Decades before Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire and Shakespeare in Love played cross-dressing for laughs, Katharine Hepburn was helping to turn drag into a movie art form. In the 1935 romantic comedy Sylvia Scarlett, which costarred Cary Grant, Hepburn played the titular character, a young woman who pretends to be a boy named Sylvester as part of a con.
Unfortunately, the movie was not a success and didn’t do much to boost Hepburn’s career, which is explored in words and photos in Moxie: The Daring Women of Classic Hollywood by Ira M. Resnick and Raissa Bretaña, due out Nov. 5 from Abbeville Press. The new book devotes chapters to Hepburn and other legendary screen sirens, including Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall. It also offers rare photos from the collection of Motion Picture Arts Gallery founder Resnick and a forward written by Hepburn’s On Golden Pond daughter, Jane…
