The big rumor of the week was that "Kate Remembered," the part-posthumous-memoir, part-biography about Katharine Hepburn, was going to reveal that she gave birth to Howard Hughes's lovechild.
But one look at the scrawny Hepburn during any of her 96 years until her death two weeks ago would tell any observer that this was not a woman who had ever experienced childbirth.
So, what are the major revelations of the 20-years-in-the-making, kept-under-heavy-wraps "Kate Remembered"?
According to New York's two tabloids, the Daily News and Post, there's a lot about Spencer Tracy's drinking to the point of abusiveness and the personality quirks of Hepburn and Hughes, who both "desperately" sought stardom, she said.
The book is written by Hepburn acquaintance and Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lindbergh" biographer A. Scott Berg. G.P. Putnam published "Kate Remembered" on Friday with a massive 530,000 print run.
Among other revelations in the book: She was decidedly not a fan of either Meryl Streep or Woody Allen, though John Travolta (in "Saturday Night Fever") and Harrison Ford apparently revved her engine. When Michael Jackson left her house after dinner, Hepburn ordered her housekeeper to go get her some whiskey.
There's also the acknowledgment that Hepburn pal Irene Mayer Selznick, ex-wife of famed "Gone with the Wind" producer David O. Selznick and daughter of ferocious MGM lion Louis B. Mayer (who founded the studio), ended her friendship with Kate in the 1990s when she became convinced that Hepburn was engaged in a lesbian relationship with a young woman who also lived in the star's Manhattan townhouse, says the Post, citing the book.
The News quotes from the volume at length, including a passage on how Tracy (with whom Hepburn kept company for 26 years, until his 1967 death) was so drunk one night that he unknowingly smacked her face.
Asked why she didn't leave him, Hepburn, according to the book, replied: "What would be the point? I mean, I loved him. And I wanted to be with him. If I had left, we both would have been miserable."
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