The night Katharine Hepburn thought she’d made it but got fired instead: “That’s that, I’m a star”
When Katharine Hepburn was in her early 20s, she found herself on an off-Broadway stage performing the lead role in George Middleton and A E Thomas’ play The Big Pond. At this point, the future icon had only recently left university with a burning desire to become an actor and had almost immediately landed work in theatre. In fact, she’d only been working for a month when she was thrust into the spotlight.
Instead of feeling nervous about being front and centre with so little experience, Hepburn, never one to lack self-belief, simply chalked it up to her innate talent being obvious to everyone around her. After all, she’d initially been hired as the understudy to the lead, but when that actor was fired a week before production, it felt like fate was smiling on her. If nothing else, being bumped up to lead meant the director had faith in her as a star.
“I took this change in my status as a matter of course,” Hepburn grandly admitted. “I was the leading lady. I had been in the theatre about four weeks. This was happening just as I had imagined it would; it should. I was arriving.”
So, on opening night, a confident Hepburn strode into the theatre fashionably late and took to the stage, safe in the knowledge that there was no way she could fail. Then, she failed spectacularly.
You see, when the audience wildly applauded after Hepburn nailed her opening scene, she let her excitement get the better of her. A more experienced actor would have known to ignore the applause and focus on the show, but suddenly, her racing heart and adrenaline caused her to fly through her lines so quickly that they could barely be understood. The pitch of her voice became higher with every passing moment, her body language became stiff, and she even tripped over her own feet a few times.
By the time the curtain came down on the show, Hepburn could hear the audience laughing. The Big Pond was a romantic comedy, so she assumed this reaction was a good thing. “Naturally, I thought, ‘Well, that’s that. I’m a star!'” However, when she ventured backstage, she couldn’t help noticing that nobody came over to congratulate her on her performance. Then, the true horror dawned on her: the audience wasn’t laughing with her, they were laughing at her. She hadn’t nailed the performance; she’d botched it.
The next morning, a crestfallen Hepburn was getting ready to leave for a day of rehearsal when her acting teacher, Frances Robinson-Duff, turned up at her door. She wanted to chat, but Hepburn told her she’d be late for rehearsal if they stopped to talk. When her nervous teacher offered a meek, “They won’t mind”, she didn’t quite get what was happening. “They won’t mind?” Hepburn thought to herself, “What does that mean?”
Regardless, she barrelled ahead and showed up for rehearsal on time, Robinson-Duff in tow. Only when she got to the theatre and saw everyone’s grim, serious faces did she realise what her teacher had been trying to tell her, but didn’t have the heart to vocalise. “I’ve been fired,” a stunned Hepburn acknowledged, her premature dreams of stardom seemingly blowing up in her face.
Of course, the legendary actor would take Hollywood by storm only four years after the Big Pond debacle, but she never forgot the humbling lessons she learned on that awful opening night.
