June 14, 2022 • 23 mins
Today we are launching a deep-dive, four-parter discussion about sex, scandal, and Hollywood! Professor Jay Malarcher, a film and theater history professor, joins us to tell the salacious story of two of our favorite Old Hollywood actors - Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - who may have actually been involved in a scandal within a scandal. Dun dun dunnnn.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have very exciting news for you. Listen close. Today
we're launching a deep dive for part or discussion about sex,
scandal and Hollywood. I'm Alicia Rye and I'm Sarah Wendel.
Welcome to love Stock Daily, where we bring scandalous love
stories to your ear drums every day this week in
(00:23):
love with the same I love with you, all right, Alicia,
were doing some past, present and future gossip scandals. Future.
(00:46):
I don't think we have a psychic on but maybe
maybe maybe future in terms of the kids that have
been born of these scandals. Yeah. I mean. One thing
that I have learned as we have been researching and
learning about these differ stories is that everything repeats everything everything.
In the words of theologian and philosopher Bruce Springsteen, everything dies,
(01:10):
but maybe everything comes back. Yes, And I'm so excited
that we're doing this during your birthday week because as
as anybody who listens knows, you are a big fan
of celebrity gossip. I narratives love it and you don't
like you You You follow Demoi, which is like a very
popular sort of I do not, actually, but I follow
(01:33):
the subreddit which they hate Duma. This is like amazing
to me. Yes, there's a whole series of here. Here
is another gossip narrative that I find it amazing. There
are subredits devoted to topics that actually hate the creator
of that topic, like the Harry Potter subredit. They do
not like the creator of Harry Potter can't believe that
that's true, hates Douma the Instagram feed, and the host
(01:56):
of the Instagram feed hates the subreddit. It's kind of amazing.
That is kind of amazing. And she like they were outed, right,
Dema as like who the person is? Recently, Yes, there
was a journalist who did a deep dive and was
pretty sure they proved who was behind the account. And
I remember everyone was like, well, that's like wanta, Like
it was nobody. Nobody anybody thought, Wow, a really white, rich,
(02:20):
privileged person with access to celebrity and fashion. Who could
have seen it coming? Yeah, okay, So today we're going
to start with old Hollywood, which do you so? I
have a very weird blind spot for anything pop culture
related in America before the nineteen eighties, except for like
star Wars, like the things that went to other countries
(02:42):
like that were exported. I know, really well, and then
everything else. I'm like, I don't know who these old
Hollywood stars are, but you are a big fan, right,
Like you know these people. I'm not a big fan,
but I know enough about them. I do love those
like Instagram accounts or tumblers back in the day where
it was just like hot, old people like hot, like
black and white photos and random people and and of
(03:07):
course who does that better than Hollywood. It's true. Yeah,
there's some beautiful people back in the day. And today
is our first day of four of answering this question,
how has our fascination with Hollywood scandals changed over time?
And to help us out since we're starting in the past,
we're inviting Professor Jay Millar Sha onto the show. Professor
(03:31):
Millar sha teaches at West Virginia University, where he specializes
in film and theater history, and is here to tell
us about two of our favorites, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy,
who may have actually been involved in a scandal within
a scandal that is my favorite. Dr Muller Shay, thank
(03:53):
you so much for joining us. I am so excited
to talk with you about some vintage Hollywood drama. Could
I first ask what do you do? And how awesome
is it to do what you do? I teach theater
and film at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Big fan, Well,
thank you Mountaineers, let's go. Um I have I have
(04:15):
been interested in film and sort of pop culture before
I knew it was a area of research my whole life.
When I was getting my PhD in theater, I was
stuck for a dissertation topic, and in desperation, I wrote
a letter to Larry Gelbart, who created Mash for television,
(04:35):
wrote Tutsie, wrote a funny thing happened on the way
to the Forum, wrote for Sid Caesar, Bob Hope, red buttons, etcetera.
And to my astonishment, he sent me back a letter saying,
when do we start? And that was the beginning of
my career studying one of the great comic geniuses, one
of the colleagues of Neil Simon, mel Brooks, Carl Reiner,
(04:57):
Woody Allen. You know, he's worked with almost any name
in comedy. So that was like my comedy grad school
was dealing with Larry And of course he was a
film writer, television writer, stage writers, so it really was
in my wheelhouse. To research him and that helped get
me a job obviously in a book. And uh, you know,
(05:18):
I've been at West Virginia University more than twenty years now,
so I think I'll stay. Yeah, I mean why not? Yeah,
you know, moving moving the number of books I have
would be fatal. So uh, that's that's really my background.
