Today, when the media puts studio-era Hollywood and feminism together, the answer is usually Katharine Hepburn. But during her career at RKO and MGM, she did not discuss women’s issues regarding equal pay, career opportunities, or political equality. However, she did state flatly in 1933, “I intend to speak my mind when I please, despite movie traditions,” setting her independence against the Hollywood establishment. She remained uninterested in working with other Hollywood women on-screen or in recognizing the advantages of promoting women’s careers through publicity networks off the set. Katharine Hepburn endures as a product of American myths about pioneering individualism, the Hollywood star system, and the studio-era film industry’s ambivalent investment in strong women. But if, as historian Nancy Cott has argued, “Pure individualism negates feminism because it removes the basis for women’s collective self-understanding or action,” then Hepburn was no feminist. This chapter unravels her myth.
