Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Without Love

Katharine Hepburn on the MGM lot during the filming of Without Love (1945) Calvin Klein: Your style, did it come from you? Or was it someone else that influenced you? KH: No, no one influenced me. I think that I must have been very self-conscious about my appearance, that I wanted to present something that looked as though it had just come out of the woods or something, and everyone thought, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’ I liked to look as if I didn’t give a damn. I think you should pretend you don’t care … but it’s the most outrageous pretense. I said to Garbo once, ‘I bet it takes us longer to look as if we hadn’t made any effort than it does someone else to come in beautifully dressed.’ CK: Were you influenced by any of the men you knew at that time? KH: No! I never dressed up for any man. If I thought he cared how I looked, I would have thought he was a fool. I really would have. The men dressed for me, you know. Nobody ever made a pass at me unless I fully expected them to and welcomed the notion. CK: Good for you. KH: I’m rather a forbidding character. -excerpted from Washington Post Magazine interview (March 9th, 1986)

Katharine Hepburn on the MGM lot during the filming of Without Love (1945)

Calvin Klein: Your style, did it come from you? Or was it someone else that influenced you?

KH: No, no one influenced me. I think that I must have been very self-conscious about my appearance, that I wanted to present something that looked as though it had just come out of the woods or something, and everyone thought, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

I liked to look as if I didn’t give a damn. I think you should pretend you don’t care … but it’s the most outrageous pretense. I said to Garbo once, ‘I bet it takes us longer to look as if we hadn’t made any effort than it does someone else to come in beautifully dressed.’

CK: Were you influenced by any of the men you knew at that time?

KH: No! I never dressed up for any man. If I thought he cared how I looked, I would have thought he was a fool. I really would have.

The men dressed for me, you know. Nobody ever made a pass at me unless I fully expected them to and welcomed the notion.

CK: Good for you.

KH: I’m rather a forbidding character.

-excerpted from Washington Post Magazine interview

1 comment:

  1. Well, duh, that she was influenced. I don't buy the "never influenced by anybody" thing. I mean, it's not like she was dressed outside the realm of possibility. Anybody who does that is locked up in, well, lockdown facilities. Puh-lease, Katharine. I love her, but I don't believe she was beyond influence.

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