That's so cool. I want to start by asking you
about Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Can you give listeners
(05:41):
a context? Who was Katherine Hepburn and who was Spencer Tracy? Okay,
sure for your young your younger listeners, right. Katherine Hepburn
was you know, she started as an actress in New
York around the early thirties, and when the Group Theater
was forming, she was in it to one of Harold
Klerman's kind of nightly lectures on the theater and he said,
(06:06):
miss Hepburn, would you like to join the Group Theater?
And she said, no, I don't think so. I'm going
to be a big star. Go ahead, ma'am, absolutely, and
she walked away. Right, we stand a confident queen. She did.
She did become a big star, and she was friends
with a man named Philip Barry, who was a playwright.
He wrote wonderful play called Holiday, which is not as
(06:28):
well known as his big hit, The Philadelphia Story, which
he actually gave Katherine Hepburn the rights to. When she
went out to Hollywood, she basically held out and said, no,
I'm going to be the star of this movie, even
though you might think I'm an unbankable, you know, box
office poison, which was her reputation at the time. She
(06:50):
was hard to work with because she was headstrong and
she knew what she wanted to do, and she was
very good at what she did, but she wasn't as
as malleable as the Hollywood machine wanted her to be.
You know, she wore slacks, right, and she insisted on
wearing slacks in The Philadelphia Story, which is groundbreaking at
(07:11):
the time. Oh, absolutely, absolutely so. The Philadelphia Story was
sort of the the achievement of Katherine Hepburn in her
early career. She went on to do The Women and
and great great films in the African Queen, right, we
can talk about her time with Humphrey Bogart. She's most
famous today probably for those Spencer Tracy movies, Adam's rib Desk, Set,
(07:34):
Pat and Mike, and then of course the sort of
the p ss Stones was guests, Who's coming to dinner? Now?
Spencer Tracy grew up as a sort of a Midwestern
or Catholic. And you know there's an irony there because
he was in boys Town, right, he played a priest
talking about the great orphanage Boys Town. And when somebody
(07:54):
asked him, well, why don't you divorce your wife and
you know, hook up with Katherine hepburn. He said, Oh,
I'm a Catholic. I don't want to. I can't divorce,
but he can have an affair, right, It's okay for
him to have the affair, but not not to divorce.
So I I think that's kind of a selective Catholicism,
you know, I call it that. Anyway, he went on
to do. I mean, he's he's just one of the
(08:16):
great actors in Hollywood, uh sort of history. His his
most famous acting advice is acting is easy. Just don't
let them catch you doing it. That's good advice. Actually,
it's absolutely the best acting advice I've ever heard. You know,
learn your lines, don't bump into the furniture. Those are
all sort of like the basic tenets of the of
(08:37):
the Spencer Tracy style, if you want to call it that.
But he's he's kind of an everyman paternal figure in
in you know, not just a priest, but you know,
he's the lawyer in in Adam's Rib and he's got
a lot of gravitas. And then of course that the
crowning achievement was guess Who's coming to dinner, which in
the sixties was a waters had moment for race relations
(09:02):
and made a made a strong you know, the Sydney
plotsier who is you know has venerated today? And you know,
Middle America could not blink. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Heppern
they had to take in that story, whether they believed
in the message or not. So that was a real,
you know, sort of victory for race relations in the
(09:25):
time in the sixties when you know, cities were burned.
Katherine Hepburn, you know, she had to kind of call
time on on some filming days because Spencer was just
tired to keep working and and he shot a lot
of his scenes and and takes sitting down that sort
of thing. So it was really the last labor of love.
And then Katherine Hepburn just to finish her career on
(09:48):
a strong note. She in did The Lion in Winter
and listened to her supporting cast and her movie character
Mats Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton. Yep, I mean
this is like a full, you know, amazing cast. If
you haven't seen The Lion in Winter, it's a good movie. Oh,
(10:09):
it's a brilliant movie. It's it's like Who's Afraid of Virginia?
Wolf meets British History. Yeah, it's you know, it's got
those knockdown, drag out marital struggles between Peter O'Toole and
Katherine Hepburn. Well, she won the Academy Award that year
for her performance as the Queen, and she tied with
whom here's your trivia for the day. Who did she
tie with in nine for the Best Actress oscar Is
(10:31):
it Julie Andrews that year? No, she was earlier. It
was actually it was Barbara Streisand for funny Oh jeez,
you don't tie with Barbara. She doesn't like that. Oh no, well,
I think at that stage of her career she she
gladly accepted being in the same conversation as Katherine Hepburn.
