The Katharine Hepburn Flop That 'Fueled Rumors' About Her Sexuality: 'A Real Disaster'

New book 'Moxie: The Daring Women of Classic Hollywood' pays tribute to the four-time Oscar winner and other female screen icons

Decades before Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire and Shakespeare in Love played cross-dressing for laughs, Katharine Hepburn was helping to turn drag into a movie art form. In the 1935 romantic comedy Sylvia Scarlett, which costarred Cary Grant, Hepburn played the titular character, a young woman who pretends to be a boy named Sylvester as part of a con.

Unfortunately, the movie was not a success and didn't do much to boost Hepburn's career, which is explored in words and photos in Moxie: The Daring Women of Classic Hollywood by Ira M. Resnick and Raissa Bretaña, due out Nov. 5 from Abbeville Press. The new book devotes chapters to Hepburn and other legendary screen sirens, including Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall. It also offers rare photos from the collection of Motion Picture Arts Gallery founder Resnick and a forward written by Hepburn's On Golden Pond daughter, Jane Fonda.

Despite it's lack of box-office success, Sylvia Scarlett was notable for getting the rumor mill churning about the sexual orientation of its star, who raised eyebrows early in her career for ignoring the traditional femininity standards to which young starlets were expected to adhere. The film also included a then-scandalous kissing scene between Hepburn and her female costar Dennie Moore.

According to the book, Hepburn called the film "a real disaster." It adds, "This subversive gender-bending fueled rumors about Hepburn's sexuality — which became a topic of debate after she divorced her husband [Ludlow Ogden Smith] in 1934 and began living with a female companion."

In an era where female stars were expected to sell sultry and sexy, Hepburn played strong-willed women and, controversially, even wore slacks offscreen.

Related: Glenn Close Reveals How Katharine Hepburn Changed the Course of Her Life in a Major Way: ‘No Regrets’ (Exclusive)

"Hepburn had a strong aversion to celebrity culture and had no interest in perpetuating the illusion of movie stardom," the book offers. "She didn't dress glamorously, didn't sign autographs, and didn't give interviews."

The book also cites a 1934 interview with Motion Picture Magazine in which Hepburn said, "I'm not living my life for Hollywood or publicity, and I never will. Why should I have to change my personality?"

Hepburn, who died in 2003 at age 96, famously had a long-term relationship with her nine-time costar Spencer Tracy, from 1941 until his death in 1967 at age 67. But according to Hollywood lore, the enduring love story was a cover to hide the sexual orientation of both stars.

In his 2012 book Full Service, Scotty Bowers, an entrepreneur/"pimp to the stars" who supplied Hollywood celebrities with sexual partners through a gas station on Melrose Avenue, claimed to have introduced Hepburn to "150 girls" and Tracy — who remained married to Louise Tracy from 1923 until he died — to men, including Bowers himself.

“They were merely friends … They were not in the bed department at all,” he said of the Oscar winners in the 2018 documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. (Bowers died in 2019 at 96).

Regardless of where she fit in on the Kinsey scale, Moxie is clear on Hepburn's legacy in Hollywood, despite early critical and commercial misfires like Sylvia Scarlett. Her "tireless dedication to her career," the book observes, "is at the core of her cinematic legacy, and with it, she has rightfully earned her place as one of the foremost stars in the Hollywood pantheon."

Moxie: The Daring Women of Classic Hollywood will be published by Abbeville Press on Nov. 5 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.