The cast of characters in this story includes an unlikely group: Katharine Hepburn, Jane Fonda, and Michael Jackson. And it was Hepburn, herself, who told us the story during lunch at her house in New York.
She had agreed to participate in our profile of James Stewart, but she had a favor to ask.
“I’ve also promised to do an interview for a piece about Michael Jackson, so can your film crew shoot it on the same day? I’ll already be in makeup for you, so it would make sense to do the other one right afterwards.”
Since she already knew us and our crew, that made sense. But what caught our attention was her mentioning Michael Jackson.
JK “Do you know him?” I asked.
“Why? Does that surprise you? As a matter of fact, that book on the table over there belongs to him. He left it here when he came to visit.”
“Okay. Now I’m filled with curiosity.”
“Oh yes, we’re good friends,” she said. “I met him when I was up at Squam Lake in New Hampshire making On Golden Pond, and he came to visit Jane Fonda. They were already friends and she invited him to the location. She introduced him to me, and he was very soft-spoken and sweet.
“Then, Jane said to me, ‘I have to go back to Los Angeles for the weekend, so could you look after Michael for me?’
“I said, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do with this kid? I hardly know him.’
“‘Oh, you’ll find things to do,’ she said. ‘He’s crazy about you.’
“She’d found him a room in the attic of an old house. When I went there on Saturday morning, the room looked like a hurricane had hit it. I said, ‘Michael, clean up this place—right now.’ And he said, ‘Yes, Miss Hepburn,’ in a voice I could hardly hear, and he began picking up all those clothes and piling them on a chair. I said to him, ‘Don’t you ever do your laundry?’ And he said, ‘Someone usually does that for me.’
“I said, ‘Come with me. We’re going to a laundromat just down the street.’”
DH It’s a scene that should have been captured on film: Katharine Hepburn and Michael Jackson walking into a public laundromat, with Kate showing Michael how to feed quarters into the washing machines.
She said, “People were a bit taken aback to see us, but then went about their own business and left us alone.”
While they sat and watched his clothes tumbling around, she said, “Michael, take off those goddamn sunglasses. I can’t see your eyes.” And he promptly obliged.
“So that was the beginning of our friendship. Now, whenever he’s in New York, he comes to visit. The last time, he said, ‘I’d like to buy some books. Can you recommend any that you think I should read?’ I asked Kathy (her niece, Katharine Houghton, who played Hepburn’s and Spencer Tracy’s daughter in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) to take him shopping at Barnes and Noble and they came back with three shopping bags filled with books I’d suggested. He proudly showed them all to me. And I can guarantee that he’s never cracked the spine of any one of them.”
JK She also invited him to dinner and asked what he’d like to eat.
“Just vegetables,” he said.
She told us, “So, Norah made this beautiful vegetarian dinner, with almost every vegetable you can think of. When he arrived, I asked him, ‘What’s your favorite vegetable, Michael?’ He replied, ‘Cauliflower.’
“‘Really? How fascinating,’ I said, as I realized it was the only one not on the menu. But I decided to let him discover that for himself.
“And then, he invited me to one of his concerts at Madison Square Garden.”
Actress that she was, she paused for shock value.
I said, “And did you go? I don’t quite picture you at a Michael Jackson concert.”
“Yep,” she said. “He insisted I come. I took Phyllis and Schuyler (her great-niece, Schuyler Grant).”
Another great scene for a movie: two octogenarians and a seventeen-year-old walking down the aisle at Madison Square Garden to seats in the second row. Apparently, word spread like wildfire that Hepburn was in the audience, with everyone wanting to catch a glimpse of her.
Soon after 8 pm, the concert started. But as with most rock concerts, the main attraction isn’t the first one to appear. So as the clock ticked away, Kate became increasingly angry.
“Let’s go,” she said. “He’s late and I don’t want to wait any longer.” Schuyler explained that he wasn’t late—that this was just the opening act for him.
“Well, then why didn’t he tell me that so we could have arrived later?”
Schuyler prevailed on her to wait it out, since Michael knew they were in the audience.
And then, finally, out he came. Hepburn was horrified—by his erotic pelvic moves and the volume level of the entire performance. The young man with the quiet voice and shy personality had turned into a sex object on the stage in front of her.
She said, “Let’s get out of here. I don’t ever want to see him again. He’s vulgar.”
Again, it was up to Schuyler to convince her not only to stay, but then to go backstage, where he was expecting her after the concert.
Another frenzied melee erupted when she walked through the stage door. And in a voice everyone there could hear, she said, “Michael, what was that? Asinine. And lewd.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Hepburn,” he said, speaking again in his soft, childlike voice. “But that’s what I do when I perform on stage.”
“Well, take my advice. And don’t ever do it again.”
DH A week after she told us that story, our crew set up in her living room for our James Stewart interview. As usual, we were a very small group: Joan and I, a production assistant, lighting director, cameraman and sound engineer. By the time we’d finished, the producers of the documentary about Michael Jackson had already arrived. Obviously everyone on their staff wanted to meet Katharine Hepburn and found an excuse to show up: two producers, writers, a director, an assistant director, a production assistant, and several others whose titles weren’t obvious.
When Kate saw this crowd she said to us, “Stick around. When I get rid of that bunch, we’ll have lunch.”
Joan and I went into an adjacent room and watched the interview on a monitor. It didn’t take long to realize that the questions were making Hepburn increasingly uncomfortable.
“What’s your favorite Michael Jackson song?”
“I don’t know the name of any goddamn one of them.”
“What do you see in Michael Jackson’s future?”
“I see Michael Jackson.”
I felt my stomach muscles tense as this continued through several more questions. I thought she was going to throw them all out at any moment.
After about fifteen agonizing minutes, it was over. When they were on the way down the stairs, she said to us, “Thank God they’re leaving. Now let’s eat.”
As usual, lunch was a cup of Norah’s homemade soup, and a sandwich. And, of course, for dessert, Sedutto’s mocha chip ice cream and lace cookies.
JK and DH We never saw the finished documentary about Michael Jackson. And we doubt that Hepburn did either.
And, as far as we know, she never went to another one of his concerts, which undoubtedly was best for both of them because he clearly, and astutely, never took her advice about his performance.
Photograph by Len Tavares.
David Heeley meets President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan.
The White House Library, 1986. Authors’ collection.
President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan greet Joan Kramer.
The White House Library, 1986. Authors’ collection.
