When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Up for sale "African Queen" Katherine Hepburn Hand Signed Fan Letter.
ES-0079
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12,
1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, stage, and
television. Hepburn's career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned more than 60 years. Known
for her headstrong independence and spirited personality, she cultivated a
screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly played
strong-willed, sophisticated women. Her work came in a range of genres,
from screwball comedy to
literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a
record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute the greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema. Raised
in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying
at Bryn Mawr College.
Favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Her
early years in film brought her international fame, including an Academy Award for Best
Actress for her third picture, Morning Glory (1933),
but this was followed by a series of commercial failures culminating in the
critically lauded but commercially unsuccessful comedy Bringing Up
Baby (1938). Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying
out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the film rights to The Philadelphia Story,
which she sold on the condition that she be the star. That comedy film was a
box office success and landed her a third Academy Award nomination. In the
1940s, she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where
her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy, which spanned 26 years and nine movies and
extended to an unacknowledged off-screen affair. Hepburn challenged herself in
the latter half of her life, as she and a range of literary roles. She found a niche playing
middle-aged spinsters, such as in The African Queen (1951),
a persona the public embraced. Hepburn earned three more Oscars for her work
in Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968),
and On Golden Pond (1981).
In the 1970s, she began appearing in television films, which later became the
focus of her career. She made her final screen appearance at the age of 87.
After a period of inactivity and ill health, Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of
96. Hepburn famously shunned the Hollywood publicity machine and she refused to
conform to society's expectations of women. She was outspoken, assertive, and
athletic, and wore trousers before they were fashionable for women. She was
briefly married as a young woman but thereafter lived independently. With her
unconventional lifestyle and the independent characters she brought to the
screen, Hepburn epitomized the "modern woman" in the 20th-century
United States, and is remembered as an important cultural figure.