Katherine Hepburn, 1907-2003

Harry Haun writes this at MSNBC.com:

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Hepburn’s perverse sense of fun, it has been suggested, compelled her to wear high heels the day she first set eyes on the rumpled forehead of Spencer Tracy. Perhaps so. She and the co-star she had selected for “Woman of the Year” met in an MGM corridor, and the problem was readily apparent.

“I’m afraid I’m a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy,” she remarked coolly.

The next line is usually credited to Tracy, but it was really their producer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who interceded with just the right retort:

“Don’t worry, Kate. He’ll cut you down to size.”

In that brief, sparky encounter is the stuff of which myths — and at least nine movies — are made, for it capsulizes the kind of affectionate tug-of-war that Tracy and Hepburn were to wage for the next 25 years.

As screen teams went, there were none better.

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Indeed. Rest in peace, Kate. We won't see your equal ever again. I'll miss you.