Kate Remembered, Signed to Jeanne Cooper
[Signed Presentation to Jeanne Cooper] Berg, A. Scott. Kate Remembered. First Edition. 2003. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. Book is warmly inscribed, “Happy Birthday to my new friend Jeanne—who, like my old friend Kate—knows a thing or two about sustaining a career—with admiration … and thanks for countless hours of viewing pleasure, Scott (once young, still restless), Los Angeles, 2008.” Laid in is a notecard, “Happy Birthday, Jeanne! from Alex’s friend Scott.”
In this warmly inscribed copy, Scott Berg calls himself “once young, still restless,” a sly nod to The Young and the Restless, on which Jeanne Cooper starred for four decades. His “old friend Kate” is Katharine Hepburn, who first befriended Berg in 1982, when he interviewed her for an unpublished Esquire profile. Over the years, Berg came to understand that Hepburn expected him to write about her after her death, raising one of the book’s most intriguing questions: was he seeing the real Katharine Hepburn, or another great performance? By then, did Hepburn herself know the difference?
Adding texture is Irene Mayer Selznick, friend to both Berg and Hepburn, who grows increasingly disenchanted with the woman she once affectionately called “Sister Kate.” One surreal episode finds Selznick appalled by Hepburn’s dinner guest Michael Jackson, whom Hepburn had met through Jane Fonda and who reluctantly removes his sunglasses only at Hepburn’s insistence. There are more serious matters here as well, especially Hepburn’s long relationship with Spencer Tracy. Was it truly a romance for the ages? Berg seems to think so.
“The greatest movie stars, the few genuine icons of the cinema, become so because we believe they are sharing actual pieces of themselves on the screen, a delusion fans nurse to heighten the fantasy.”
--A. Scott Berg