Katherine Hepburn

Another story. 

In the latter ‘80s I got a gig in a Katherine Hepburn TV movie of the week called Laura Lansing Slept Here. I would be playing a talk show host interviewing a best-selling author named, yes, that’s right, Laura Lansing. Who would be played by Katherine Hepburn. 

Then a couple of weeks before production was to begin we were all informed that Miss Hepburn had contracted pneumonia and had been hospitalized so shooting was being postponed. Well, she was in her eighties by then so I, at least, figured that postponed was being used euphemistically. 

But it wasn’t. A year later my agent called to tell me that the production was back on and did I still want to do it. Duh.

So I showed up on set on the day, got into costume, went through make-up and hair, was escorted to set and met the director again over a year after I met him the first time. This was a man named George Schaefer, a lovely man who had been directing television since the early 50s. 

I sat in my chair behind the desk and only a couple of minutes later Miss Hepburn was escorted to the seat beside me. To say I was excited would be accurate. George introduced us to one another. It turned out that, although the show had already been shooting for a week, today would be her first day on set and she too was quite excited and happy to be there and we chatted happily away for several minutes while the shot was set up. I managed to avoid asking her about Spencer. 

Anyway, we did the little scene, which actually set the hook for the story that was to follow, I said it had been a pleasure, she said something similar, I was thanked by George and off I went. 

A few weeks later I got a call from the shows production office telling me that I was invited to the cast and crew wrap party on the following weekend and would I be attending. Well, yes I would and that wrap party is what this story is really about. 

The party was held in a restaurant, now long gone, downtown on Robson Street. The production had taken it over for the evening and all the tables had been rearranged with one quite large round table in the middle of the room on a slightly raised dais. The bar was open as well as open ended. 

Once most of the tables were full Miss Hepburn, George, the executive producer (an utterly lovely, kind man named Merrill Karpf) and the rest of the above the line people came in. They all, including Miss Hepburn went from table to table and personally welcomed everyone, including significant others. This took a while because as far as I could tell every single person who’d worked on the show from PAs to teamsters to day players like me had been invited and everyone was there. They then seated themselves at the big round, raised table in the middle. 

George and Merrill then came down to the front of the room and a microphone on a stand appeared. They thanked us all for coming and told us that bottles of champagne would be arriving at our tables shortly and that food would be served shortly after that and that Miss Hepburn would be pleased to accept any and all visits at her table but please not in large numbers so please try to keep it to only a few at a time. And then the party got underway. I think over the course of the evening everyone there went to that table. 

After we’d eaten and the tables had been cleared George once again came to the front of the room and the microphone reappeared. He told us that Miss Hepburn had something she’d like to say and Merrill then escorted her to the mike.

You could have heard a pin drop in that room as this legend stood before us at the microphone, looking at us a wee bit nervously and seeming sort of shy. 

Then in that unforgettable, tremulous, Boston Brahmin voice that had been burned into our minds from so many memorable performances over the six decades of her career she told us about the first movie she’d ever made and her first experience of being on a film set. 

The film was A Bill of Divorcement starring John Barrymore and directed by George Cukor. Miss Hepburn had been cast as a result of a role she was playing on Broadway at the time. She knew nothing at all of how a film set functioned or how to make the best of it as an actor and, she told us, was terrified by all of it. 

She told us the crew took her under their collective wing. They taught her, they coached her, they protected her and generally made that first experience one that she had remembered all these years as one of her favourite work experiences. She told us that she hadn’t thought that an experience of such warmth and caring would ever happen again in her career.

And then she said – until now.

Well...

She went on to tell us what she meant and actually named people on the crew and detailed what they had done for her. She thanked the teamsters who had driven her for their kindness and consideration. She thanked the caterers for looking out for the dietary issues of an old lady. She thanked her fellow cast members, thanked the day players, thanked anyone who’d had anything to do with the production. May have even thanked the restaurant staff.

I glanced around the room a few times during this speech and let me tell you there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. Teamsters with tattoos had tears running down their faces the same as everyone else.

Then she pointed back toward the door of the restaurant where there was a table set up with a bunch of cardboard boxes on it. She told us that she wanted to give us all something as a gesture of gratitude so in those boxes were copies of her recently published book, The Making of the African Queen (subtitled How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind). She had signed each book personally to each of us. On the overleaf George, Merrill and the screenwriter James Prideaux had signed it too. It’s one of my prized possessions.