A couple other choice Hepburn quotes I have tripped over in my wanderings today:
This one is delicious:
Barbara Walters interviewed Hepburn, and asked the penetrating question: “Kate, you always wear pants. Do you even own a skirt?”
Hepburn replied: “I have one, Miss Walters. I’ll wear it to your funeral.”
Something else comes to mind, an anecdote I heard in person:
Christopher Reeve came and spoke at my school (The Actors Studio) in, oh, 1997 or something like that. It was quite a production, with his team of medical professionals, his wife, his oxygen-tank, his rolling bed. And yet, despite all of the problems, despite his head rolling off to the side at one point, and his wife strolling on stage to put it right, despite those bumps in the road, he managed to put US at ease. Talk about a class act! Anyway, one of Chris Reeve’s big breaks was on Broadway. He had a small part in a play starring Katherine Hepburn. It was quite a coup for a young unknown.
So Jim Lipton, the interviewer, asked him, “So tell us what it was like to act with Katherine Hepburn?”
There was a long pause, as Chris Reeve took in some air. Then he said dryly, “I don’t think I acted with Katherine Hepburn. I acted near Katherine Hepburn.”
Oh, Lord. I remember the waves of laughter rolling through the auditorium when he said that.
Vodka Pundit has a gorgeous in-memorium on his blog.
You should go and read the whole thing.
A couple of choice quotes from the Pundit himself:
“The gal had gams.”
“Kate, in short, was a knockout. And not a knockout in the lazy way we’ve grown too used to, with boobs falling out everywhere and microskirts with a slit all the way up to the left ovary.”
“She was tough before tough was cool, a feminist before feminism was cool, independent before independence was cool, and cool before even cool was cool.”
And then his great description of her voice: “You’ll hear whiskey and smoke poured through velvet, with a delivery that could soothe like a gin martini or burn like acid.”
