Katharine Hepburn
By:
May 12, 2009
An icon as much for her chin line and Ivy League drawl (which possibly she made up; they certainly didn’t talk like that at Cornell!), KATHARINE HEPBURN (1907-2003) was a strong and independent woman, perhaps even more so than the ones she portrayed onscreen. My favorite roles of hers are the screwball comedies like The Philadelphia Story, which combined romantically convoluted plotlines with a little slapstick and a lot of incredibly intelligent repartee. Back when fast and action-packed were adjectives applied to the dialogue. These exchanges required the characters to be on for the entire length not only of the film but, one suspects, their lives.
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On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Philip Gordon Wylie, Tony Hancock, Joseph Beuys, Ian Dury,
Edward Lear, George Carlin.
READ MORE about members of the Partisan Generation (1904-13).