The divine Ms H

Zadie Smith on why she has always been devoted to Katharine Hepburn

guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,36 … 04,00.html

Like Gregory Peck, Katherine Hepburn played solid and remarkable characters; they made Hollywood dreams worth striving for, and it is sad that both have died: so, so almost immortal they were.

Through their moral impossibility though, Peck in Moby Dick and To Kill a Mockingbird, Hepburn in Woman of the Year and many others, they created a place and time, although only a silver flicker on a screen–but still a time and place–that will live on, indefatigably.

Bye Kate. R.I.P.

Chou

Thanks for the link, alleycat. Yes, RIP, dear old sweet Kate.

Alleycat, thanks for the link.

One of the quotes of Kate’s in the TT article (actually from the AP)

" Life’s what’s important. Walking, houses, family. Birth and pain and joy-then death…"

really says it all don’t it.

RIP Kate

Possibly because she got to me so young, her effect is rather out of proportion with what any movie star should mean to anyone, but I am immensely grateful for it. The kind of woman she played, the kind of woman she was, is still the kind of woman I should like to be, and an incidental line of hers, from the aforementioned The Philadelphia Story, remains my lodestar every time I pick up a pen to write anything all: “The time to make your mind up about people is never!” This line was written by Donald Ogden Stewart, but in its utterly humanist commitment to the peculiarity and beauty of individuals, it was 100% Hepburn.