So Much to Say About Katharine Hepburn in a Documentary #1
This is really fun. Talking to people who really knew and spent time with the iconic actress, Connecticut’s own, Katharine Hepburn.Interviews are being done for a documentary for the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center and Theater in Old Saybrook, Connecticut for which I am a trustee. It will be featured at the theater, in the museum to Hepburn.
The first interview is with Martha Soper, a Connecticut Yankee thru and thru and at 89 is as spry as they come, she’s adorable. Martha summered in Fenwick the site of the Hepburn summer home, the place Hepburn called “paradise.”
Martha wore a red sweater. That was a trick that Hepburn knew all about from the get go…she wore a lot of red.
Martha was about 11 when she was tooling around Fenwick with Kate, or “Katy” as everybody in the neighborhood called her. She said there were six Hepburns, there were six in her family, and besides Martha’s Mom had been nice to the Hepburns. Others in the enclave had kind of ostracized the family as Doctor Hepburn was a urologist and he and Mrs. Hepburn would discuss such things as venereal disease and the like, and well that was frowned upon out there in puritanical Fenwick.
Martha thought of “Katy” as her big sister and she told me Katy was always the leader of the pack organizing plays and deciding who would play what. Martha told me she was told by Hepburn that she could never play the ingenue…she just wasn’t pretty enough. In much later years when Hepburn would drop by (make that barge in) to Soper’s home in Old Saybrook proper, she saw a baby picture on the wall and remarked about how pretty the child was. Martha told her it was her to which Hepburn said:
Martha was never offended by Hepburn, because she said she always spoke the truth, and that was that. Martha sent tulips to Hepburn when she was very young and Hepburn, who was known as a writer of notes, sent one to Martha whose mother told her to save it because someday Katy was going to be famous, Martha’s Mom was right. It was written to Martha in about 1932. I told her it was probably time to get it in a frame instead of in a book where she’s had it all these years. In it Hepburn expresses her thanks for the flowers and how beautiful they looked. You’ll see she signed it “Katy.”
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Ann Nyberg
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I cannot wait to see this doc, the first of it’s kind. Very exciting stuff!
Best Regards,
Peter Fox
I too have fond memories of Kate Hepburn in Fenwick. My parents purchased a house in 1947 which at that time was next to the tennis courts. The Hepburn home was directly in front of us passed the par 5 on the golf course and the pond. We were from N.J., my father a medical doctor, but with an Italian last name. The area in those days were mainly inhabited by families from Hartford especially Aetna insurance, so to say the least we were outsiders. I was 12 years old at the time but summers there were magical. I watched the comings and goings of all the Hepburns and waved to Kate as she bicycled or played golf or tennis. In the 10 summers there we were never part of the clan but it didn’t seem to matter because it was so peaceful and beautiful plus exciting to have such a famous star in our midst. In 1993 I wrote to Kate about my memories growing up there and that it was a little bit of paradise. She responded in a 3 sentenced typed written note (hand signed). I have this framed with her picture on by wall here in San Francisco. It is a special possession of mine.
Joan, thank you so much for sharing that wonderful story with all of us.