‘Secret’ Hepburn biography to be published
NEW YORK (AFP) – A biography of Katherine Hepburn that was two decades in the making, will finally go on sale in accordance with the screen legend’s wish that it be published posthumously.
“Kate Remembered” appears to have been one of the best kept publishing secrets in recent memory, with fewer than 10 people at the publishing house, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, even aware of its existence.
With Hepburn’s death on June 29 still fresh in the public mind, the biography is virtually guaranteed to hit the bestseller lists, although the author, Scott Berg, stressed that the timing had nothing to do with marketing strategies.
“Kate often suggested the importance of publishing a book right away because she presumed there would be many books about her over the years, and she presumed they would be filled with the same misstatements of facts that have appeared over the years,” Scott said in a statement.
Scott said the book was based on intimate conversations with Hepburn that began immediately after their first meeting in 1983.
“She made it very clear that she hoped all that she was imparting would somehow be preserved in a book, one that would not be published until after her death,” he said.
“With this book, I think, she imagined there would be at least a foundation of truth — of what she actually said and thought about things, in many cases things she felt could not be printed until she died.”
The publisher’s were giving little away regarding the book’s content, saying only that it would reveal “untold details” of her entire career and her relationships with billionaire Howard Hughes and Spencer Tracy.
Berg is the author of three previous biographies, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning life of aviator Charles Lindbergh published in 1998.
Berg said he actually finished all but the final page of “Kate Remembered” in 2001 and that G.P. Putnam Sons had agreed to Hepburn’s dictate that it could not be published, “indeed even discussed,” until her death.
“In the last few weeks of her life, I wrote the final paragraphs, the hardest I’ve ever had to write,” he said.
In fading health for several years, Hepburn died at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. A family spokeswoman gave the cause of death as “old age.”
During Hepburn’s career she became one of the most acclaimed actresses of all time. She was outspoken and her longstanding affair with actor Spencer Tracy brought drama and controversy to her life.
They made nine films together and remained a couple until Tracy’s death in 1967.
No woman has matched the four Academy Awards she won, and the American Film Institute counts her among the greatest film icons, alongside Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant and Bette Davis.
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