Kiss Me Kate

Katharine Hepburn’s efforts at getting the last word on her own life seem set to crumble less than a month after her death.

While Scott Berg’s Kate Remembered, which the actress authorised on the condition it not be published until after her death, has been rushed into print and into the bestseller lists, it is another book that is causing controversy with a claim that both Hepburn and her long-term companion Spencer Tracy were gay or bisexual.

The claim is made in an updated version of a 1985 biography, Anne Edwards’s Katharine Hepburn: A Remarkable Woman, which has also just hit American bookshops. Publishers Weekly has suggested that this, not Berg’s book, might be the most definitive source for readers who want to read more than Hepburn wanted them to know.

Scott Berg is a super, wonderful writer, Edwards told Publishers Weekly. I assume he had as many problems as I did dealing with Kate. She told me, -˜I don’t care what you write as long as it’s not the truth.’

She romanticised and fictionalised her relationship with Spencer Tracy, a bisexual, abusive alcoholic -“ not so much physically as verbally abusive, Edwards said.
I had great respect for her and she was the ultimate film performer, but she was not honest about her life.

Between the lines, I was able to say that she lived a bisexual life most of her life. She and Spencer were great beards for each other throughout their lives. I can understand why she would have to keep her sexuality a secret, but in later years I felt it was less moral of her to never make some sort of gesture to the gay community.

This was, after all, a woman who married a gay man and took her long-time companion, Laura Harding, on their honeymoon, Edwards claimed.