Katharine Hepburn made me the man I am today
The actor, who would have turned 118 last week, could only be herself
Hey, y’all. An issue coming out a day early. Will wonders never cease? But that’s because …
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The summer I was 12, my nightly prayers went as such, verbatim: “Dear god, thank you for food, shelter, family, friends, and all that good stuff. Please protect me and keep me safe. Please forgive me of my sins. Please heal Katharine Hepburn of her urinary tract infection.”
All sincere requests, equally urgent. And for good reason.
At the end of every trip to H-E-B, I made a beeline to the newsstand. There, I’d pluck that week’s editions—always People and US Weekly, sometimes Entertainment Weekly or whatever else grabbed my eye—and settle with the dust onto the store’s tan vinyl flooring. (It looked exactly like this. You remember.)
This was my time to lock in and learn what The Stars were up to.
One day in July 2001, I read some horrible news in the front pages of US Weekly (where the shortest bits of gossip lived, the North Pole to the Fashion Police pages’ South). Katharine Hepburn, my favorite actress, had been admitted to a hospital for a urinary tract infection. She was 94.
Old Hollywood stars had a habit of dying. I remembered Frank Sinatra going to that great sky casino in 1998, just months after my grandpa died. But I didn’t really care about the chairman of the board. Kate? That was my girl. “Bringing Up Baby” was my favorite movie. I’d caught “Stage Door” on TCM and rented “Adam’s Rib,” “Desk Set,” and “Pat and Mike.”
One of the thumb-thick tomes about classic cinema that I liberated from Buda Library’s annual book sale taught me about movies that I couldn’t get at Hollywood Video. Kate played a woman disguised as a boy in “Sylvia Scarlett,” which I thought was kinda cool. In “Dragon Seed,” she played a Chinese woman, which I thought was less cool.
Hepburn spoke in an accent that was impossible to place, because it was not a real accent. I could, and would, do my interpretation on demand. It wasn’t “The Philadelphia Story” or any of her actual films that taught me how to pitch my voice to the back of the throat and elongate my A’s. That was all the doing of Bugs Bunny, whose impression became my own.
“The calla lilies are in bloom again,” someone might have heard a fat little boy cooing out in the wilds of Texas. “Rahlly they are.”
I’ve wondered why Hepburn captured me so, aside from my general childhood passion for any pop culture between FDR and LBJ.1 This wasn’t a conscious love. Maybe it was unconscious study for her transgressive spirit, which I’d one day need to emulate to keep myself alive. Kate could only be herself. She wore pants before women did that. Chairs were her natural enemy. She was devoted to a man who wouldn’t marry her, but as I later found out, she probably loved other women, too.
Hepburn’s whole schtick jived with other esteemed ladies in my cultural canon. The cast of “Designing Women.” Black Cat, the femme fatale from the “Spider-Man” cartoon. I didn’t try to interpret my fascination with them as crushes, like I did with pretty, oppressed Samantha from “Bewitched.” These ladies were assertive, quippy, and stylish. I just thought they were neat.
And why wouldn’t I be obsessed? Hepburn overcame a “box office poison” death sentence in the 1930s to win more best actress Oscars than any other woman in history. She still holds the record. Suck it, Frances McDormand. Crucially, Kate was funny. Nothing was more important to me than being funny.
I bring all this up because last week would have been Hepburn’s 118th birthday. That urinary tract infection didn’t take her down, by the way. She lived another two years. Prayer works. God heard that 12-year-old plea to spare the nonagenarian star of “On Golden Pond” and said, “Aight.”
Not that I have Hepburn’s birthday memorized; TCM posted a clip from “Bringing Up Baby” to Instagram. You have to watch her spar over a jungle cat with Cary Grant while wearing a diaphanous nightgown.
I took the occasion to think warmly about her, since she doesn’t come up that often now. The heat of my young Kate-mania came from gut instinct. Today, it’s hard to imagine some of that quick-talking, pants-wearing dame’s silvery glow didn’t rub off on the man I am today. The individuality, I hope. Maybe the Transatlantic accent; we’ll see what happens. The UTI … well, there’s always cranberry juice.
One rad thing
Eurovision 2025 has come and gone; do you know where your favorite Balkan state placed? Whenever I talk about this campy thing, it’s like taking hostages. I’ve seen y’all’s eyes glaze over when I say through gritted teeth, “Baby Lasagna was robbed last year.”2
The American mind is simply not capable of fully processing Eurovision. But as a journalist, I am duty bound to bring you the truth about culture and pyrotechnics. The facts: History will condemn that Finland’s entry, “Ich Komme” by Erika Vikman, only came in 11th. She was my choice for first.3
You’re telling me that Finland sent a pleather-clad Trisha Paytas character all the way to Switzerland and lost? That she sang a song melding ABBA, industrial rock, and “Your Disco Needs You” and didn’t crack the top 10?
That for the end of the number, Vikman soared above the audience on a giant microphone that spewed fireworks as she belted over chants of the title refrain, which translates to “I’m coming”—and Helsinki isn’t hosting next year’s contest?
Europe, sweetie! Flop less!
Outbox
Things that I talked about with Benito Skinner: “George of the Jungle,” "Sue Sylvester doing “Super Bass” on “Glee,” Robin Williams, “The O.C,” the unbearable gayness of straightness, and his new TV show, “Overcompensating.” Only three of those made it into my story for Backstage, because word counts harm us all.
In “Overcompensating,” now streaming on Prime Video, he gives a performance of a performance of a performance, which I found quite compelling:
“I knew that I was going to have to tap back into this portion of myself that I had shame about and that I would cringe at,” Skinner says. “Which is funny, because I used to cringe at myself as a kid for being so obviously gay.”
Benny was a real sweetie. Read my interview here.
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He speaks! Sufjan Stevens, the only person whose lyrics I’ve ever tattooed on my arm, has been laying low for a while now. Understandably so, after the death of his longtime partner and some truly scary health issues. But Vulture’s Craig Jenkins swooped in to put my mind at ease with a new interview. You don’t know how long I’ve waited to read Sufjan saying the words: “The Bible’s very gay. Just all men.” Read it here.
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Engage in limerence this week via NPR’s “Wild Card” interview with Jonathan Groff. Listen to it—or for the audiophobes, read a transcript—here.
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W magazine just published a package about the elder stateswomen of music, including Kate Pierson, Crystal Waters, and the coolest woman who’s ever lived, Debbie Harry. Worth it for the portraits alone. Read it here.
The silent era bored me to tears, and anything from after hippies entered the picture scared me a bit.
Also robbed: Latvia’s Tautumeitas. The vocal group, which comprises six “Pure Moods” CDs given human form by a witch, conjured something unearthly with their song “Bur Man Laimi.”
The Designing Women shout-out here just GOT ME 😄 Speaking of must see TV, did you ever watch Murphy Brown? Designing Women + Murphy Brown + Golden Girls = some of my earliest pop culture women role models.
I didn't think I could love Sufjan Stevens but that comment about the bible does it.