| Kate: The Woman Who Was Katharine Hepburn | 
 enlarge | Author: William J. Mann
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 109190
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 656
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.9
ISBN: 0571229786
EAN: 9780571229789
ASIN: 0571229786
Publication Date: June 7, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships same day (if ordered Mon-Fri before 3pm) from UK, Royal Mail First Class. Prompt and Friendly customer service.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Gay Woman's View! March 4, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is better than most previous books on Katharine Hepburn as it does reveal more about her, than they have. Her relationship with Spencer and her affairs with women ect.
However the most annoying thing about this book is the author's view that Kate is "transgender" he constantly tries to push this view. Instead of just presenting the facts and leaving it up to the reader make their own mind up, there is too much amateur psychology.
He is great at writing about gay men, he clearly knows that subject, but seems to have a very poor understanding of gay women.
He seems to think only men can really be gay (if you have read his other book "Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969" you'll know what I mean, he even calls Lilyan Tashman in to question, who is widely known to have been a lesbian). He believes every man is but doubts every woman. If you've read the interview he gave to advocate magazine you'll see what I mean, he says Spence is gay, but questions Kate just as he does in his previous book. Every man is, every woman isn't, there is something very odd or chauvinistic about this view.
Whilst she (Kate) may have or may not have slept with a bloke or two (most lesbians have) that doesn't necessarily mean she is bisexual. Gay women are generally more discrete than gay men anyway.
He seems to think that lesbian women don't have sex drives either and just sit down and talk of a night, even though later on in the book he says about how Kate asked Scotty (a friend of Cukors who is a male prostitute and a sort of male madam) to find her a "friend to go hiking", did he really think she just wanted to go "hiking" with this friend. It's just not consistent with his view that she wasn't really interested in sex, but just liked women as friends, same goes for the odd masseuse thing.
Also He seems to think that if women wear trousers, or are not typically "feminine" they are "transgender".
Many gay women as young girls dress up in "boys" clothes and do role play of a sort. I personally know many people who have done so, I myself have, and it doesn't make us "transgender".
Also many gay women dress in shirt and tie, it was more common in 20's - 50's (they're called butch). Look at Marlene Dietrich who used to sign photos of herself in top hat n tails as "Daddy Marlene" and other famous women who also dressed in this way are Vita Sackville West and Mercedes De Acosta.
I think it very curious that men (even a gay man like Mann) and straight women like Karen Swenson (in her biography of Garbo) like to think butch women are just transvestites or transgender, but not really actually gay.
At that time in history women were very much 2nd class citizens and so to escape many of the restrictions on girls at the time; of course a young girl who wants to be treated equally with her male siblings would try and claim to be a boy. After all most parents (particularly fathers, especially of that generation, say they prefer a boy child to a girl, just ask most expectant parents today, it hasn't changed much.)
So if she pretended to be a boy it doesn't necessarily make her "transgender", this seems to be difficult for most people to understand, maybe you can't unless you are a gay woman?
Surely as a gay man his heard of drag? Women can dress in drag too and not want to actually change their sex or be uncomfortable about their gender. There were many popular male impersonators in British music hall of the 1930's Hetty King and Ella Shields to name only a couple and many in Greenwich Village also. It seems this author is just towing the line to the prevailing culture that think butch women are transgender. It is dangerous to think this way when you look at Iran for example with the forced sex changes of gay people there, you can see this view taken to the extreme.
Of course she would like to play male roles, most butch women would (Garbo also wanted to and the great actress Sarah Bernhardt also played male roles in some of her plays), you could get away with interacting with female co stars without the script actually being overtly gay and also not have to batter your eye lashes at a man, like you would have if you played a woman's role. (Pantomime is a good example of where men play women's roles and women play men's roles.) Another point is male roles were generally more substantial; where as most of the women's roles were just as a love interest for the man.
I hope a gay woman will write a biography of Katharine Hepburn soon and hopefully they'll have more of an understanding of these subjects than this author.
I've given this book four stars as it reveals more about Kate than most other biographies.
 Great Kate February 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I knew very little about Kate Hepburn before I read this but I was intrigued by Cate Blanchett's portrayal of her in 'The Aviator'. The real Hepburn is utterly fascinating with an enviably adventurous life both on and off the screen. Mann has stripped away the hype and rumour to reveal the true woman behind the legendary trousers and haughty image. This is a superb biography and comes highly recommended.
Finally A Peek Behind the Curtain December 17, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
When I heard that William Mann was turning his attention to Katharine Hepburn my first thought was, does the world really need another biography of Kate Hepburn? Kate's own autobiography ME wasn't exactly enthralling. And Garson Kanin's TRACY & HEPBURN seemed like a lot of homespun hokum at the time. I shouldn't have doubted Mann's talent because KATE is a sensational book. I still have a cramp for holding it. I literally couldn't put it down.
The reason KATE is such a thrilling read is because William Mann has finally looked behind the curtain, behind the Kate Hepburn smokescreen. Like the climactic scene when the wizard in THE WIZARD OF OZ is found to be a little man in control of smoke, bells and whistles, this book discovers the real live Katharine Hepburn behind all of the PR. And the real Kate is fascinating. Much more fascinating than the puff pieces previously written about her. For the first time we find that not only was she ferociously ambitious but also sometimes unsure, sometimes fearful, very often courageous but also sometimes not.
William Mann has matured as a writer in an astonishingly short time. His book WISECRACKER about William Haines was a page turner but it didn't have near the depth that KATE does. How could it when most of the principles were gone before the writing? Along with THE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT, Mann's biography of director John Schlesinger, KATE will be read and studied by film fans and students for years to come.
This book is an astonishing achievement. No wonder The New York Times has declared it one of the best of the year. I second that commendation!
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