Kate and Spence

Getting a pedicure at a fancy salon, I picked up this month's Vanity Fair (and, oh, how glad I am that I did not buy it, because then I would be forced to rail against this month's puff piece, the text, if one can deign to label it thus, though I suppose text is a better term than article, that accompanies the famous Suri Cruise photos, and basically consists of Tom and Katie talking about how great they are, and the author, whose name I will not look up, so as not to have to print it and embarrass her, talking about how great Tom and Katie are, oh, and what a great and loving--and did I say great and loving--big happy family the whole Cruise-Holmes melange turns out to be) (though you know, that author probably would not be embarrassed at all, and I really need to stop complaining about Vanity Fair being Vanity Fair, or, if I am going to be offended and complain, I should stop reading the damn magazine).

At any rate, because I did not buy the magazine, I need not offer a sustained analysis or critique (hmm, am I creating a new magazine-reading-blogging rule here? let's not...). Instead I can just comment upon (my, it is taking me an awful long time to get to this comment which is all I really want to make) the excerpt from William J. Mann's new biography, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn.

It's one of those reads that makes you see everything in a new light that is immediately completely obvious, which is my absolute favorite kind of non-fiction read. We all thought of Hepburn as the ultimate in feminist New England authenticity, but she was a movie star, for god's sake, and Mann's argument that she invented and reinvented herself makes total sense, especially when you consider the complications of her politics and sexuality, writ against the history of Hollywood from the 1930s on.

But what I found really interesting was his account of how Hepburn herself participated in the sentimentalizing and romanticizing (they are slightly different things, especially in this case) of her relationship with Spencer Tracy. I remember reading Garson Kanin's Tracy and Hepburn (no links worth linking to) and being entranced by the stuff of tragic love story. Turns out it's not the case: the romantic part of the relationship ended in 1952, they both had significant same-sex relationships, Tracy's guilt was not just about drinking or his deaf son, but about gay sex, Hepburn's friends were shocked when, in the late 80s, she herself started trumpeting the relationship as tragic romance. Fascinating stuff, and much more commentary about current celebrities, celebity biographies, and the like could be vouchsafed, but I must go pick up authentic children at very un-Hollywood school.