A Year With Kate: Little Women (1933)

Episode 4 of 52 Anne Marie is screening all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order.

In which we remember childhood fondly.

When I was 11, our school librarian told me that if you love a book enough, you have its first line burned into your brain. Being a very literal child, I immediately selected my favorite book, Little Women, and studiously memorized the first line:

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.”

Later—much later than I’m comfortably willing to admit—I realized that Mrs. Krall actually meant that when you love a story, you revisit it so often that it stays with you. I think we can all agree this extends to film as well. [more...]

Click to read more ...

Jennifer Lawrence and the Youngest To...

With her nomination for American Hustle this morning, Jennifer Lawrence has become the youngest actor of either gender to receive her third Oscar nomination. She is only 23. Or, if you'd like to get technical about it, 23 years 5 months and 2 days. Whether you think her work in American Hustle is great or terrible (and factions have formed on both sides) or you have a more nuanced perspective on what does and doesn't work about it, there is just no denying her screen dynamism. That's what they use to call "It".  

Here's how the stats break down and which legends Jennifer is toppling. Did the performers with similar records flame out early? Read on...

Click to read more ...

A Year With Kate: Morning Glory (1933)

Episode 3 of 52  Anne Marie is screening all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order. On the eve of the Oscar nominations, Morning Glory (1933)

In which the seeds of Oscar history are sown...

Sometimes, Katharine Hepburn’s career seems too charmed to be real. At the 6th Academy Awards, Kate won her first Oscar. For her third movie. In her second year. To put that in perspective, it took Bette Davis 23 movies and 4 years to get a nomination alone (on a controversial write-in ballot). Ingrid Bergman: 6 movies and 5 years to be nominated. Olivia de Havilland: 29 movies and 10 years to win. The other record-holding actresses of the Studio System had to slog through bad scripts and bit parts to get their golden statues, but young Kate practically waltzed into the Academy and casually picked one up (figuratively speaking, since she didn’t actually show up)

Morning Glory is the by-now cliché story of a naive actress making it big in New York. 1933's model was Eva Lovelace. [more...]

Click to read more ...

A Year with Kate: Christopher Strong (1933)

ICYMI - New Series! - Episode 2 of 52

In which Katharine Hepburn plays another British lady, and her acting gets better even if her accent doesn’t.

If Katharine Hepburn has one problem in her early career (besides her infamous intractability) it is her inability to be anything other than herself. That odd quality that made her a star in A Bill of Divorcement also plagued her through her career. She’s too stubborn to be an ingénue, too young to be a dame, too androgynous to be a femme fatale and too fascinating to be a character actor. What then to do with her? Once she hits MGM she definitely hits her stride, but sadly that is seven years, twelve movies (and for us, twelve very long weeks) away.  First we have to get through the trial and error period of Kate’s career, where she tried on many hats.

The next hat is this:

Click to read more ...

A Year with Kate: A Bill of Divorcement (1932)

In which two ingénues are introduced...

A girlish debutante in a white gown floats down the stairs and into her waiting beau's arms. Gracefully, they glide around the dance floor sharing quips and quiet smiles. Thus is the world introduced to Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement in 1932. It's a pretty enough entrance, but somehow inauspicious for Kate the Great. It is just so entirely Movie Ingénue Ordinary. The girl floating down the stairs could just as easily be Jeanette McDonald or Joan Bennett. Considering who Katharine Hepburn was and who she became, one would expect her to come striding into the room like a Greek goddess. Katharine Hepburn would make many more striking and characteristic entrances later, so for now we'll settle for this beautiful-if-ephemeral debut of the ingénue, and proceed with my own introduction.

My name is Anne Marie, and Katharine Hepburn is my idol. The first movie I ever saw her in was The Philadelphia Story. Kate was powerful and witty. She wore pants and still looked glamorous. To an awkward tomboy in middle school, she was everything. This idolatry only intensified as I grew. But recently, while perusing IMDb, I discovered two shocking things: 

1. I have only seen a third of Katharine Hepburn's movies
2. There are exactly 52 of them. 

This presents me with an exciting opportunity: "A Year with Kate"... 

Click to read more ...