Katharine Hepburn, The African Queen

While Tracy Lord was the role that reinvigorated Katharine Hepburn's career, Rose Sayer is one which seems to mark the beginning of a new era for Kate. Watching The African Queen, one might be surprised to realize that she is just a little over ten years older than she was when she played Tracy. Gone are the soft, beautifying studio lights befitting for A Goddess. Gone are the gowns by Adrian. Gone are MGM's opulent mansions. Instead, we see a sweaty, matronly Kate thrusted out in the bright African sunshine and shot in vivid, unforgiving technicolor. The African Queen is the debut of the deglammed, "old maid" Kate.

Katharine Hepburn, Woman of the Year

as TESS HARDING

I'm indifferent about Woman of the Year. Again, let's take out the classic argument that it hasn't "aged well", because it hasn't really. It's primitive in its moral-fiber and I personally found it to be too silly and slightly insulting towards women. But what can you do? This was the film that brought us the legendary coupling of Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and you'd have to be blind not to see the literal sparks that shoot out of their eyes when they glance at each other in the picture. But at the end of the day Hepburn, in all her virile flirty glory, can't make gold out of lead. It's just too much of a subpar romantic comedy, with not much to offer either actor.

Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story

as TRACY LORD

Won: New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress

I first watched The Philadelphia Story a few years ago for a college film course, and at the time I hadn’t seen many screwball comedies nor was I very familiar with Katharine Hepburn’s work. Once the film was over I had no idea what to make of her performance. It was so…Katharine Hepburn-like. It was such a marriage of the qualities we typically associate with Kate—sophistication, wealth, haughtiness…not to mention the heavy Mid-Atlantic accent that is so rigorously unique and hers, that which reverberates so vividly in this film. I thought her to be very unusual; compared to her contemporaries, it’s obvious that she’s a much more idiosyncratic presence onscreen, and it just felt to me as if I was watching her be herself for an hour-and-a-half. I liked it, but I was a little underwhelmed; I expected more from a performance that is so revered and so heavily considered as one of Kate's greatest. Flash-forward to present day; I am older and (as I'd like to think) a bit more refined in my taste, and this time around while watching Kate, I saw the performance in a much different light.

Katharine Hepburn, Alice Adams

as ALICE ADAMS

Whenever I think of "Katharine Hepburn", there are particular images of her that come to my mind. I don't know about you, but I think of the wealthy, hi-hat Kate that we see in The Philadelphia Story, playing golf on a large estate a la Cate Blanchett's depiction in The Aviator. I think of a tomboyish, feminist, pants-wearing Kate. I think of a senior Kate in the later stage of her career, she with the trembly voice and the I-don't-give-a-fuck spirit that we see in those interview clips of her on YouTube. So when I got around to watching Alice Adams, I was mystified; the Katharine Hepburn in this film isn't at all like the ones I envision in my head! Many of the Hepburn clichés are gone (I say many because the infamous voice and the rea-lly's are still there, very unmistakably hers and no one else's) and Kate has more or less transformed into somebody else. And it's dazzling to see. 

Katharine Hepburn, Little Women

as JO MARCH

Won: Gold Medal Winner for Best Actress - Venice Film Festival

"As vital, sympathetic and full of the joie de vivre as one could hope for...Miss Hepburn goes darting through this picture without giving one a moment to think of her as other than Jo," praised Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times at the time of Little Women's release. Trusty ol' Wikipedia says joie de vivre "may be seen as a joy of everything, a comprehensive joy, a philosophy of life..." This is a more than accurate assessment of Katharine Hepburn, whose luminosity spearheads Little Women and whose performance is just as joyous if not more than that of her role as Eva in Morning Glory.

Katharine Hepburn, Morning Glory

as EVA LOVELACE

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

How fitting and pleasantly ironic it is that the legendary Katharine Hepburn's first Academy Award-winning performance was for the role of a naïve ingénue hungry to make it big as...an actress. There is a moment in the film when Eva, drunk at a party, tells theatre producer Louis Easton, "I'm the greatest actress in the world, and I'm gonna go out and get greater, and greater, and greater..." She causes a ruckus, and when her mentor Hedges tells her she's making a fool of herself, she exclaims affirmatively, "You're talking to the greatest actress in the world and I'm gonna prove it to you!" Again, very fitting and ironic. As I watched Morning Glory, I couldn't help but be in a state of bedazzlement--and how could you not? Because here, right in front of my eyes, was the very first Oscar-nominated (and winning) performance by a young and beautiful actress who, quite like Eva, was set to become the greatest actress in the world.