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Summary: American Royalty Remembered: Kate Hepburn Speaks
Review: Oh, Mr. Berg, you have brought us closer to who Kate Hepburn was...as a friend, a lover, as a sister, wife, daughter, and actress. And, how different was the truth from the media stories...thank you. What you didn't warn me about, is what a truly funny woman she was...her one liners are fabulous. I couldn't put the book down..literally, until I had consumed her life through your eyes. Again, thank you. American doesn't have Kings and Queens (royalty, that it) but we certainly do put our Movie Stars on a gigantic, elevated throne from which we stare from afar, admire, and adulate. And occasionally rip apart in the tabloids. You have shown us what it was like for one of our Royalty to live in that environment, and how she survived. Beautiful, just beautiful. With humor, too, thank you. God Bless her.
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Summary: Kate Captures
Review: te Remembered has been such a great read! 370 pages total and I hated to put this book down at all really. This book is even more intriguing and witty than I originally anticipated, and, that's saying a lot. Katharine Hepburn's forthrightness and no nonsense way is incredibly appealing. You really get a sense of who she is and what she is about. As you flip the pages, you feel as though you are right there witnessing certain moments...glimpses of her story coming to life as they unfold. I want to go back and see her movies now that I have a timeline as to what was going on behind the scenes. A. Scott Berg, her biographer and friend, seems to have really nailed Katharine's essence. He writes with an exactness and tenderness that is touchingly gentle, caring and real - and well, his writing is insane - he is that good. Kate Remembered is definitely not a bore either. The writing stays on track, riveting you from one topic to the next with a natural flow. There's plenty of old and new Hollywood history and insight and a bit of gossip tossed into the mix. Berg invites his readers to share in his firsthand intimate exchanges and visits with Kate, his friend of twenty years.Usually it is clear within the first chapter whether I'll feel a sense of satisfaction, as was the case here. Kate Remembered delivers.
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Summary: Fascinating details
Review: I read Kate Remembered from cover to cover in four days -- I would have read it faster but that's impossible, you have to savor and think about the material within. This draws a marvelous portrait of "Late Kate" -- Katharine Hepburn in her later years, when she was obviously eager to talk about her life. I loved all the anecdotes about her life, on East 49th Street, and at Fenwick, down to the chocolate sauce on coffee ice cream. I have just two nits to pick: first is that the sections about Irene Mayer Selznick and Warren Beatty caused the book to drift. Selznick was an equally fascinating woman, and her own book is a great read, but I thought some of this could be edited. Likewise, the Warren Beatty anecdotes just weren't that interesting, especially since Dominick Dunne had already explored this in Vanity Fair. Second, the final chapter seems very rushed compared with the lovely writing and tone and color of the rest of the book. Of course, it would be, given the amazing speed at which the book was put together, but perhaps just a post script mentioning Kate's death would have sufficed. But how lucky Scott Berg was to have such great access to her, over so many years. This is a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in Hollywood, and a fitting companion to his other books.
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Summary: Huge disappointment
Review: I rarely buy a newly published book, but I've admired Katharine Hepburn for so long and the hype for this book was so strong that I got it. I wish I hadn't. It seemed like a perfect mating of author, subject, and timing, but something went wrong. The writing is amateurish and tedious, and Hepburn comes across as self-absorbed and shallow. I never would have imagined this book would be so boring.
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Summary: Berg made me see Hepburn as someone I'd like to know...
Review: ...instead of just as the cranky old egomaniac I used to think she was, and who I thought I'd rather just enjoy from afar. It's a funny little book, at times more about the author than about his subject, but it's utterly riveting, and a completely loving portrait of one of the true American originals of the 20th Century. Wonderful cameo appearances by the likes of Irene Selznick and the Hepburn family, admirably etched by the author to support his portrait of the "main event," Hepburn. Worth the price of admission for Kate's crack after dinner with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening! Found a few irritating misspellings and typos that made me wish the publishers had cooled their jets for as long as it would take to have one more once-over by a proofreader instead of rushing this out so soon after Hepburn's passing, but that's the book trade for you. Anyway, I highly recommend this book to any Hepburn fan or lover of classic American cinema.
