Call Me Kate (2023)

It's easy to feel there’s nothing salvageable from the past. That much of what’s preceded us, the conformity, suffocating oppression, and intolerance is best discounted and forgotten. That there is enough strife and turmoil in today’s world that outweighs any relevance or similarities a previous decade or generation may have on our current reality.

I look directly to Hollywood, specifically old Hollywood, where delineations and labels are in black and white, both literally and figuratively. Awful, demeaning stereotypes are ubiquitous in early-era films like the egregious The Jazz Singer and The Birth of a Nation. But even further down the line, I’m left with a sour taste in my mouth whenever I encounter racism or subjugation in what are known as "classic films.”  One does not have to venture too far into the old vault to see the awful portrayal of Native Americans in The Searchers or Mickey Rooney’s gross display of a Chinese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  I find it hard to compartmentalize these offensive bits when doing my own investigation into film history.  While there is great quality and originality, it will always be interwoven into these totally unacceptable trends and tendencies.  There is no escaping it.

I address this before delving into Call Me Kate, a new documentary on the silver screen starlet Kathryn Hepburn recently released on Netflix, because Miss Hepburn, despite her independence and pioneering efforts for women, was very much a product of her times.  As a white, cisgender, affluent woman she had advantages and opportunities that others didn’t. And she is not excluded from the ignorance or naivete that pervaded her industry and the world at large at that time.

That being said, let’s get to the documentary.

Like a few documentaries released in the last decade, specifically Listen to Me Marlon and Love, Marilyn, Call Me Kate invites the viewer in for a more intimate account of an iconic film star from an earlier era. Through the use of previously unheard tape recordings, interviews, and video footage, director Lorna Tucker constructs a behind-the-scenes account of the four-time Oscar winner's life. Slow-motion recreations combined with interviews with Hepburn’s nephew, Mundy, and playwright Bonnie Greer, also fill in the gaps of her story and add important perspective.

We learn about Hepburn’s upbringing. Raised in Connecticut, surrounded entirely by male siblings, Katherine admits early on that she “always wanted to be a boy.”  Her father was a doctor while her mother was a suffragette.  She would have Katherine hand out leaflets at the local fair for women’s voting rights. It's easy to see her mother’s influence on her daughter's feminist ideals and principles.