That's true, but you know she's going on to you know,
(10:52):
she's she's done. Okay, she's been all right, Yeah, she has.
Her career hasn't been bad. The mythic relationship between Spencer
Tracy and Katherine Hepburn that she talks about in her
memoir is one of those great Hollywood love stories. Right,
he was married, but they were devoted to each other,
Katherine and Spencer. So at that time with Katherine and Spencer,
(11:15):
did did the public know about their fare early on
or did it sort of come out on purpose? What
did the public think of their relationship? I think that
I think that they were forgiving because it was clear
that they had chemistry. This is a really wild old
Hollywood story because they seem to have done a lot,
(11:35):
but not a lot of people knew about Well. You know,
if I if I could blow your mind a little bit,
please do. It is my favorite thing. It's a scandal
within a scandal. Oh even better, tell me everything. We're
going to take a beat, go have a sip of water, coffee, wine,
or whatever you need, and we'll be right back. I
(12:04):
believe that they were absolutely in love. Now, did they
have a sexual relationship. This is one of those questions
that leads us to that m that sort of under
the covers or under under the cover of darkness kind
of thing. I think. According to some scholars today the
(12:26):
last ten years, it's been purported that Katherine Hepburn was
a lesbian and Spencer Tracy was bisexual, and so that
led to a kind of a she was his beard
and he was her merkin. If you know what American is, Yes,
I've heard of America referred to as Canada's merkin. Oh there, well,
(12:50):
you know, yeah, that'll put hair on your yeah, no, yeah,
if you remember, if you remember Dr Strange Love, the
President of the United States, was merkin. Muffly's subtle. That's
the only word for subtle, right on the nose there.
So anyway, get getting back to Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.
You know, she liked to wear pants, she was, you know, athletic,
(13:12):
she had all those kind of cliches of the independent woman.
But according to the author of a book called Full Service,
which was made into a series on Netflix where they
showed the old Hollywood, the kind of the procureur ran
a gas station and guys Hollywood celebrities would pull up
(13:33):
in their cars and a young man or woman was
would jump in the car and they would drive off
for a masignation. And so full service being one of
the terms around gas stations, filling stations. This is the
author of Phillips I believe is his name, Mark Phillips.
He talked about Spencer Tracy having to know down a
(13:55):
couple of drinks or maybe even a full bottle before
he would engage in that sort of thing. And so,
you know, that's a scandal in itself that they were
so well protected that we thought we were getting the
dirt when we found out that they were having a relationship,
but that that's nowhere near the depth of the kind
(14:15):
of the story, if you will, And so the myth
of their having this lifelong love affair is actually a cover,
even though it seems to be a scandal in itself. Wow,
that's really sad too, that I know that at the
time there were morality causes in their contracts about what
they could get caught doing, and that their images look yep,
(14:39):
and that their images were very tightly controlled by the
marketing machine of the studios to which they were contracted.
And if you were this role, you were staying in
that role. And I mean, I think we kind of
see that same process with Disney and the young people
who work for Disney. This is your role. Disney will
market you in this role, and you will stay in
this role because that's the contract. So they're they're inside
(15:03):
a morality clause and they might be essentially protecting each
other from behind the barriers of that. Wow, that's really something.
So that's that's the Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn story.
They were stars, they got along famously, and I have
no doubt that they loved each other deeply. But whether
(15:24):
it was consummated in a kind of a sexual I
don't know what you would call it heterosexual cis gender relationship?
That's the question and I don't know if if anybody
can answer that completely. But there's a lot of evidence
that they were both sort of situated in different in
different ways look looking in different directions. It's fascinating to
(15:47):
think about, especially right now in the context of Pride Month,
like if they were alive right now with their lives
would be like and how they would be so very
different because they wouldn't have to operate inside a morality
clause for one thing, and they would be able to
have great or freedom to be who they are, not
total freedom, because there's already still so much homophobia in
Hollywood conscripting actors and actresses to very specific Exactly, Yeah,
(16:11):
let's not let's not kid ourselves that it's not happening. Still, No,
it's absolutely happening. Absolutely. The aspect of being a celebrity
hasn't changed a lot except for the ways in which
celebrity happens. So back then it was through very specific
controlled media. Now it's just all social media, but celebrity
very isolating. Yes, if you are a famous person, I
(16:31):
always say, you just can't go up, you know, up
and go to Target. You don't have the freedom to
just leave your house and be like, I need to
go to Target. If you're very famous, you cannot do that.
