a little bit later by people like Jane Fonda or some of Cher's roles, Sally Field, where you have women who go in and change the system or challenge the system. Katherine Hepburn helped to popularize that kind of woman, as opposed to just the romantic or the passive woman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "BRINGING UP BABY")

HEPBURN: Will you get off my running board?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my running board.

HEPBURN: All right, honey, stay there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Her independence, her feisty spirit, traits that she came by honestly. Born in 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, she was one of six children in a well-to-do New England family. Her father, a doctor of urology, and her mother, a pioneering leader in women's rights, fighting for the vote and later for birth control. It was an unorthodox upbringing. Of Hepburn's mother, "Life" magazine wrote in 1939, "Mrs. Thomas Norval Hepburn believes in the control of children before birth and nothing thereafter."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "LITTLE WOMEN")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You love those arms stealing around you.

HEPBURN: I'd like to see anybody try it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Growing up with three older brothers, Hepburn was something of a tomboy, which may explain why her favorite movie was "Little Women," in which she played the tomboy, Jo March.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "LITTLE WOMEN")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now I've got you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: But her childhood was not without tragedy. It was she who discovered her older brother hanging dead from a rafter, a suspected suicide. But the family always said it was a prank gone bad. Hepburn went on to graduate from Bryn Mawr in 1928, not a college known for turning out actresses. And this scene was America's first glimpse of Katherine Hepburn, in the movie "Bill of Divorcement." She went on to make another 42 movies, winning four Oscars and 12 nominations, playing a diverse range of characters, from costarring with a leopard and Cary Grant in a movie that helped put the screwball into comedy --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "BRINGING UP BABY")

HEPBURN: Oh, oh, oh. Do something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: "Bringing Up Baby."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "BRINGING UP BABY")

HEPBURN: Well, get behind me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am behind you.

HEPBURN: Well, get closer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't get any closer. Now are you ready? Now be calm. Left foot first.

HEPBURN: All right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: To portraying an uptight minister's sister in "African Queen."

LEAMING: I think probably the closest to what she actually was is the character she plays in "The African Queen." There's a kind of clumsiness and vulnerability and incredible grace that Houston captured. He got her bravery, he got her courage, he got her hunger for experience.

BURKHARDT: But it wasn't all successes. The Hollywood Critics Association at one point called her "box office poison" and there were complaints about her tinny voice. She lost the part of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind" because producer David Selznick thought she lacked sex appeal. As usual, she fought back and bought the rights to "The Philadelphia Story" so she could play the lead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "THE PHILADELPHIA STORY")

HEPBURN: Now, I'm to be examined, undressed and generally humiliated at 15 cents a copy. And you, you -- you're loving it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: In an era when studio moguls controlled everything, Katherine Hepburn fought them tooth and nail, even negotiating her own contract. But it was her next film, "Woman of the Year," that proved to be the most pivotal of her life. It was in this film that she met Spencer Tracy, an intense love affair that her biographer believes had its roots in her brother's suicide.

LEAMING: And the rest of her life, if you look at it, she finds one man after another who needs her, men who are bent on destroying themselves. And that's, first of all, John Ford, and then probably most famously, Spencer Tracy.

BURKHARDT: During their 27 year affair, Hepburn and Tracy made nine films together, a perfect on screen match that ended with "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?"

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?")

SPENCER TRACY: And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that your son feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Tracy, a Catholic, would not divorce his wife, and at the time their affair was kept relatively quiet. Two weeks after finishing this film, Tracy died. Hepburn never watched the movie.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "THE LION IN WINTER")

HEPBURN: How dear of you to let me out of jail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: To deal with her grief, Hepburn immediately jumped into another project, costarring with Peter O'Toole in "The Lion In Winter." It won her a third Oscar, with a fourth and final one still to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "ON GOLDEN POND")

HEPBURN: You know, Norman, you really are the sweetest man in the world, and I'm the only one who knows it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: "On Golden Pond" paired her with Henry Fonda. Amazingly, they had never met before this movie, two legends facing their own mortality, onscreen and off.

Hepburn claimed that death did not frighten her. Not much did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "THE AFRICAN QUEEN")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hope we never die!

HEPBURN: So do I.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think there's any chance of it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURKHARDT: Hepburn liked to tell people about her family's motto. She said her parents lived by it and so did she. Listen to the song of life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Katherine Hepburn dead at the age of 96.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com