The Original, page 31
Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get—only with what you are expecting to give—which is everything.
—Katharine Hepburn
Author’s Note
What happened next:
Irene Selznick
Irene Mayer Selznick divorced David Selznick and went on to become a legendary New York theater producer. In 1947, working closely with Tennessee Williams, she steered the original production of A Streetcar Named Desire to Broadway. The cast included Jessica Tandy, Karl Malden and Marlon Brando in his first breakout role. Irene Mayer Selznick died of breast cancer in 1990.
Howard Hughes
During World War II, Howard Hughes became a leading defense contractor, developing and supplying aircraft for the United States military. An innovator in the field of aviation, Hughes never returned to film directing. After suffering a near fatal plane crash in 1946, Hughes also developed an entirely new model of hospital bed, an early prototype of ones used today. In order to manage the pain resulting from the crash, Hughes began taking codeine and was addicted to large doses of the drug until his death in 1976. As his obsessive-compulsive disorder worsened, his behavior grew eccentric and Hughes became increasingly isolated, moving from hotel to hotel, always staying in the top floor penthouse. Although she never resumed their romance, Katharine Hepburn always spoke warmly of Hughes. She kept their vivid love letters and the emerald engagement ring for the rest of her life.
Ludlow Ogden Smith
Luddy Ogden Smith eventually married a woman named Elisabeth Albers, but he remained close to his ex-wife and her family until his death in 1979. He named his only daughter Katharine.
Cary Grant
Cary Grant did try to join the Royal Navy at the start of World War II but was told his talents would be better used to raise funds and morale. By the time the United States entered the war, Grant was too old to be considered eligible for active service in the U.S. military. Desperately worried about his mother in Bristol, a city devastated by bombing raids, Grant repeatedly applied for permission to travel to Britain throughout the war but was denied. His mother survived and Grant returned to the city once peace was declared. Today, a statue dedicated to Grant stands in Millennium Square and Bristol holds the Cary Comes Home film festival every two years.
Grant married five times, eventually becoming a father and walking away from Hollywood in 1966, at the height of his fame. Under increasing pressure from the studios to deny any hint of homosexuality, he and Randolph Scott stopped living together sometime in the mid 1940s. Although no one can ever know the true nature of their relationship, toward the end of his life, a writer friend asked Grant about his feelings for Scott. He answered, “Have you ever heard of gravity collapse? Some people call it love at first sight.” Cary Grant is remembered as one of the greatest stars of the golden age of Hollywood. Synonymous with elegance and style, he once said, “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”
Katharine Hepburn
While Katharine Hepburn never remarried, she did enter into a long love affair with actor Spencer Tracy, who was himself already married. George Cukor did build a cottage on his property on Cordell Drive. Hepburn and Tracy were living there together when Tracy died in 1967. Hepburn took over the lease and kept it as her Los Angeles home until Cukor’s death in 1983. Spencer Tracy’s last movie was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, filmed when he knew he was dying. Tracy’s final speech of the film is said to be meant for Hepburn.
Katharine Hepburn refused to sell the film rights to The Philadelphia Story unless she was cast in the starring role and permitted to select both the leading men and the director. She chose Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and George Cukor. MGM agreed to her terms and Katharine Hepburn was relaunched as a star. She was nominated for Best Actress for her role, one of six Academy Award nominations the film received. In her career, Hepburn was nominated twelve times and won four Academy Awards, more than any other actor in history.
* * *
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Katharine Hepburn absolutely refused to do television interviews, but in 1973 her friend Irene Selznick talked her into meeting with talk show host Dick Cavett. Hepburn agreed to go to Cavett’s studio, just to see how it felt. They spoke and then Hepburn suggested they move forward with the interview right away with no studio audience. Hepburn did not know the initial conversation was being filmed but eventually allowed Cavett to air those four minutes of footage along with the subsequent interview. We see Hepburn reorganize the furniture, ensuring a stable surface where she can put up her foot, switch chairs so she can be filmed from her better side, ask the hair and makeup person to fix her hair so it’s loose and “falling down,” so she can then haphazardly pile it back up. It’s part of the act. In essence, we see her stage manage and preset the interview so her manner will seem entirely impromptu and natural and she can best play the part of Katharine Hepburn. She knew what worked for her and became famous for her candid, unstudied, unrehearsed personality. Of all the primary, archival, video and biographical sources I found, these four minutes of film were among the most useful. They helped me tell a story of the woman I saw in those unguarded moments. A woman who had perfected her public-facing technique, who learned the hard way how to get to the top and stay there.