If you do, TMC will find you, Yes, exactly, and
it will always be when you have like the most
bizarre expression and you're taking out your world's biggest pimple
that'll be on the side facing the camera that at
least that's that's what would happen, or you've dressed down
(16:52):
so that people don't recognize you and all of a sudden,
you're no makeup pictures and every tabloid or on every
green around the world. That's that's the issue with celebrity.
It's kind of a a monster that has to be fed, yes, exactly.
And the nature of how celebrity isolates people really hasn't
(17:13):
changed a lot in this time period. And I imagine
that for Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy knowing each other's
like real selves, if they were queer, if they were
very close friends, like I think the Latin term is
a more cara friend of the soul. I mean, you
(17:36):
could call it platonic low, but I think it's I
think it's deeper than that. I think they were romantic.
I think I think he would have given her flowers,
for instance. You know, it's just that and Martini and well,
he wanted her to feel special. You could tell that, yeah, yeah,
and that's a really beautiful thing. Yeah, And that they
felt safe with each other. And so they have this
(17:58):
incredible monster of celebrity where outside they have this image
and all of this opinion in public information about them,
but between each other they have this place of safety
that's really beautiful and and you know, Katherine Hepburn in
her memoir, she seems to be happy to divulge the
affair in that kind of mythic way, but she doesn't
(18:22):
go all the way to the sort of the lesbian possibility.
So she's basically feeding the received story of Spencer and Hepburn. Yeah,
so that's that's where they are, and that received story
carries so much weight even now to oh sure, yeah,
I mean, if they haven't made a movie of the
(18:44):
Week or a Hallmark movie about this affair, I'm sure
you know it's in the work somewhere, someone's written a
spec script for it. People could see that they were
devoted to each other. And that's a really good way
to think about it, that you know, she would care
for him and he would care for her. Because on
the set, nobody's really about comfort. They're about getting the work.
(19:07):
So you know, if, like like I said, with with
guess who's coming to dinner? You know, if she says,
you know, Spence is a little tired, you know, can
we shoot some other scene right now, give him a
break or maybe bring him back tomorrow. That's the kind
of thing that that I think would be the most
public demonstration of their love, uh if you had eyes
(19:27):
to see it. And I always admire the fact that
she didn't speak about her relationship with him until after
his wife had died. Yes, right, she was very protective
of him, but also of his wife. I find that
incredibly honorable because he loved his wife, you know. And
this is this is again one of those issues that
(19:49):
you have to take into account. I don't think Catherine
Hepburn really had long term relationships with anyone. I think
she sort of dated around. But we're going to talk
about Howard Hughes later, and I think she was linked
to Howard Hughes, but I think that was more of
a kind of a power wishful thinking kind of relationship
(20:11):
that she had with him. Um, there is a there
is a story. She she was Stephen Sondheim's neighbor in
New York at the end of her life, the brownstone
next to Stephen Sondheims. So he was like, you know,
I could just go outside and watch her pulling the
garbage out for for the pickup the next day. It's like,
that's gotta be weird, you know. So but he thought
(20:34):
it was thrilling, and I'm sure she appreciated him when
when she found out that he was a genius. I mean,
who wouldn't. Yes, And Catherine Hepburn tended to celebrate people
of good creative genius. She wanted to work with the best,
and she was a very strong, very steel willed person,
which is hard to be at at any age in
(20:56):
any era. Absolutely, absolutely, we're going to pause right there.
We're gonna pause the movie and the scandal, and we
will be back tomorrow with yet another old Hollywood scandal
with our fabulous guest, Dr Milarsha. Well, that was a
fascinating story, especially for someone who doesn't know much about
like I know Katherine Hepburn as Kate Blynchett playing Katherine
(21:18):
Hepburn because I saw The Aviator and I really enjoyed it.
But so I don't actually know any of these people
are like their movies for the most part, which just
makes me feel like I need to go see them
now because they sound really interesting. They're gorgeous movies. Yeah,
they bet they are. And like I said, everything repeats, right,
everything does repeat. Conceiling behind a public narrative are manufactured,
(21:40):
um persona, it's repeating cycle. I find it absolutely fascinating.
I'm so excited for tomorrow. I can't wait for for
this next start, so excited and every day this week
we are going to be exploring celebrity because it's going
to be so interesting. Please come back with us. Seriously,
this week is going to be amazing. I can't wait.
I can't wait. And if you have any funds Love Stories,
(22:00):
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(22:20):
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an I Heart radio podcast. We wish you a very
(22:41):
old timy happy ever after love with that same I
in love with you. I'm in love with you
We have very exciting news for you. Listen close. Today
we're launching a deep dive for part or discussion about sex,
scandal and Hollywood. I'm Alicia Rye and I'm Sarah Wendel.
