Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn will star as herself in an ABC miniseries she has written about her life. According to the network, Hepburn's story involves her "long-term working relationship with the woman who has been her assistant, traveling companion and companion through good times and bad." The Schaefer/Karpf/Eckstein production will be directed by the actress's longtime professional associate George Schaefer.

Martin Poll, 89, a veteran producer best known for "The Lion in Winter," the Oscar-winning 1968 film that starred Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, died Saturday in New York. He had pneumonia and kidney failure, according to his son, Jon. Hepburn won a best actress Oscar for her portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The film was also honored for best musical score and best adapted screenplay. Poll produced a remake for television in 2003 with Glenn Close in the Hepburn role. During a five-decade career, Poll produced a dozen films with stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Woody Allen.

Over a long career, biographer Charlotte Chandler has persuaded Groucho Marx, Billy Wilder, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, Mae West, Federico Fellini and Alfred Hitchcock to speak revealingly and at length about themselves for her tape recorder. Chandler also befriended such illustrious directors as Fritz Lang, Michelangelo Antonioni and George Cukor. It was through Cukor that Chandler was able to pull off her greatest coup: His endorsement made it possible for her to win the trust of the notoriously private Katharine Hepburn, who died in 2003 at 96. Chandler spent many years, starting in the 1970s, getting Hepburn to talk.

If as widely predicted, Woody Allen wins his fourth Academy Award on Sunday, this time for original screenplay for the romantic comedy "Midnight in Paris," an even safer bet will be that Allen won't be there to accept the Oscar. The academy has a long love affair with Allen — a record 23 Oscar nominations, including wins for writing and directing the 1977 best picture winner "Annie Hall" and for his screenplay of 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters"; 22 of the nominations were for screenplay and directing and one was for lead actor, for "Annie Hall.

Four-time Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn picked up a posthumous tribute last night when Australian Cate Blanchett won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her performance as the screen legend in "The Aviator." Her nervy performance divided critics, but the 5,808 members of the academy applauded her assumption of Hepburn's famous lock jaw, her long stride, her air of independence. The film details Hepburn's love affair with aviation and film tycoon Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Wanting more than our performing artists can express in the medium they have chosen, we try to entice words out of them. But as is evident in this autobiography, coaxed out of a publicity-shy superstar for a reported $4.5 million, the mere fact that these artists are fluent in one medium does not mean they will be so in another. Take the photo here of Hepburn after the death of the man we all watched her fall in love with: Spencer Tracy.

New York Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of a new memoir about Katharine Hepburn is how it came to be written in the first place, how an accomplished biographer and a famously prickly megastar came together to unravel some of the most intimate details of her life.

Irene Dunne The actress-singer of "The Awful Truth" fame played Tracy's character's gal pal in the 1943 romantic fantasy "A Guy Named Joe. " Lana Turner The "Sweater Girl" appeared with Tracy in 1941's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and 1947's "Cass Timberlane. " Jean Harlow The sassy blond bombshell teamed with Tracy for 1931's "Goldie" and 1936's "Libeled Lady. "

It will take more than death to put Katharine Hepburn into the past tense. It's been years since she starred in any film, granted an interview or even been photographed, but say her name and there she is, in the collective mind's eye, just as she was when she played Tracy Lord, Mary Tyrone or even Eleanor of Aquitaine. That relentless right angle of a jaw, those expressive eyebrows, the simple unending length of her, limber even in "On Golden Pond," which she made when she was 73.

For James Prideaux, Sunday night signals a symbolic write of passage. The time when great actresses walked the Earth seems to be ending as Katharine Hepburn plays what some have said is her final role in the CBS Sunday night movie "The Man Upstairs," written and co-produced by Prideaux. Here we have another of those generational things, one in which the Hepburn leading ladies of this world dissolve and in their place . . . the emergence of the Madonna Era. Perhaps.

