“On July 4th, 50 years ago, Hepburn arrived in Los Angeles at the Pasadena Railway Station with a swollen eye and an RKO contract for 1500 dollars a week. Cukor immediately collared her (in preference to Norma Shearer and Irene Dunne) to costar with John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement, reportedly because of the way she tragically put a glass on a table in a screen test: ‘Though she'd never made a movie, she had this very definite knowledge and feeling right from the start...a quality of cutting through “correctness.”'
“It launched her career with a bang, and began her notoriety for ‘cutting through correctness' in other ways, especially in her mannish style of dressing (beautifully exploited in her second film, Christopher Strong, where she plays an aviator) and in her flippancy with press, public and studio alike. But her third film, Morning Glory, brought her universal acclaim. She became one of the few actors ever to win an Academy Award on first nomination. Hepburn demonstrates considerable subtlety and sincerity as a stage-struck Vermont girl trying to make it big on the New York stage at any cost. High points include her drunken recital of Hamlet's ‘To be or not to be' soliloquy and the balcony scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet' at her first Broadway party, and Adolphe Menjou and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. competing for her love.” --Richard Kwietniowski