THE PAIRS THAT NEVER WERE: Katharine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall

It was Katharine Hepburn’s birthday yesterday but I was travelling all day, which means that for the first time ever, I didn’t post something on May 12th! Well, I’m about to rectify that now! Here we are.

May’s THE PAIRS THAT NEVER WERE goes to Katharine Hepburn, as planned. And who better to pair her with than another great baddass woman, whom she was very good friends with all her life?

The all-time record holder for the most Oscars for acting, it seems that Katharine Hepburn did it all. From her family-oriented upbringing in Connecticut, to her start on he legitimate stage, to her rocky first decade in Hollywood, during which she won her first Oscar for Morning Glory (1933), and was named ‘box-office poison’, to winning four Oscars, the last of which in 1981 for On Golden Pond. Talk about range. Her characters, it seemed, were often tailor-made for her, or at least inspired by her, in particular Tracy Lord from The Philadelphia Story (1940). Throughout her career, whenever she was on screen, you knew she was the boss. She played strong, complex women, who knew what they wanted and knew how to go after it, but who could also be vulnerable and sweet.

Who does that remind you of? Her lifelong friend Lauren Bacall also knew a thing or two about being and playing strong women. She started out as a model in her native New York, before enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her film debut in To Have and Have Not (1944), at the age of 19, which is mind-blowing to me. Right away, she brought that confidence and sense of self that she would come to be associated with. Her roles in The Big Sleep (1946), Young Man With A Horn (1950), How To Marry A Millionaire (1953), and many others often reflected that. She famously never won an Oscar, but she did win two Tony’s, for her performances in Applause (1970), based on All About Eve, in which she played Margo Channing, and Woman of the Year (1981), in which she played the role originally played by Katharine Hepburn in the film, Tess Harding. Isn’t that something!

They became friends when Hepburn and Bacall’s husband Humphrey Bogart were filming The African Queen (1951) and remained close until Hepburn’s death in 2003, eleven years before Bacall’s death in 2014. It’s kind of weird that they were never on screen together, because I think they would have been absolutely incredible. They probably would have played a couple of bickering siblings or best friends going on some crazy adventure or something like that. Can you imagine the zingers? Or maybe something off-beat like The Women (1939). Throw in Eve Arden, Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland and you’ve got yourself a winner.