Welcome to love Stock Daily, where we bring scandalous love
stories to your ear drums every day this week in
(00:23):
love with the same I love with you, all right, Alicia,
were doing some past, present and future gossip scandals. Future.
(00:46):
I don't think we have a psychic on but maybe
maybe maybe future in terms of the kids that have
been born of these scandals. Yeah. I mean. One thing
that I have learned as we have been researching and
learning about these differ stories is that everything repeats everything everything.
In the words of theologian and philosopher Bruce Springsteen, everything dies,
(01:10):
but maybe everything comes back. Yes, And I'm so excited
that we're doing this during your birthday week because as
as anybody who listens knows, you are a big fan
of celebrity gossip. I narratives love it and you don't
like you You You follow Demoi, which is like a very
popular sort of I do not, actually, but I follow
(01:33):
the subreddit which they hate Duma. This is like amazing
to me. Yes, there's a whole series of here. Here
is another gossip narrative that I find it amazing. There
are subredits devoted to topics that actually hate the creator
of that topic, like the Harry Potter subredit. They do
not like the creator of Harry Potter can't believe that
that's true, hates Douma the Instagram feed, and the host
(01:56):
of the Instagram feed hates the subreddit. It's kind of amazing.
That is kind of amazing. And she like they were outed, right,
Dema as like who the person is? Recently, Yes, there
was a journalist who did a deep dive and was
pretty sure they proved who was behind the account. And
I remember everyone was like, well, that's like wanta, Like
it was nobody. Nobody anybody thought, Wow, a really white, rich,
(02:20):
privileged person with access to celebrity and fashion. Who could
have seen it coming? Yeah, okay, So today we're going
to start with old Hollywood, which do you so? I
have a very weird blind spot for anything pop culture
related in America before the nineteen eighties, except for like
star Wars, like the things that went to other countries
(02:42):
like that were exported. I know, really well, and then
everything else. I'm like, I don't know who these old
Hollywood stars are, but you are a big fan, right,
Like you know these people. I'm not a big fan,
but I know enough about them. I do love those
like Instagram accounts or tumblers back in the day where
it was just like hot, old people like hot, like
black and white photos and random people and and of
(03:07):
course who does that better than Hollywood. It's true. Yeah,
there's some beautiful people back in the day. And today
is our first day of four of answering this question,
how has our fascination with Hollywood scandals changed over time?
And to help us out since we're starting in the past,
we're inviting Professor Jay Millar Sha onto the show. Professor
(03:31):
Millar sha teaches at West Virginia University, where he specializes
in film and theater history, and is here to tell
us about two of our favorites, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy,
who may have actually been involved in a scandal within
a scandal that is my favorite. Dr Muller Shay, thank
(03:53):
you so much for joining us. I am so excited
to talk with you about some vintage Hollywood drama. Could
I first ask what do you do? And how awesome
is it to do what you do? I teach theater
and film at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Big fan, Well,
thank you Mountaineers, let's go. Um I have I have
(04:15):
been interested in film and sort of pop culture before
I knew it was a area of research my whole life.
When I was getting my PhD in theater, I was
stuck for a dissertation topic, and in desperation, I wrote
a letter to Larry Gelbart, who created Mash for television,
(04:35):
wrote Tutsie, wrote a funny thing happened on the way
to the Forum, wrote for Sid Caesar, Bob Hope, red buttons, etcetera.
And to my astonishment, he sent me back a letter saying,
when do we start? And that was the beginning of
my career studying one of the great comic geniuses, one
of the colleagues of Neil Simon, mel Brooks, Carl Reiner,
(04:57):
Woody Allen. You know, he's worked with almost any name
in comedy. So that was like my comedy grad school
was dealing with Larry And of course he was a
film writer, television writer, stage writers, so it really was
in my wheelhouse. To research him and that helped get
me a job obviously in a book. And uh, you know,
(05:18):
I've been at West Virginia University more than twenty years now,
so I think I'll stay. Yeah, I mean why not? Yeah,
you know, moving moving the number of books I have
would be fatal. So uh, that's that's really my background.
That's so cool. I want to start by asking you
about Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Can you give listeners
(05:41):
a context? Who was Katherine Hepburn and who was Spencer Tracy? Okay,
sure for your young your younger listeners, right. Katherine Hepburn
was you know, she started as an actress in New
York around the early thirties, and when the Group Theater
was forming, she was in it to one of Harold
Klerman's kind of nightly lectures on the theater and he said,
(06:06):
miss Hepburn, would you like to join the Group Theater?
