A fiery Scots-Yankee known for her intelligence, humor and iron determination, Katharine Hepburn demonstrated remarkable staying power in a screen career that spanned more than six decades, winning three of her four Best Actress Oscars after the age of 60. Credit must go to her extraordinary parents, a noted urologist father, who at great professional risk brought the facts about venereal disease to a wider public, and his dedicated suffragette wife (an early champion of birth control), for providing an eccentric and genteel upbringing stressing Spartan physical discipline. Out of their
