The Real Kate

Drawing on recordings beginning in the mid-1970s and spanning many years, acclaimed biographer Charlotte Chandler has written the most intimate and personal biography ever published of Hollywood legend, Katharine Hepburn. The book is introduced by George Cukor, who directed Hepburn in films such as The Philadelphia Story and Adam's Rib. Chandler socialised with Hepburn at the Cukor estate and was allowed to tape their conversations, during which Hepburn spoke candidly about her personal and professional lives. She reveals how she found the body of her adored older brother - an apparent suicide at fifteen - and how she assumed his birthday and even his name as her own, and gives intimate details of her marriage and divorce from Ludlow Ogden Smith or 'Luddy'. Hepburn describes her affair with Howard Hughes, admitting that she enjoyed diving nude from the wings of his seaplane when they went swimming together, but her warmest recollections are of her twenty-seven-year affair with Spencer Tracy. Including the huge family influence that shaped Hepburn's personality, and interviews with many of the stars that worked with her over the years, The Real Kate is a fascinating, delightful, and personal book that brings readers closer than ever to the real Katharine Hepburn.