Many of the historical figures featured in this novel came to prominence just as Hollywood was becoming a more dangerous place. The Hays Code and surrounding scrutiny meant that in effect, a star could be quickly “canceled” for getting caught saying or doing something deemed transgressive. As a result, much of what we know of the sexuality and private lives of stars such as Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn is based upon personal accounts from friends and industry insiders at the time. It is impossible to know the truth about Katharine Hepburn’s intimate affairs with both men and women. Her relationship with Laura Harding remains an open question, regardless of the fact that biographers and contemporaries claim the connection was absolutely sexual. And so, while the timeline of their friendship in this novel is rooted in fact, the emotional and sexual choreography is very much a fictional creation. It is a guess at what might have happened.
As far as possible, I stuck to the historical chronology but there are places where dates, names and events are altered to improve pacing and storytelling. For instance, Cary Grant did not buy himself out of his contract, he simply chose not to renew it but I have adjusted the detail in service of the story. In other cases, changes were made to avoid confusion such as when two characters had the same name. With such a vast and interconnected web of characters, many professional, personal and romantic adventures I would have loved to explore did not make it into the final novel at all. Howard Hughes had several brief but high-profile romances between his liaison with Billie Dove and his relationship with Katharine Hepburn but I left them out for narrative clarity. Hepburn herself likely had a tempestuous sexual relationship with John Ford and possibly with the editor Jane Loring, among others during this time but those encounters could be entire novels in themselves.
I would have loved to write the story of Katharine Hepburn briefly fleeing to Paris in 1934 after receiving bad press. She returned on the same boat as Ernest Hemingway, who was sailing home from Europe with his wife Pauline. Allegedly, he gave Hepburn a fantastic pep talk about facing the cameras. Whatever transpired, Hepburn stepped off the boat ready to dazzle reporters. Just after Cary Grant’s separation from Virginia Cherrill, Randolph Scott briefly married and then divorced but like Grant, he never moved out of their shared home. Other events such as Cary’s trip to Bristol have been condensed and restructured in order to streamline the narrative. In reality, Cary Grant made multiple visits to Bristol—first to reconcile with his father and then later upon learning his mother was alive. Howard Hughes’s unfortunate visit to the Hepburn home in Fenwick, Connecticut, was excluded as it has been depicted in films such as The Aviator and I wanted to avoid scenes that already exist in the collective imagination.
Some private moments live only in the negative spaces of missing or fragmented correspondence and I was interested in examining events that might have happened. We know from Luddy’s letters that Hepburn was rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles in January 1933. Upon her release, she quickly returned to Connecticut to be treated by her father. For narrative ease, I moved the event back to December when she was already home on the East Coast. While we don’t know the exact nature of the surgery, we do know that she nearly died several times while on the operating table and that things went awry as the surgery took twice the amount of time as expected. We also know that the surgery left a scar on her “lower anatomy.” It could not have been her appendix as her father had already removed it while she was at Bryn Mawr. Months later, Hepburn’s friend Alice Palache mentioned in a letter that Kate was still recuperating and was extremely unwell. Hepburn biographer, William J. Mann, surmised from this information that the surgery was likely to be uterine, possibly a hysterectomy. It is interesting to note that it is only after 1933 that Hepburn is quoted as saying that she did not want children. She never publicly referenced the surgery.
Some of the unlikeliest events of the novel really happened. Howard Hughes did land on the golf course in an effort to spend time with Katharine Hepburn. Cary Grant did find out that his mother was alive and living in a mental institution decades after he left Bristol. Cary Grant and Randolph Scott also did pose for a series of domestic photographs in their shared home. The Hepburn house in Fenwick, Connecticut, floated clean off its moorings in the great storm of 1938, and Howard Hughes sent the whole town bottled water. Hughes also really did help Hepburn to outsmart Hollywood and together they bought the film rights to The Philadelphia Story before the smash hit play ever opened on Broadway. Hepburn went on to five decades of iconic popularity, dying at age ninety-six at her home in Fenwick.
I am hugely indebted to the vast array of biographers and film historians who have preserved so much of the cultural history of this time. For anyone wishing to read further, I would urge them to read the work of Charlotte Chandler, Anne Edwards, Scott Eyman, Barbara Leaming, William J. Mann, Patrick McGilligan, David O. Selznick, and Irene Mayer Selznick, as well as Hepburn’s own memoir, Me.
