Did Lewis create Hepburn?

By Dave Simpkins

What similarities could the ruggedly handsome Spencer Tracy have with the pock faced and cynical Sinclair Lewis?
Has Katharine Hepburn ever reminded you of Isabel Warner Lewis, Dorothy Thompson or Carol Kennicott?
Probably not!
But Lewis had a close friendship with Hepburn and Tracy that came out in both his novels and their movies.
Lewis and Thompson were the couple writers had in mind when they wrote the 1942 Academy Award winning movie Women of the Year that brought the famous Tracy/Hepburn team together for the first time.
Lewis and Thompson were popular figures in Hollywood. Many of Lewis's books had been made into movies and Thompson had interviewed many actors, directors and writers for her nationally syndicated column.
Woman of the Year was the first pairing of Hepburn and Tracy. Hepburn played a professional woman who is an international affairs columnist, Tess Harding. Spencer played Sam Craig, a sportswriter for the same newspaper as Tess is wonderful at toppling her off her lofty pedestal and bringing out the woman in her. This was the ultimate "opposites attract" film much like the famous marriage of Lewis and Thompson.
Lewis said Tracy and Hepburn were an easy, frank and intelligent couple that always welcomed him with intelligent and engaging conversation.
"Tracy's portrayal of me in Woman of the Year was a far better edition than the original," said Lewis.
Tracy played another Lewis character in the movie adaptation of Cass Timberline where a steady Midwestern judge marries a free spirited younger woman played by Lana Turner.
Most of Lewis' heroines were independent, working women much like the characters Hepburn liked to play. Claire Boltwood is up for adventure in Free Air. Carol Kennicott fights the village virus in Main Street. Ann Vickers sets out to reform the American prison system for women.
Lewis had plenty of examples of intelligent, independent women in his life.
His stepmother, Isabel Warner Lewis, was one of Sauk Centre's early community leaders active in the Gradatum Society, the library and the Women's Temperance Union.
His first wife Gracie was a suffragette and friend of Hepburn's mother. Hepburn's doctor father helped Lewis do research for Arrowsmith.
The person most like Hepburn in Lewis' life was his second wife Dorothy Thompson.
Thompson was the chief European correspondent for the New York Evening Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger throughout the 1920s. She was the only woman journalist covering prewar Europe and a strong critic of Adolph Hitler, which got her expelled from Germany in 1931.
She briefed both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill as she became the foremost authority on foreign policy.
Her punkiness, energy and tenacity won her references like "an amiable blue-eyed tornado".
Back in the states in the 1940s, her column On The Road made her the second most popular woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt.
Lewis didn't create Katharine Hepburn, but he did help create the 20th Century woman. Like Thompson and Hepburn, the 20th Century woman was equal to men, brainy, snappy yet sexy and stylish.
In contrast, our 21st Century heroines are better at kick-boxing than thinking. While the 20th Century women looked great in a cocktail dress or slacks, today's heroines carry laser guns and wear next to nothing.
Modern day writers would do well to revisit Lewis' books and take a look at the strong women he created.