Irene Dunne The actress-singer of "The Awful Truth" fame played Tracy's character's gal pal in the 1943 romantic fantasy "A Guy Named Joe. " Lana Turner The "Sweater Girl" appeared with Tracy in 1941's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and 1947's "Cass Timberlane. " Jean Harlow The sassy blond bombshell teamed with Tracy for 1931's "Goldie" and 1936's "Libeled Lady. "

According to James Curtis, author of the new 1,056-page "Spencer Tracy: A Biography," it could have been actress Loretta Young who became the love of Tracy's life, not Katharine Hepburn, his partner for 26 years with whom he made nine films. Tracy and Young, both Catholics, began their romance while working together on the 1933 Depression-era drama "A Man's Castle. " Though Tracy was married to Louise Treadwell, the illicit pair would go to Mass and confessions together. "I think they were drawn together because of the shared bond of faith," said Curtis, who spent six years on the book, drawing from Tracy's own papers and obtaining the cooperation of the actor's daughter, Susie Tracy.

'Love Among the Ruins' Multi-Emmy Award-winning 1975 romantic comedy that marked the only pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier. George Cukor directed. 'That Certain Summer' Landmark 1972 TV movie, penned by Richard Levinson and William Link, about a teenage boy (Scott Jacoby) who learns that his divorced father (Hal Holbrook) is gay and in a relationship with a young man (Martin Sheen). 'My Sweet Charlie' Levinson and Link also wrote this 1970 TV movie starring Patty Duke in an Emmy Award-winning role as a young pregnant Southern girl who finds an unlikely ally in a black New York attorney (Al Freeman Jr.)

Norris Church Mailer, an actress, model, author and painter who enjoyed and endured the ride of her life as the sixth and final wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer, died at her home in Brooklyn on Sunday. She was 61. Her death was announced on the website of the Norman Mailer Society , which said she passed away "after a long and valiant struggle with cancer. " As Norris Mailer wrote in her 2010 memoir, "A Ticket to the Circus," she was a single mother in her mid-20s when she met the then-52-year-old Norman Mailer at a 1975 party in Russellville, Ark. Their attraction was immediate, even if he was breaking up with his fourth wife and seeing the woman who would become his fifth.

I Know Where I'm Going Katharine Hepburn, A Personal Biography Charlotte Chandler Simon & Schuster: 350 pp., $26

Over a long career, biographer Charlotte Chandler has persuaded Groucho Marx, Billy Wilder, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, Mae West, Federico Fellini and Alfred Hitchcock to speak revealingly and at length about themselves for her tape recorder. Chandler also befriended such illustrious directors as Fritz Lang, Michelangelo Antonioni and George Cukor. It was through Cukor that Chandler was able to pull off her greatest coup: His endorsement made it possible for her to win the trust of the notoriously private Katharine Hepburn, who died in 2003 at 96. Chandler spent many years, starting in the 1970s, getting Hepburn to talk.

According to James Curtis, author of the new 1,056-page "Spencer Tracy: A Biography," it could have been actress Loretta Young who became the love of Tracy's life, not Katharine Hepburn, his partner for 26 years with whom he made nine films. Tracy and Young, both Catholics, began their romance while working together on the 1933 Depression-era drama "A Man's Castle. " Though Tracy was married to Louise Treadwell, the illicit pair would go to Mass and confessions together. "I think they were drawn together because of the shared bond of faith," said Curtis, who spent six years on the book, drawing from Tracy's own papers and obtaining the cooperation of the actor's daughter, Susie Tracy.

I was surprised and disappointed to read Kenneth Turan's review of Cate Blanchett's performance as Katharine Hepburn in "The Aviator" ["A Wing and a Player," Dec. 17]. As the godchild and namesake of Katharine Hepburn, I was extremely impressed with Blanchett's portrayal. She truly captured the essence of my godmother. Katharine Kramer Valley Village

ENJOYED Susan King's feature on Katharine Hepburn ["Kate Hepburn, Star of a Century," July 15].The story about her wanting the cast meetings at her place rather than [director] Mark Rydell's place reminded me of a business school legend. Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired a company and called for a meeting with top management. He came into the room and sat at the closest chair to the door. A manager said, "Please, sir, come sit at the head of the table."

KATHARINE Hepburn was always punctual. Sometimes a bit too punctual -- a fact Joanna Miles learned as a young actress on location in London with Hepburn for the 1973 ABC movie version of Tennessee Williams' "A Glass Menagerie." Save for Hepburn, the cast was living in a little town house decorated with window boxes. One day, she was supposed to pick up Miles for lunch. "I had taken a nap," recalls Miles. "I had set the alarm to wake up on time, but Katharine was always early.