Kate : The Woman Who was Hepburn [Hardcover]

Unless the purpose of the book was only to "out" Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and, apparently, everyone else Kate knew, in which it tries very hard to achieve its objective.

I found the book to be difficult to read, and often difficult to believe. So many things didn't add up, and I often found myself thinking "now, how did the author know that?" Mann uses a lot of innuendo, and in order to actually KNOW the things he claims, he would have had to have been in the bedrooms of the people involved.

I read a lot of good reviews before purchasing the book, and can only say I was disappointed. After the first chapter I GOT the idea - Kate was gay or bisexual, at least in the author's opinion - so much paper could have been saved without the rest of the book.

When I was about 10, I was a tomboy. I wanted to be a boy. I buy and wear men's jeans because they fit better. I played with my brothers and their friends, not my sister or "dumb dolls". God only knows where the author could go with that information. When I was older, I had close female friends, and close male friends - with that information, the author could write a similar book about me, I think. Except I've never been sexually attracted to other women, and I'm happily married.

My real problem with the book, aside from the fact that it was not interesting reading, is that I couldn't understand why someone would write a book trying to prove a person was gay or bisexual. It just got tedious after a while.

One can always find "someone" who said "something", and the author did have an agenda. Whether or not Kate was bisexual or gay does not a book make. Speculation about it makes even less of a book.

This was not the definitive bio of Kate that people claimed it was. The author started with a thesis, or opinion, and set out to prove it - to me, not very successfully. Perhaps one day there will be a definitive biography of Hepburn. Possibly her sexuality will be part of it - the small part that it should be when one writes about a life. I look forward to that book.

Hi, the account-holder's daughter here. I do not reflect the opinion of the person who has this account.

I will not talk about Hepburn's sexuality, because the only person who knew for sure is dead. Instead, I will point out that this book makes many factual errors. It claims that Hepburn had a hysterectomy, ignoring the fact that Hepburn mentions having her period in 1951, eighteen years after the supposed surgery. It gets Spencer Tracy's drinking habits entirely wrong- he was a binge drinker, not a regular drinker. The author uses a witness, Scotty, who has said before that he has lied to biographers. Mann also takes comments out of context and manipulates them to suit his own purposes. An example here:

Mann told an interviewer that Hepburn told Dick Cavett she was a "missing link" between the genders, to support his theory that Hepburn was transgender. Wrong! Though she did say "missing link", it was to refer to her position in the family (her younger siblings were all much younger than she- thus a "missing link" between children and parents), not her gender at all.

Maybe Hepburn was bisexual, or lesbian. Maybe her relationship with Spencer Tracy was exaggerated. And perhaps she was, in fact, transgender. There's no problem in that. However, I personally would need a more credible source than what Mann has provided.

for a biographer to come up with a 'theme', i.e. homosexuality/asexuality and run with it - in this case run with it far beyond any possible interest. Mann repeats his point about everyone in Hepburn's world being one or the other so often it is truly tedious. Spencer Tracy arrives on the page and you are simply waiting until he is outed too, which, of course, is not a long wait.
I do wonder , too, whether Mr Mann has ever taken care of a sick person for a long period of time, as Hepburn took care of Tracy. My guess is not, because if he had, he might not have dismissed the feelings she subsequently expressed about their relationship with such seeming triumph.
He has mined the sexual vein of all connected with Hepburn to such a degree, the book is bloodless and boring.