Have you read the article about you in
the most recent issue of Life Magazine?
No. I make it a business of not reading articles
about me. What I don’t know won’t hurt me.
Then maybe I won’t ask you this next
question?
(She laughs. )Then maybe I will. (She laughs again.)
It seems so strange to me that you said
in Life that you’d “rather look forward to
dying. That it would be such a great
relief. The Big Sleep.” Why would dying
be such a great relief?”
I wouldn’t mind dying. I mean, I don’t think about
dying. An awful lot of people are terrified of dying. I
don’t think about it.
Is it because you’ve had such a
successful and fulfilling life?
I’ve been very lucky, so the thought of disappearing
doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you? It doesn’t
bother me. Some people are so terrified of it. I think
if you were an old pig you might be a little nervous.
Maybe it’s because some people feel like they
never have accomplished anything in their life or that
they haven’t left a mark.
Well, I don’t think you have a leave a mark. I don’t
think you have to leave anything behind you except
good behavior. I believe in a man’s goodness, a
decent sort of generous existence. Where the
hopes survive, with religious people about being
good just so you get a good place in the next
adventure doesn’t make much sense to me. I don’t
think so at all.
Tell me a little about your involvement
in Planned Parenthood.
As you know, my mother was mixed up in that all
her life, and dad was, too. My mother came from
Corning, NY. She was first cousin to Arthur
Houghton. Dad was from Virginia, and they met
around the turn of the century and got married.
Mother had a good education and had a college
degree and was very bright, and dad was a surgeon.
18 GASPARILLA ISLAND July/August 2018
Then mother had two children and began to
think, “Well I have a good education, what am I
supposed to be?” She became interested in
suffrage, and they went to speeches given by
Emmeline Pankhurst, the great suffragette, and
she and dad became fascinated.
Dad was interested in diseases, and he had a
case of a woman who died of a form of
gonorrhea. He was horrified. He was one of the
founders of the American Social Hygiene Society.
So they were all mixed up in causes together, so
I’ve always sort of backed Planned Parenthood
on account of my mother. They used both our
names as a sort of advertising for fundraisers. I
got mixed up because I always backed them.
Hepburn then asked the interviewer,
“Now, do you think you’ll stay in Boca
Grande always?”
Katharine with Spencer Tracy
(Interviewer): I think I will now. I left here and
did quite a bit of traveling but never found a place
that appealed to me as much as this place does.
Now I’m back here doing what I like. I like to fish
and I like to write. For me there’s not much
better than that.
“I can see that can be a kind of
wonderful freedom. And of course
the quiet. Great, isn’t it? The absence
of cars and noise is great.”
(Interviewer): Yes, but now I notice things like
the grass cutter makes noise and the tree trimmer
makes noise. Everything makes a noise,