Katharine Hepburn - Kate and Garbo Trivia

Here is more Garbo/Hepburn related info. You know more? Please mail us.
 

 
There is also a story of Hepburn storming onto the set of Ninotchka to speak to Garbo and everyone holding their breath as to what was going to happen. Apparently Hepburn was furious because Louis B. Mayer had just told her she needed to increase her breast size if she was to continue being a successful film star.

Garbo on the set of her 1939 comeback in Ninotchka.

Garbo is reported to have said "Don't worry darling he said the same thing to me last week", whereupon they both fell about laughing.

Source:
unknown

 
King Kong producer Merian C. Cooper was making Technicolor tests with Kate at RKO-Radio Pictures for a possible Joan of Arc project.

Mercedes de Acosta wrote in her biography that Greta wanted for several years to do a Jeanne d'Arc film and wanted her to write it. When they were in Carmel she again said she would rather do it than anything and lamented the fact that Kate was going to do it.

Kate's famous screen-test

Fact is that Kate did the screen test as a favour so that they could see the progress of the Technicolor. So Greta was false informed.

 
Despite internet rumours (from 2003) that Greta and Kate had a love affair. The rumor appeared in the book Katharine the Great. The author (Darwin Porter) claims that both legends had an affair together. On page 570, the author claims that Kate had sex with many female Hollywood stars, including Garbo, Marlene and.... Mercedes de Acosta

There has never been any proof or evidence that they were other than good friends, who both enjoyed theatre, films, tennis and swimming.

The book

More info   HERE!

 
In Hepburn's early carrer she was titles as 'The American Garbo'. Hepburn biographer Scott Berg mentioned that Greta changed the public's attitudes toward beauty.

  
Photomontages

Before Greta, most leading ladies were rounder of face and fleshier of body, more curves than angles.........

Irene Selznick said: "Producers were desperate to find an  American Garbo - somebody with her looks but an All-American attitude. The American Garbo was Kate!"

Then Came Garbo

A wonderful illustration of her impact appeared in the November 1932 Vanity Fair photo feature, ‘”Then Came Garbo'”, depicting Dietrich, Bankhead, Stern, Crawford, Hepburn, and other actresses in early and recent photos. In the pre-Garbo shots, they all look coquettish and much ”done up” Post-Garbo, they wear minimal make-up, their hair is straight, thin eyebrows and long lashes.

Translation

When anthropologists of the future will enjoy archives of cinema, they will discover a surprising phenomenon. They will see that Hollywood women in the beginning of XX century had different types, since 1931-32 they began again to look similar. Main airs of this similarity are lightened hair, more or less discoloured, medium length brushed inside, thin eyebrows straight to the sky and long lashes. They add to this lipstick, which gave them a sulky look and a gauntness, which let think in this period they suffered digestives problems. Of course this analysis is wrong. All this is showed on pictures in the bottom. In the top these pictures represent us golden age of pre-Nordic innocence. Before Garbo and they can see in the bottom metamorphosis they did consequently ....

 
Garbo couln't  find the right bathing suit for a swim scene she had to film. Director George Cukor wrote Katharine Hepburn, asking if she had a bathing suit to lend Greta for Two-Faced  Woman (1941). The suit finally came from the New York designer Valentina.

Garbo in her 'bathing suit-scene'

 
Mother Goose goes Hollywood is a Disney animated short puts Hollywood stars of the 1930's into roles from Mother Goose stories. For example W.C. Fields is Humpty Dumpty and the Marx Brothers are the fidlers three. Donald Duck, Kate and Greta does make a cameo appearance.

  
Kate and Greta in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood

More info  HERE!

 
 It is said that Greta like Kate had freckles.

 Both had blue eyes.

 Like Marlene Dietrich – both wore pants.

 Bill Tilden played tennis with stars such as Charlie Chaplin and coached Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo among others.

 Ayn Rand greatly admired Greta and had thought Kate would have been perfect for the role of her fictional heroine Dagny Taggart in a film version of Atlas Shrugged. (Boston's Ford Hall Forum 1970s)

 Kate at seventy-one took up jogging with Greta then seventy-three.

 They have been seen together playing tennis in Fenwick near Kate's home.

 Greta once said that if she had not been Garbo she would have liked to be Katharine Hepburn.

 In the late 1960s, film producer Ross Hunter offered Garbo to appear in this Civil War drama called The Heaven Train. It was going to be a religious western about a mother superior driving her "girls" through the west. Garbo said: ”Give it to Katharine Hepburn”.

