By the time of her death in 2003 at the age of ninety-six, Katharine Hepburn had long been an American institution. The following year, Cate Blanchett's striking depiction of Hepburn's eccentricity in "The Aviator" reminded audiences of the sheer complexity of the woman. William Mann charts the journey by which Kathy Hepburn of Hartford, Connecticut, became the star known simply as 'Kate', dazzling audiences for fifty years in the company of such luminaries as Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and, most memorably, Spencer Tracy, with whom she made nine movies and conducted a long off-screen romance. Hepburn won her fourth Oscar aged seventy-four and made her swansong movie at eighty-seven. Across seventy years in the public eye, she was a cut above the usual screen queen. Now William Mann looks beyond the legend to consider apart the life and the persona of Katharine Hepburn, from her movies, her loves, her bisexuality and her extraordinary life in the golden age of film-making.