An actress's appearance had Ashland all atwitter
March 24, 2006 (Larry Hall, Richmond Times Dispatch)
Katharine Hepburn was every inch the glamorous and gracious movie star when she visited Ashland in 1938. Her Feb. 3 tour of Randolph- Macon College, her father's alma mater, took the town by surprise and won her new fans.
Newspaper reports the following day said the actress was traveling "incognito," but her disguise - a chic hat with a spotted veil, a monogrammed blouse, a mink coat and sandals with high heels - failed on what then was an all-male campus.
She had been touring less than an hour when word of her presence spread through dormitories, fraternity houses and classrooms.
Autograph-seeking students mobbed the actress as she made her way across the grounds on the arm of Robert Emory Blackwell, the school's president. Hepburn lifted her veil for a photograph.
"Don't take this side of my face," she said playfully. "My makeup isn't right."
At the time of her visit, Hepburn was 30. She already had a dozen films to her credit and had won an Academy Award for 1933's "Morning Glory," the first of four Oscars she would earn during her 60-year career.
Hepburn was on her way to Florida with her parents for a vacation, and the trio had stopped to see her father's birthplace and alma mater.
Hepburn's grandfather was Sewell Snowden Hepburn, an Episcopal clergyman who served churches in Hanover County and New Kent County. Author Anne Edwards writes in "A Remarkable Woman: A Biography of Katharine Hepburn" that the actress remembered her grandfather as an independent eccentric.
"We've had some nuts in the family," Hepburn recalled. "My grandfather was one. He never owned a toothbrush. He'd say he didn't want to become dependent upon anything."
Hepburn's father, Thomas Norval Hepburn, was born in Hanover County in 1879 and spent his boyhood there. He entered Randolph- Macon in 1896 and graduated in 1901 with bachelor's and master's degrees.
Those who had known him during his Ashland years remembered him as a star athlete with blazing red hair.
After graduation, he studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University, married and moved to Connecticut, where he established a career as a surgeon.
Katharine Hepburn's trip to the Ashland area was her first visit to her father's boyhood home.
The Hepburns had arrived in Hanover by car the day before the Randolph-Macon tour. They spent the night at Oakland, the Page family estate, and the actress regaled the Pages with anecdotes about her latest film, "Bringing Up Baby," which co-starred Cary Grant and an unpredictable leopard.
Rosewell Page Jr. escorted the Hepburns while they toured the area, and years later he recalled his impressions of the young actress.
"I had a lot of fun taking Miss Hepburn over the county, and she had the prettiest auburn hair you ever saw," he said. "She was just as natural as an old shoe."
After seeing the college, Thomas Hepburn took his famous daughter to meet old school friends who still lived in Ashland. "One of the sweetest girls, so unpretentious," a friend who met the actress later said.
"I like to visit historic places," Katharine Hepburn told reporters before leaving town. "I am especially glad that I had the opportunity to visit Randolph-Macon College... and to visit in Ashland, where my grandfather served as rector of the Episcopal church."
The Hepburns left for River's Edge, the Gloucester County farm of Thomas Hepburn's sister, and made other stops in Virginia before continuing on to Florida.
-- Contact Times-Dispatch librarian/researcher Larry Hall at lhall@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6076. Time Capsules features items from the archives of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Richmond News Leader.
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO
MEMO: TIME CAPSULES; SPECIAL SECTION: EXPLORING ASHLAND
Credit: Times-Dispatch Staff Writer