Hi, I'm Amy Henderson, I’m a Cultural Historian here at the Portrait Gallery, and I want to
talk today about Katharine Hepburn.
In 2007, we did a wonderful One Life exhibition to celebrate Hepburn’s centennial, and this
portrait by Everett Raymond Kinstler was the centerpiece image in the show.
This was Hepburn’s favorite portrait.
Now, years ago I was lucky enough to get to know her through Garson Kanin and she allowed
me to come to her New York row house to look at all the portraits that she had.
And she had portraits all over the place because from her entire career she had known artists.
So beginning on the top floor in her bedroom there is Cecil Beaton watercolor.
Then there were sculptures.
But her favorite was the Kinstler portrait.
And when we did the exhibition, this was the centerpiece.
We also were able to borrow her Oscars for the exhibition.
Now, in her house I never saw these Oscars.
She didn't have them displayed prominently on the mantle place or anything else.
But the estate was able to locate them and they graciously loaned them for the exhibition.
Hepburn earned twice as many Best Actress Oscars than anybody else, starting in 1933
for a film “Morning Glory” and going through until 1981 “On Golden Pond.”
So it's almost a span of fifty years that she had won these Oscars for Best Actress.
Now, unbeknownst to me but last summer, the summer of 2009, the estate contacted us and
said that they would like to donate her Oscars to us, to our permanent collection.
And here they are.
We're delighted to have them along with her favorite portrait.
The motion picture academy was formed in 1927 by the moguls who ran the studios, led by
Louis B. Mayer at MGM.
And one of the things they did to signify their importance was to create this award
which would be given out every year first of all to only five categories: actors, directors,
producers, writers, and cinematographers.
Now, they were first made in bronze on these small pedestals.
But in the 1940s they were made… they started to be made from an alloy called britannium
and gilded in a number of things but finally with 24-karat gold.
The pedestal was raised in the ‘40s as it remains today.
But the early one, where the gilding is worn off and all you see is the bronze, is really
kind in my favorite . It’s arguably the first statuette to be called Oscar in print.
Now, we think this because in 1934 at the award’s ceremony – which Hepburn did not
attend, of course, she never attended her own ceremonies – but the young writer name
Sidney Skoslky who wrote about the ceremony, when he typed it up, he called it, the statuette,
an Oscar.
It was a kind of vaudeville term back then where somebody on stage would use it generically
and say hey Oscar, you got a cigar?
And somehow this popped into the young writers head.
And so he said last night, Katharine Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal
in “Morning Glory.”
And he kind of has that wonderful aura as if he’s special anyway.
The other Oscar she won, the second one, was for “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner” in
1967 where she costarred with Spencer Tracy.
The third was for “The Lion in Winter,” which costarred Peter O'Toole, 1968, and the
final one, “On Golden Pond,” in 1981.
She co-starred with Henry Fonda.
And altogether these Oscars, as they say no one has won more than two Best Actress awards,
and Hepburn won four, spanning a fifty-year career.
She did not keep them in a place of prominence.
In fact I think they had to rediscover where she had hidden them in closets and drawers,
wherever.
But it was incredibly gracious of the Hepburn estate to think of the National Portrait Gallery
last year and to donate these Oscars to the Portrait Gallery so we could show them with
her favorite portrait.