 
While Garbo was filming Queen Christine in 1993, the press reported that Marlene Dietrich would soon film a story of Catherine the Great. Other proposed historical epics included Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette and Katharine Hepburn as Elizabeth I.

  
Kate as Queen Mary of Scotland and Greta as Queen Christina of Schweden

Kate as  Elizabeth was not made but in 1938 she starred as Queen Mary of Scotland.

 
Kate and Garbo were both befriendedwith George Cukor. Kate made 10 films with Cukor – such as Bill of Divorcemant (1932), Little Women (1933), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), The Philadelpia Story (1940), Keeper of the Flame (1942), Adams Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Love Among the Ruins (1975), The Corn is Green (1979) and Greta in Camille (1936) and Two-Faced Woman (1941).

The Philadelphia Story

Keeper of the Flame

Love Among the Ruins

Camille

Two-Faced Woman

 
Kate and Greta were both included in the 1938 list of Box Office Poison.This full-page advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter read on May 3, 1938.

  
Kate and Greta were both included

"Wake up Hollywood producers! Practically all of the major studios are burdened with stars – whose public appeal is negligible – receiving tremendous salaries necessitated by contractual obligations.”

Having paid out such enormous sums, the studios were obligated “to put these box office deterrents in expensive pictures in the hope that some return on the investment might be had,” the ad charged.

“Among these players, whose dramatic ability is unquestioned but whose box-office draw is nil, can be numbered Mae West, Edward Arnold, Garbo, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn ...”

Kay Francis and Marlene Dietrich were also pronounced deadly “poison at the box office.”

The uncredited author of this controversial advertisement was Harry Brandt, writing on behalf of the Independent Theatre Owners Association. Brandt's purpose had not been to tear down stars, but to put the studios on notice. With movie grosses in a slump, small-town exhibitors resented being forced to take product they didn't want (“prestige” films) in order to get movies they did (Andy Hardy, Charlie Chan, comedies, westerns, adventure pictures).

The exhibitors' wake-up call started a public debate just as producers and distributors were getting together to discuss product for the upcoming season. However, the industry rallied in defense of the studios. Independent theater owners would not win their point regarding block booking until the Department of Justice intervened a decade later.

Source: Karen Swenson - A life apart

 
According to Scott Berg in Kate Remembered – In the early 80s Michael Jackson once had dinner at Kate's house in NY, after the dinner he asked Kate if she would introduce him to Greta, Kate refused.

Jackson in the mid 1980s

It is said that Garbo waxed lyrical about Michael Jackson in an almost girlishly adoring way. “He is a handsome and so musical, I never miss seeing him on television if I can help it. What a star he is!”

In the 1980s, the The Globe magazine wrote: Michael Jackson met Garbo secretly. He wore a beard, sunglasses and cap so nobody can recognise him. He went to her apartment for a secret meeting.

 
Kate wanted to star in a film version of the successful stage play, Mourning becomes Electra, by Eugene O'Neill. She hoped that George Cukor would direct and MGM produce the drama.

Kate wanted the daughter role and saw Garbo in the mother role. Kate said that she was “absolutely besotted” by Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra and wanted to do it at MGM with Garbo and director George Cukor.  Kate arranged a meeting to discuss the project with Mayer, Garbo and Cukor.

The studio boss listened to the story, as told by Harriet Frank, his talented storyteller. Mrs. Frank did a brilliant job when she told Mourning Becomes Electra. It took almost two and a half hours to present a detailed synopsis and Kate knew by the end of act 1 that they had lost Mayer.

The trio left Mayer's office without further comment. Greta was obviously perplexed and wanted to know what had happened.  There was some discussion about taking the project to Warner Bros., but all three partners preferred keeping in alignment with their adopted alma mater.

Kate did another play written by Eugene O'Neill

In 1962 Kate did a play written by Eugene O'Neill. It is the film Long Nights Journey into Night – a fabulous portrait of a woman addicted to Morphine.

 
Kate worshiped Greta to such an extent that she went to her own studio executives and asked permission to work as an “extra” in Queen Christina (USA 1933), in order that she might observe at close range the mysterious Greta charm and technique: Permission was denied.

Garbo as Sweden's only queen

Another source said that Kate asked for the maid's role in Queen Christina just to watch Garbo at work. She was denied.