KATHARINE HEPBURN: Star as Feminist

Britton's admiration for Katharine Hepburn's achievement is clear throughout this highly intelligent book on the movie star and the classical Hollywood cinema. He studies her career, significance and meaning, the star system, the Director/Auteur, and the genre. He looks at the radicalism which blossomed during the 1930s and withered by the 1950s, the principle of recouperation taking dominance, the transgressions increasingly punished. His analysis of Hepburn's films at times drastically modifies the accepted critical canon, preferring for example Stage Door and Holiday to The Philadelphia Story and even Adam's Rib (the most consciously 'feminist' of the films). His sound argument shows a clear preference for films that challenge rather than reassure or flatter the audience. But he never loses sight of Hepburn-as-star and how the image developed, of the series of films made with Spencer Tracy, illuminated by comparisons with other celebrated male/female partnerships - not only Hepburn's own films with Cary Grant (notably the 30s masterpieces Holiday and Bringing Up Baby), but also William Powell/Myrna Loy, Bogart/Bacall and especially Astaire/Rodgers. This is a book that should live as long as the classical Hollywood cinema in that it reveals one of the great creative episodes in the history of the Arts. Conforming to none of the stereotypes of female superstardom, Katharine Hepburn far transcended the customary 'star' and was able to develop her own persona within the confines of the studio system, with her own brand of intelligence, wilfulness and independence. 264 page well illustrated large softback. Thin red remainder mark.