Kit Houghton Hepburn, Her Mother's Daughter

THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO PUBLISHED ON margaretperry.org.

"Mother with her real savvy of life. She adored [father]. She adored us. She was deep. She was witty. Some say I am like her. I hope so, I'd be so proud." (Hepburn 27)

On the 106th anniversary of Katharine Hepburn's birth (May 12, 1907), is only seems fitting to pay a Mother's Day tribute to Mrs. Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn. As much as I admire Katharine Hepburn the film actress, the real heroine of that family was her mother Kit. 

Mrs. Hepburn was involved in most major causes of the Progressive Reform Era, including woman suffrage, social hygiene, and birth control. She worked tirelessly for women's rights in a way that both enabled and encouraged her oldest daughter to live a life of independence many women of the time could only dream of.

Book Review: "At Home With Kate"

"At Home With Kate: Growing Up in Katharine Hepburn's Household: An Intimate Portrait" is a bit of a highfalutin title for this humble volume. The book is written by the daughter of Katharine Hepburn's cook/housekeeper at the NYC residence, so the author did not actually "grow up" in Katharine Hepburn's household. That's not to say she didn't accumulate a number of interesting anecdotes about the star, but let's just try and keep things in perspective.

In the early 1930s, after Hepburn had made her initial splash out in Hollywood, she and her husband Luddy moved into 244 East 49th Street, a brownstone in the Turtle Bay area of New York City. They rented the house furnished for $100 a month, and in 1937 Hepburn purchased the house for $27,500. 244 would be Hepburn's New York headquarters for the rest of the 20th century.