And she said, no, I don't think so. I'm going
to be a big star. Go ahead, ma'am, absolutely, and
she walked away. Right, we stand a confident queen. She did.
She did become a big star, and she was friends
with a man named Philip Barry, who was a playwright.
He wrote wonderful play called Holiday, which is not as
(06:28):
well known as his big hit, The Philadelphia Story, which
he actually gave Katherine Hepburn the rights to. When she
went out to Hollywood, she basically held out and said, no,
I'm going to be the star of this movie, even
though you might think I'm an unbankable, you know, box
office poison, which was her reputation at the time. She
(06:50):
was hard to work with because she was headstrong and
she knew what she wanted to do, and she was
very good at what she did, but she wasn't as
as malleable as the Hollywood machine wanted her to be.
You know, she wore slacks, right, and she insisted on
wearing slacks in The Philadelphia Story, which is groundbreaking at
(07:11):
the time. Oh, absolutely, absolutely so. The Philadelphia Story was
sort of the the achievement of Katherine Hepburn in her
early career. She went on to do The Women and
and great great films in the African Queen, right, we
can talk about her time with Humphrey Bogart. She's most
famous today probably for those Spencer Tracy movies, Adam's rib Desk, Set,
(07:34):
Pat and Mike, and then of course the sort of
the p ss Stones was guests, Who's coming to dinner? Now?
Spencer Tracy grew up as a sort of a Midwestern
or Catholic. And you know there's an irony there because
he was in boys Town, right, he played a priest
talking about the great orphanage Boys Town. And when somebody
(07:54):
asked him, well, why don't you divorce your wife and
you know, hook up with Katherine hepburn. He said, Oh,
I'm a Catholic. I don't want to. I can't divorce,
but he can have an affair, right, It's okay for
him to have the affair, but not not to divorce.
So I I think that's kind of a selective Catholicism,
you know, I call it that. Anyway, he went on
to do. I mean, he's he's just one of the
(08:16):
great actors in Hollywood, uh sort of history. His his
most famous acting advice is acting is easy. Just don't
let them catch you doing it. That's good advice. Actually,
it's absolutely the best acting advice I've ever heard. You know,
learn your lines, don't bump into the furniture. Those are
all sort of like the basic tenets of the of
(08:37):
the Spencer Tracy style, if you want to call it that.
But he's he's kind of an everyman paternal figure in
in you know, not just a priest, but you know,
he's the lawyer in in Adam's Rib and he's got
a lot of gravitas. And then of course that the
crowning achievement was guess Who's coming to dinner, which in
the sixties was a waters had moment for race relations
(09:02):
and made a made a strong you know, the Sydney
plotsier who is you know has venerated today? And you know,
Middle America could not blink. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Heppern
they had to take in that story, whether they believed
in the message or not. So that was a real,
you know, sort of victory for race relations in the
(09:25):
time in the sixties when you know, cities were burned.
Katherine Hepburn, you know, she had to kind of call
time on on some filming days because Spencer was just
tired to keep working and and he shot a lot
of his scenes and and takes sitting down that sort
of thing. So it was really the last labor of love.
And then Katherine Hepburn just to finish her career on
(09:48):
a strong note. She in did The Lion in Winter
and listened to her supporting cast and her movie character
Mats Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton. Yep, I mean
this is like a full, you know, amazing cast. If
you haven't seen The Lion in Winter, it's a good movie. Oh,
(10:09):
it's a brilliant movie. It's it's like Who's Afraid of Virginia?
Wolf meets British History. Yeah, it's you know, it's got
those knockdown, drag out marital struggles between Peter O'Toole and
Katherine Hepburn. Well, she won the Academy Award that year
for her performance as the Queen, and she tied with
whom here's your trivia for the day. Who did she
tie with in nine for the Best Actress oscar Is
(10:31):
it Julie Andrews that year? No, she was earlier. It
was actually it was Barbara Streisand for funny Oh jeez,
you don't tie with Barbara. She doesn't like that. Oh no, well,
I think at that stage of her career she she
gladly accepted being in the same conversation as Katherine Hepburn.
That's true, but you know she's going on to you know,
(10:52):
she's she's done. Okay, she's been all right, Yeah, she has.