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Summary: Almost As Good As Being With Her Yourself
Review: When famous people get very old, television networks and newspapers write stories in preparation for the one newsworthy thing the elder has left to do, die. Then when the death comes, the story is ready to go. This is not something that book publishers have done. Such a rush to print, with all the preparation a book takes, would be considered disrespectful if not ghoulish. It is easy to acquit A. Scott Berg of unseemly rashness in the case of the memoir _Kate Remembered_ (Putnam), although its subject, Katharine Hepburn, died 29 June and the book was ready to buy on 11 July. There are essential items in his defense. Berg had the book virtually completed for the past two years and only needed to put an ending to it. He had visited with Hepburn many times since he first met her in 1983, she knew he was compiling the book, and she agreed it should be released as soon as possible after her death. And finally, it is clear from the book that Berg and Hepburn had a loving friendship during her final years. Berg's intelligent and entertaining look at his friend and his examination of his friendship with her is courteous and sensitive. Berg has written highly regarded biographies of Max Perkins, Samuel Goldwyn, and Charles A. Lindbergh, but he admits this is no biography, because he cannot write about her objectively: "I walked into her life adoring her; and over the next twenty years, my admiration for her only swelled." Movie fans who felt similar affection toward Hepburn will love this memoir. During her professional life, Hepburn had not had the reclusiveness of Garbo (the actress she most admired), but she had not played the publicity game as stars often did, and was happy to have someone to talk to when Berg set out to interview her for _Esquire_. The mere interview became twenty years of dinners together and weekends spent at her cottage. Berg's book is full of wisecracks the two traded. When she got an invitation to receive a fashion award, he quipped, "Are you sure they didn't mean Audrey?" which got him her ice cream cone in his face. There were intimacies shared on both sides; it was a grand friendship. Hepburn, the product of an independent and eccentric family, remained outspoken and headstrong throughout her life. She might not have been our finest actress, though some will argue she was, but she certainly took control to get herself one of the finest and longest careers in Hollywood. She remained unaffected despite her stardom, and many times throughout the book, she reports self-criticism even more than self-deprecation. When Berg asked if she regretted being childless, she replied, "I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being." She won a record four Oscars but she never went to the ceremonies to collect them, saying she didn't believe in awards; but she tells Berg, "Mine was a bogus humility. Actually I was thrilled to win." She calls herself a pig for using her husband of long ago for finances and security as her career began. She has remarks to make on many of the stars she knew as friends, and does so in a chatty fashion, but she is usually more generous to them than to herself. There are few revelations and little scandal here. For those of us who admired Hepburn the actress and Hepburn the individualist, and would have loved to have had the opportunity to have sat down and talked with her at length about her life, this book will be as close as we get. Berg had enormous good fortune in getting to know Hepburn intimately. He knows it, and his memoir is a wonderful tribute to their friendship. There will be plenty of biographies after this; Hepburn certainly deserves them. She didn't want tributes after she died, hoping everyone would just go on with their lives after thinking about her for a few minutes. "And if anybody wants to do more than that," she said, "they can rent one of my movies." Yes, we can, and thank goodness for the permanent cinematic record. She could not have known, though, that she could have also suggested that we read this loving memoir.
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Summary: Title should be- ME; OTHERS TRASHED; KATE REMEMBERED
Review: If I edited the book down to the parts about Katharine Hepburn that I bought the book for, at least a third would have ended up on the cutting room floor. An alternate title might be: "I'm tired of writing about me, here's what Hepburn had to say." A. Scott Berg has used Katharine Hepburn's unique life to relaunch himself and spread dirt using Miss Hepburn as his foil . I find Berg a gossip of the worst kind seeking the largest audience he can find. Most of the people trashed are dead and can't tell their side of the story. The others know that responding will only bring more attention to matters best left between the parties themselves. And all of it written in sheeps clothing as a "dear friend." Save us all from friends like that. Shame on you, Mr. Berg.
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Summary: Where are the photos?
Review: I've just leafed through "Kate Remembered" and I must admit that for a biography that was drawn from a 20 year friendship there are amazingly few photos that provide evidence for such a relationship, or indeed evidence of Kate's interactions with the world she lived in. Hopefully once I've read the text I'll be more impressed with what I was hoping would be a ground breaking biography.
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Summary: Kate Remembered
Review: I have just finished "Kate Remembered" and I really believe the author was writing about HIM. It had nothing new about the lady herself. I did take a trip several months ago to Old Saybrook and so reading about driving around Fenwich and Old Saybrook was something I did enjoy in the book. I was disappointed that he mentioned over and over about her drinking, his drinking, their drinking....it wasn't necessary. We will all miss Miss Hepburn, but I won't be reading anymore of this authors work. thank you
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Summary: A great book
Review: I knew very little about Katharine Hepburn before reading this book. Only movie I remember her being in is "On Golden Pond". I had seen her on TV a few times and heard a bit about her.
Mr. Berg does a good job of giving us an overview of Hepburn's life. This is not a gossipy type biography nor one just full of dates and facts. Knowing some of the incidents that happened between Berg and Hepburn help in understanding Berg's view while writing this book. I felt the stories about Irene S. did not add much to the book. Even though we get to know some about Hepburn's personal life, I feel that we are still being kept at arm's length from really knowing who Katharine Hepburn was inside. Mr. Berg does a great job of writing a captivating story about a unique woman.
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