Pick your Hepburn

A website called Style Dash compares the two very different icons with the same last name. Apparently they're like the Beatles and Elvis: you can like them both, but odds are you only LOVE one of them. Now that I think of it, that's probably true.

As fashion icons, they couldn't be more different. According to Style Dash's Deidre Woollard, they can be summed up this way: Kate wore shirts, Audrey wore blouses; Kate was brash confidence, Audrey was fragile beauty.

As movie icons, they shared this: neither one of them ever disappeared completely into character because they were characters themselves: Oh, let's watch Kate shoot the rapids in Bogie's boat! Uh-oh, that nasty man is terrorizing poor blind Audrey! Each woman's persona was so indelible and likable that we enjoyed the familiarity, and probably never would have forgiven either of them if they strayed too far from the women we (thought we) knew.

I like them both, but I LOVE Kate.

The strength of my favorite Kate performances comes from us knowing instantly how good and how beautiful (both inside and out) she is, but it takes a while for her leading men (from Fred MacMurray in Alice Adams through Cary Grant in Holiday onto Spencer Tracy in Desk Set) to catch on. There are the movies (Adam's Rib, Woman of the Year, Philadelphia Story) where she was a bit too big for her khaki britches and it took a strong man to cut her down to size. I like the films in this category way less. There's something misogynistic about how we're supposed to delight in the downfall that's ultimately for her own good.

When I think of Kate, I think of On Golden Pond, because she should have been Jane Fonda's mother. And I think that, in a cinematic sense, she was. There's a much stronger line between Kate and Jane than there is between feisty Kate and ethereal Audrey.


http://www.styledash.com