Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn

Graceful, charming, hilarious, self-confident, hard-working, determined, outrageous…Katharine Hepburn has been gathering adjectives for years, adding them to her image with carelessness and calculation. In an era of changing roles for women, Katharine Hepburn was able to use her influence on the American film to stand out as an early role model of the modern American woman. She had the essence of the successful adventuress: no mater the challenge, she survived in tact with her sense of humor in good working order.

Born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, Katharine had the good fortune to be born to her well-to-do parents, Katharine and Thomas Hepburn, who believed in freedom of thought and put no obstacles in their daughter’s way. Both were active in the fight for many social and medical reforms for women: the vote, prostitution, white slavery, teen-age pregnancy, venereal disease, domestic hygiene, birth control; topics that were not discussed in polite private conversation, much less publicly. Although opposed by conservative neighbors, the Hepburns were eventually praised for their forward thinking (Anderson, 93). Their lesson to their daughter, Katharine, was clear: do what you