This was a daunting and thrilling novel to write and 1930s Hollywood a glorious and storied place to mentally make camp. Katharine Hepburn is ultimately unknowable. She designed it that way. But the words I found most often used to describe Katharine Hepburn are independent, unapologetic, and original.
Acknowledgments
This novel wouldn’t exist without the kindness of so many people. I’m grateful to all who read, guided, and encouraged along the way. I would like to particularly thank:
Kaleem Aftab, Anita Angad, Adrienne Brodeur, Jack Brough and Jess Ronane, Louis Brough, Emma Burbank, and everyone at The Kate, Anne Burt, Lyn Liao Butler, Jamie and Linsey Deeks, Sophie and Max Deveson, Wendy Oates Devore and Chad Deal, Channon Donovan, Steph and Ed Drax, Charlotte Eggington, Amaryllis Fraser, Brian and Elias Fulton, Dr. Nancy Gade, Terri, Benjy, Amber and Chloe Garfinkle, Jennifer Garza, Jane Green, Philippa Gregory, Lauren Groff, Kristin Hannah, Patti Callahan Henry, The Margaret Herrick Library, David Katz, Martha Hall Kelly, Adriana, Simon, Felix, and Logan Kent, Alex and Katie Kerr, Cathee King, Dr. Richard King, David Kline, Megan Labrise, Ariel Lawhon, Susanna Lea, Lena Mahadeo, Marc Magsaysay, Sarah McCoy, Mike Melahn, Jocy and Brody Mello, Claire Messud, Elliotte Williams N’Dure, Celeste Ng, Naomi Nicholson, Beth Parker, Camille Perri, Digvijay and Yukiko Puar, Matt and Angela Pycha, Aron Rollin, The Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, John Searles and Tom Caruso, Lisa Sharkey, Alix Strauss, Adriana Trigiani, Jane Williams, Meg Wolitzer, and Jon Zeitler.
Stephanie Cabot—my spectacular agent and unwavering advocate, who flew in to help me rework the manuscript when I needed it most. Your belief in me and in this novel means everything. Thank you.
Susanna Porter, my brilliant editor—thank you for knowing what this book needed. With wisdom, insight and so much grace, you challenged me, cheered me on, and never let me settle for anything less than the story’s best self. To everyone at Ballantine—thank you for bringing this book into the world with such thoughtful and meticulous care. From navigating Adobe nightmares to chasing down the perfect pink, your kindness and generosity have been sewn into every step. In particular, thank you to Ralph Fowler, Jennifer Hershey, Kim Hovey, Anusha Khan, Melanie Muto, Taylor Noel, Sophie Normil, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Chelsea Woodward, and Briony Everroad, Andrea Gordon, and Barbara Greenberg. And to Scott Biel and Derek Walls—thank you for a beautiful cover.
Thank you to Megan Beatie, my extraordinary independent publicist, for your kindness, your clarity and your steadfast belief in this novel.
Thank you to Ash and Cliff Mello—for your bright, sharp insight and unshakable friendship. To Haley and Alana Sharp—it is a joy to watch your creativity tear through the world, and to Joan Maas—you inspire me with your kindness, presence and strength. To Kiernan Melahn—for taking such beautiful care of my family, both those with four legs and those with two. To Dr. Lindsey Westerfield, Dr. Christian Benyei, and everyone at Schulhof Animal Hospital—thank you for your extraordinary love and kindness.
To the coven—Cynthia Baker, Christina Baker Kline, and Paula McLain—for your incredible smarts, kindness, love and loyalty. Thank you for making the whole world feel possible.
And thank you to my family: to my sister Tina, brother-in-law JD, and nephews Dash and Emmett—for their unflappable kindness; my stepchildren Jesse, Martha, Edie, and Jonah—for inviting me in and making me family; my stepdaughters Maddi and Ava—for always choosing me back. To my husband Anthony—thank you for being my anchor. And to my mother—you are woven through every word I will ever write.
About the Author
Priya Parmar is the author of the novels Exit the Actress and Vanessa and Her Sister, a New York Times Notable Book, and is co-writer of the musical Sylvia (London Old Vic), nominated for the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. She divides her time between Hawaii and Connecticut with her family and four rescue dogs.
priyaparmar.net
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Priya Parmar, The Original