Her career hasn't been bad. The mythic relationship between Spencer
Tracy and Katherine Hepburn that she talks about in her
memoir is one of those great Hollywood love stories. Right,
he was married, but they were devoted to each other,
Katherine and Spencer. So at that time with Katherine and Spencer,
(11:15):
did did the public know about their fare early on
or did it sort of come out on purpose? What
did the public think of their relationship? I think that
I think that they were forgiving because it was clear
that they had chemistry. This is a really wild old
Hollywood story because they seem to have done a lot,
(11:35):
but not a lot of people knew about Well. You know,
if I if I could blow your mind a little bit,
please do. It is my favorite thing. It's a scandal
within a scandal. Oh even better, tell me everything. We're
going to take a beat, go have a sip of water, coffee, wine,
or whatever you need, and we'll be right back. I
(12:04):
believe that they were absolutely in love. Now, did they
have a sexual relationship. This is one of those questions
that leads us to that m that sort of under
the covers or under under the cover of darkness kind
of thing. I think. According to some scholars today the
(12:26):
last ten years, it's been purported that Katherine Hepburn was
a lesbian and Spencer Tracy was bisexual, and so that
led to a kind of a she was his beard
and he was her merkin. If you know what American is, Yes,
I've heard of America referred to as Canada's merkin. Oh there, well,
(12:50):
you know, yeah, that'll put hair on your yeah, no, yeah,
if you remember, if you remember Dr Strange Love, the
President of the United States, was merkin. Muffly's subtle. That's
the only word for subtle, right on the nose there.
So anyway, get getting back to Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.
You know, she liked to wear pants, she was, you know, athletic,
(13:12):
she had all those kind of cliches of the independent woman.
But according to the author of a book called Full Service,
which was made into a series on Netflix where they
showed the old Hollywood, the kind of the procureur ran
a gas station and guys Hollywood celebrities would pull up
(13:33):
in their cars and a young man or woman was
would jump in the car and they would drive off
for a masignation. And so full service being one of
the terms around gas stations, filling stations. This is the
author of Phillips I believe is his name, Mark Phillips.
He talked about Spencer Tracy having to know down a
(13:55):
couple of drinks or maybe even a full bottle before
he would engage in that sort of thing. And so,
you know, that's a scandal in itself that they were
so well protected that we thought we were getting the
dirt when we found out that they were having a relationship,
but that that's nowhere near the depth of the kind
(14:15):
of the story, if you will, And so the myth
of their having this lifelong love affair is actually a cover,
even though it seems to be a scandal in itself. Wow,
that's really sad too, that I know that at the
time there were morality causes in their contracts about what
they could get caught doing, and that their images look yep,
(14:39):
and that their images were very tightly controlled by the
marketing machine of the studios to which they were contracted.
And if you were this role, you were staying in
that role. And I mean, I think we kind of
see that same process with Disney and the young people
who work for Disney. This is your role. Disney will
market you in this role, and you will stay in
this role because that's the contract. So they're they're inside
(15:03):
a morality clause and they might be essentially protecting each
other from behind the barriers of that. Wow, that's really something.
So that's that's the Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn story.
They were stars, they got along famously, and I have
no doubt that they loved each other deeply. But whether
(15:24):
it was consummated in a kind of a sexual I
don't know what you would call it heterosexual cis gender relationship?
That's the question and I don't know if if anybody
can answer that completely. But there's a lot of evidence
that they were both sort of situated in different in
different ways look looking in different directions. It's fascinating to
(15:47):
think about, especially right now in the context of Pride Month,
like if they were alive right now with their lives
would be like and how they would be so very
different because they wouldn't have to operate inside a morality
clause for one thing, and they would be able to
have great or freedom to be who they are, not
total freedom, because there's already still so much homophobia in
Hollywood conscripting actors and actresses to very specific Exactly, Yeah,
(16:11):
let's not let's not kid ourselves that it's not happening. Still, No,
it's absolutely happening. Absolutely. The aspect of being a celebrity
hasn't changed a lot except for the ways in which
celebrity happens. So back then it was through very specific
controlled media. Now it's just all social media, but celebrity
very isolating. Yes, if you are a famous person, I
(16:31):
always say, you just can't go up, you know, up
and go to Target. You don't have the freedom to
just leave your house and be like, I need to
go to Target. If you're very famous, you cannot do that.
If you do, TMC will find you, Yes, exactly, and
it will always be when you have like the most
bizarre expression and you're taking out your world's biggest pimple
that'll be on the side facing the camera that at
least that's that's what would happen, or you've dressed down
(16:52):
so that people don't recognize you and all of a sudden,
you're no makeup pictures and every tabloid or on every
green around the world. That's that's the issue with celebrity.
It's kind of a a monster that has to be fed, yes, exactly.
