On Performance — Katharine Hepburn

Please watch up to time mark 3:30.

"Mary. . .still has a young, graceful figure, a trifle plump, but showing little evidence of middle-aged waist and hips, although she is not tightly corseted. Her face is distinctly Irish in type. It must once have been extremely pretty, and is still striking. It does not match her healthy figure but is thin and pale with the bone structure prominent. [. . .] What strikes one immediately is her extreme nervousness. Her hands are never still. [. . .] Her most appealing quality is the simple, unaffected charm of a shy convent-girl youthfulness she has never lost—an innate unworldly innocence" (12-13).

I'm afraid I can't believe anything of "plumpness" about Ms. Hepburn, although her face is certainly "thin and pale, with bone structure prominent."

She does, however, present "extreme nervousness" and the "unaffected charm" of youth remarkably well. In my reading, I assumed Mary had some sort of tremor in her hand—akin to Parkinson's or Bell's Palsy—like Hepburn herself presented in her later life. I love that she chose just to be fidgety; moving so constantly that we can't tell if she has a tremor or not. Hepburn was fifty-five when the film came out, but there is absolutely something young, nostalgic, wistful, and even (the only word for it, really) cute about her description of meeting James.

I adore this monologue, but I'm a little bothered that I can't imagine it performed any other way after seeing this. I also can't think of any dramatic female role as complex without reaching back to Shakespeare. . . possibly Shaw's Eliza Doolittle? Any theatre types want to weigh in (Ryan)?
kz