The tragic family event that shaped Katharine Hepburn’s career
Some people manage to go through their childhoods without a hint of trauma, never experiencing a harrowing event or the tragic death of a loved one – for those less fortunate, that event often becomes a defining moment, shaping us for the rest of our lives, whether we like it or not, and Katharine Hepburn can attest to that.
The actor reigned over Hollywood with four Oscar wins and a career full of hits, well, ignoring the period during the late 1930s in which she was considered ‘box office poison’. For the most part, Hepburn’s career as a performer was pretty smooth-sailing, her star power continuously rising until she became more than just an actor, but the ultimate symbol of Hollywood greatness.
The span of time that passed between her first and last Oscar wins was really a testament to that. She picked up her first golden statuette in 1932 for Morning Glory, with her final Academy Award coming exactly 50 years later in 1982 for On Golden Pond.
Hepburn had all the success she could possibly dream of, it seemed, but her drive and ambition might not have been so strong, and herself so independent, if not for a tragic event which shaped her childhood.
She often spent time with her mother’s friends, Mary Towle and Bertha Rembaugh, in New York, but during one fateful trip when the budding actor was just 13-years-old, life as Hepburn knew it changed forever.
Upon waking and realising that her brother, Tom, wasn’t up and ready for breakfast, she went to his room to fetch him. What she found would never leave her… the 15-year-old was hanging from a curtain tie. Hepburn instantly pulled him down and laid him out on the bed, but it was too late – he was gone, and even though she rushed to the doctor who lived nearby, she was met with a rather harsh response, as detailed in her memoir Me; if he was dead, then “the doctor can’t help him, can he?”
Reeling from the apparent suicide of her brother, whom she so admired, Hepburn tried to reconstruct events in her head. Maybe it was an accident? She thought that perhaps he had been trying to execute a magic trick that had gone wrong. But of course, deep down, she knew that this was almost definitely a suicide. Hepburn was distraught.
As a result of this tragedy, Hepburn found herself turning inwards, and she struggled to enjoy normal school life. How could she, now that he was gone? Instead, the actor began to take lessons from tutors while focusing on her hobbies, becoming fiercely independent as a result. This bled into the roles she would come to take on once she entered Hollywood, with Hepburn always playing incredibly independent and strong women, always refusing to take on stereotypical roles that were often the only choice for female stars.
In the book Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J Mann explained, “I think that she began living for Tom. Much of her rebellion might have come from Tom being denied a chance to live the way he wanted. So, she did it for both of them.”
Hepburn went on to study at Bryn Mawr College, and here she would appear in theatre productions and discover her love of acting. Hepburn never lived the conventional kind of life that was expected of women at the time, instead pouring herself into a life defined by autonomy and independence.
