“Although Katharine Hepburn was briefly married to the socialite Ludlow Ogden Smith, by th

“Although Katharine Hepburn was briefly married to the socialite Ludlow Ogden Smith, by the time her Hollywood career took off, they were divorced and she was free to romp around with the likes of Laura Harding, Nancy Hamilton, Frances Rich, and Phyllis Wilbourn. Phyllis was perhaps her greatest love, having stayed together with Katharine for nearly thirty years and being described by Katharine as “my Alice B. Toklas,” who was a lesbian icon and lifelong wife of Gertrude Stein. Katharine also had a twenty-year-long relationship with the actor Spencer Tracy, but the validity of that relationship has come into question in recent years, with even gay icon and AIDS activist Larry Kramer proclaiming in 2015 that ‘Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were both gay…they were publicly paired together by the studio. Everyone in Hollywood knows this is true.’”