| Katharine Hepburn - Kate meeting Garbo
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Introduction |
It is not known how many times they met but some stories are known. Unfortunately no pictures of them together are known to excist. It is also written that Kate at seventy-one took up jogging with Greta then seventy-three and they have been seen together playing tennis in Fenwick near Kate's home.
 
Photomontage by Dreamer
The first meeting |
In 1936, after filming Camille, Greta became more social. She even went to George's six-acre hillside estate. His Italianate villa, set in elaborate terraced gardens, became her favourite party site.
At luncheon there one day, she met Kate. Kate arrived early. Noting George's shrubbery-wreathed pool, she ripped off her clothes and plunged in. Here's Garbo! shouted Cukor a couple of minutes later. Kate scrambled out, wrapped herself in a towel, while dripping and curtsied.
Garbo and Cukor filming Camille
Later, Cukor took Greta to see Kate's gorgeous new house above Benedict Canyon. Greta had heard about Kate's luxurious new home on Angelo Drive, above Benedict Canyon, and asked to see it. Cukor, who had recently directed Kate in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), arranged a visit.
Hepburn and Cukor filming The Philadelphia Story
Kate wrote about this story in her autobiography. George Cukor brought Greta over for a tour of her new house. Went upstairs showed her the bedroom, wrote Kate: She walked over to my bed. There was a lump on the bed (a hot-water bottle). She looked at me, patted it, and sighed. 'Yes, I have one too. Vat is wrong vid us?'
Garbo saw Hepburn on Stage |
Greta was a casual theatregoer she preferred matinees because they didn't intervene with her sleep schedule this way she still managed to see most of the major shows.
In 1970, when Katharine Hepburn starred on Broadway in Coco, the Coco Chanel musical designed by Cecil Beaton, Greta took in a matinee with Cécile de Rothschild. "I applauded like mad," she told Ray Daum.
"She can't sing my God, she sounds like Rose Kennedy but she's full of energy.... How does she do it? The mere thought slays me. It's enough to kill an ox in a week." She marvelled that Gloria Swanson, at sixty-seven, wanted to follow Hepburn in the role.
Coco
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A Matter of Gravity |
In 1976 Garbo and her friend Sam Green attended Katharine Hepburn's stage play in A Matter of Gravity. They went to the play and six photographers were lying in wait for her outside. "It's so sad," Garbo said when they finally escaped. "I can never go to the theatre again."
Garbo and Kate at the theater |
Actress Eva Le Gallienne wrote in her diary in the spring of 1945 that she had just sat behind Garbo and Katharine Hepburn at the theater, watching the incomparable Laurette Taylor opening in The Glass Menagerie.
Eva Le Gallienne
Their last meeting |
One of Garbo's drivers, Sid Howard, saw Garbo for the last time on February the 9th in 1990, as he took her in his blue Lincoln Mark V for a late afternoon visit with Helen Hayes and Katharine Hepburn.
Garbo New York 1990
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