Katharine Hepburn is known as a spirited performer with a touch of Yankee eccentricity. She introduced into her roles a strength of character previously considered to be undesirable in Hollywood leading ladies. As an actress she was noted for her brisk upper-class New England accent and tomboyish beauty. Hepburn attended Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pa. (1924-28), where she appeared in college productions. After making her professional stage debut in 1928 in Baltimore, she soon became a well-known Broadway performer. A Bill of Divorcement (1932), her first motion picture and the one that established her as a film star, was followed by memorable characterizations in such films as Morning Glory (1933), for which she won the Academy Award for best actress; Little Women (1933); Alice Adams (1935); and Bringing Up Baby (1938). Her Broadway stage success in Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story (1939) was reprised in a film version in 1940 with Cary Grant and James Stewart. Woman of the Year (1942) initiated Hepburn's famous screen partnership with Spencer Tracy, with whom she appeared in several other films, including Keeper of the Flame (1943), Without Love (1945), The Sea of Grass (1946), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), for which she won her second Academy Award. Her love affair with Tracy, which lasted from the early 1940s until the latter's death in 1967, mirrored the two actors' close professional relationship. Hepburn's other memorable films are The African Queen (1951), Long Day's Journey into Night (1962), and The Lion in Winter (1968), for which she earned a third Academy Award. Among her later films are A Delicate Balance (1973) and On Golden Pond (1981), for which she won her fourth Academy Award. Hepburn returned to Broadway in As You Like It (1950) and other Shakespearean roles in the 1950s. In 1969 she starred in a stage musical, Coco, based on the life of the Parisian couturière Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. She appeared also in the plays A Matter of Gravity (1976-78) and West Side Waltz (1981). A two-hour documentary television program "Starring Katharine Hepburn" was shown in 1981. Biographical works include The Films of Katharine Hepburn (1971) by Homer Dickins, Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir (1971) by Garson Kanin, Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn (1975, updated 1981) by Charles Higham, and Hepburn: Hollywood Yankee (1983) by Gary Carey.

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