And the nature of how celebrity isolates people really hasn't
(17:13):
changed a lot in this time period. And I imagine
that for Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy knowing each other's
like real selves, if they were queer, if they were
very close friends, like I think the Latin term is
a more cara friend of the soul. I mean, you
(17:36):
could call it platonic low, but I think it's I
think it's deeper than that. I think they were romantic.
I think I think he would have given her flowers,
for instance. You know, it's just that and Martini and well,
he wanted her to feel special. You could tell that, yeah, yeah,
and that's a really beautiful thing. Yeah, And that they
felt safe with each other. And so they have this
(17:58):
incredible monster of celebrity where outside they have this image
and all of this opinion in public information about them,
but between each other they have this place of safety
that's really beautiful and and you know, Katherine Hepburn in
her memoir, she seems to be happy to divulge the
affair in that kind of mythic way, but she doesn't
(18:22):
go all the way to the sort of the lesbian possibility.
So she's basically feeding the received story of Spencer and Hepburn. Yeah,
so that's that's where they are, and that received story
carries so much weight even now to oh sure, yeah,
I mean, if they haven't made a movie of the
(18:44):
Week or a Hallmark movie about this affair, I'm sure
you know it's in the work somewhere, someone's written a
spec script for it. People could see that they were
devoted to each other. And that's a really good way
to think about it, that you know, she would care
for him and he would care for her. Because on
the set, nobody's really about comfort. They're about getting the work.
(19:07):
So you know, if, like like I said, with with
guess who's coming to dinner? You know, if she says,
you know, Spence is a little tired, you know, can
we shoot some other scene right now, give him a
break or maybe bring him back tomorrow. That's the kind
of thing that that I think would be the most
public demonstration of their love, uh if you had eyes
(19:27):
to see it. And I always admire the fact that
she didn't speak about her relationship with him until after
his wife had died. Yes, right, she was very protective
of him, but also of his wife. I find that
incredibly honorable because he loved his wife, you know. And
this is this is again one of those issues that
(19:49):
you have to take into account. I don't think Catherine
Hepburn really had long term relationships with anyone. I think
she sort of dated around. But we're going to talk
about Howard Hughes later, and I think she was linked
to Howard Hughes, but I think that was more of
a kind of a power wishful thinking kind of relationship
(20:11):
that she had with him. Um, there is a there
is a story. She she was Stephen Sondheim's neighbor in
New York at the end of her life, the brownstone
next to Stephen Sondheims. So he was like, you know,
I could just go outside and watch her pulling the
garbage out for for the pickup the next day. It's like,
that's gotta be weird, you know. So but he thought
(20:34):
it was thrilling, and I'm sure she appreciated him when
when she found out that he was a genius. I mean,
who wouldn't. Yes, And Catherine Hepburn tended to celebrate people
of good creative genius. She wanted to work with the best,
and she was a very strong, very steel willed person,
which is hard to be at at any age in
(20:56):
any era. Absolutely, absolutely, we're going to pause right there.
We're gonna pause the movie and the scandal, and we
will be back tomorrow with yet another old Hollywood scandal
with our fabulous guest, Dr Milarsha. Well, that was a
fascinating story, especially for someone who doesn't know much about
like I know Katherine Hepburn as Kate Blynchett playing Katherine
(21:18):
Hepburn because I saw The Aviator and I really enjoyed it.
But so I don't actually know any of these people
are like their movies for the most part, which just
makes me feel like I need to go see them
now because they sound really interesting. They're gorgeous movies. Yeah,
they bet they are. And like I said, everything repeats, right,
everything does repeat. Conceiling behind a public narrative are manufactured,
(21:40):
um persona, it's repeating cycle. I find it absolutely fascinating.
I'm so excited for tomorrow. I can't wait for for
this next start, so excited and every day this week
we are going to be exploring celebrity because it's going
to be so interesting. Please come back with us. Seriously,
this week is going to be amazing. I can't wait.
I can't wait. And if you have any funds Love Stories,
(22:00):
if you want to treat us as demoi, because we
are very into that, uh, please send an email to
Love Stroke Daily at Frolic Media, like I really mean it.
Please send us email we really love it, or you
can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, which we would
also really love and the best way to support us.
If you enjoyed this episode or anything we do, please
(22:20):
please please leave us a review. It is so important
to making sure that we can continue to bring you
stories like this. Our researcher is Jesse Epstein. Our editor
is Jen Jacobs. We are produced by Abigail Steckler and
Little Scorpion Studios with executive producer Frolic Media. This is
an I Heart radio podcast. We wish you a very
(22:41):
old timy happy ever after love with that same I
in love with you. I'm in love with you
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