Hepburn: The Woman Behind The Legend

Relationships With Spencer Tracy, Howard Hughes, Women, Covered In New Book

(CBS)  Katharine Hepburn captivated movie fans for close to 70 years.

But, in his new biography of the Hollywood legend, author William J. Mann says we never really knew the woman behind the star.

The book is called "Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn."

On The Early Show Friday, Mann told co-anchor Hannah Storm that Hepburn "transcended her movie stardom to really become a symbol of the American character."

Mann asserted, "The real Katherine Hepburn was actually even more fascinating than the legend. She was more complicated, she was more sophisticated, she was more worldly than she ever let on, and I ended up finding that the real woman behind the legend was even more interesting than the legend we've held so dear for so long."

For instance, Mann said, what looked like an enduring love affair with Spencer Tracy that lasted a quarter of a century wasn't what it seemed.

"It wasn't what it appeared to be. However, just because it wasn't the fairytale that she tried to imply later in life doesn't mean it wasn't an important and significant relationship. They did love each other. We can look back and say maybe there was some co-dependency going on in that relationship. She was always there to pick him up when he fell down. But it was a relationship that mattered very significantly in her life and his life. She romanticized it at the end, but that shouldn't negate the significance of it."

As for her relationship with Howard Hughes, Hepburn herself observed, "He was sort of at the top of (the list of) available men and I of the women and it seemed logical for us to be together. We each had a wild desire to be famous."

"I love that quote," Mann told Storm. "The 'wild desire to be famous' sums up Katharine Hepburn very well, and I think Howard Hughes at the time, too, before his recluse days. She felt that, with Howard Hughes, she could take her career to (higher) heights, literally, than it had ever been before."

Storm noted that "Kate" addresses the "very close relationship (Hepburn) had with women. You say that, after some of these terrible breakups she had with the men in her life, you say, 'She would retreat to the comforting embrace of the community of women.' Did she have serious female romances?"

"Absolutely," Mann answered. "But at the same time, sex itself was never a real defining aspect of any relationship in her life, whether with men or with women. It was really about, for her, she found she preferred the companionship of women and the nurturance of women, but her great passions, even if they didn't include sex, were always reserved for men."

"You are reluctant to call her a lesbian," Storm pointed out, "but is it possible these relationships were sexual in nature?"

"It's certainly possible," Mann responded, "but contemporary labels just don't — they're not helpful in understanding historical figures, and certainly not someone as individual as Katharine Hepburn."

"She was so complex," Storm said, "and she wore pants and she was eccentric and, at one point, was even considered box office poison but, here she is, one of the enduring Hollywood icons."

Asked by Storm how Hepburn "carved her legend into stone," Mann replied, "At a very early age, Katharine Hepburn said, 'I want to be famous,' and she spent the rest of her life making sure she was. She knew how to reinvent herself whenever she needed to, whether it was in the 1930s, with 'The Philadelphia Story,' or after her political problems in the 1940s with 'The African Queen,' she transcended her movie stardom to really become a symbol of the American character."

Along those lines, Mann said Hepburn was a woman ahead of her time when it came to manipulating the press: "She was brilliant. Way before it became popular for celebrities to micromanage there image, she was doing it in the 1930s and doing it brilliantly and did it for 70 years."

To read an excerpt, click here.