Hepburn’s return to stage in ‘Jane Eyre’ brought her to Pabst
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s production of “Jane Eyre” concludes its run this weekend at the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater, 108 E. Wells St.
Margaret Ivey plays the title heroine in the production, based on an acclaimed adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel by Polly Teale.
Eighty years ago, a very different production of “Jane Eyre” had a fourday run on a Milwaukee stage. Katharine Hepburn played the title role at the Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St.
By February 1937, Hepburn had built a name-above-the-title career in the movies. But she also had soured on the whole Hollywood thing. So she returned to the stage in the lead of “Jane Eyre,” in a touring production with the Theatre Guild.
A month before the production hit Milwaukee, Hepburn generated headlines for a different reason: her new boyfriend, Howard Hughes.
There were headlines when the millionaire aviator sent her a telegram after he set a transcontinental flying speed record on Jan. 19, 1937, saying, “Safe and down in Newark.” There were headlines again when he flew the following day to see her in Chicago, one of several stops for “Jane Eyre” before Milwaukee.
And there were even bigger headlines the day after that, saying Hepburn and Hughes were tying the knot.
A county clerk in Chicago told the International News Service that the actress and millionaire were picking up their marriage license Jan. 21. When they didn’t, it seemed to annoy newsmen no end.
“… Reporters were rapidly getting tired of waiting for Miss Hepburn to make up her mind,” the Wisconsin News, Milwaukee’s other afternoon paper at the time, reported on Jan. 25.
Reporters weren’t tired of her when she finally arrived in Milwaukee, however.
The day after the show’s Feb. 24, 1937, opening, Hepburn met with the media at the Pabst to answer some questions and avoid others. And they ate it up.
“The mercurial lady launched into a staccato chat on the weather, sports, the stage, the screen, trousers and newspaper photographers … most everything, in fact, but her private affairs, which means, currently, Howard Hughes, millionaire sportsman,” the Sentinel reported on Feb. 25.
Asked if she and Hughes were married, she replied, according to the News’ story that day: “What an unfortunate topic of conversation. Newspapers do all the talking. We do none. I do not discuss my private life. In fact, I think it’s nobody’s business.”
Photographers dogged the actress for the rest of the show’s brief run in Milwaukee, staking out the Cudahy Tower, where she was staying. But the papers failed to get another word out of her.
Her fans, the Sentinel reported on Feb. 28, got seven. After the final performance of “Jane Eyre” on Feb. 27, about 200 fans waited outside the stage door at the Pabst. With a halfdozen police officers there to protect her on her “12-foot dash” to her waiting limousine. To the people waiting, she said, according to the Sentinel: “Hello.” “How do you like it?” “Goodbye.” “The crowd chorused a satisfied sigh, and dispersed,” the Sentinel noted.
Three days after Hepburn left town on Feb. 28, the Wisconsin News breathlessly reported that Hughes had been in Milwaukee with her the whole time.
“Although it has been vigorously denied, reports persist that the star of ‘Jane Eyre’ and the young millionaire flier not only were together during her stay in Milwaukee, but left the swanky lakefront apartment hotel together the afternoon that Miss Hepburn departed to fill an engagement in Indianapolis,” the News reported on March 3, 1937.
The paper revealed that Hughes had stayed at Cudahy Tower under an assumed name, and that he and Hepburn left together on the 28th.
Hughes and Hepburn were together for more than a year after that, but the couple never married and the relationship (dramatized in the Martin Scorsese movie “The Aviator”) ended.
Hepburn returned to the Pabst stage at least two more times: with “The Philadelphia Story,” her comeback vehicle, in 1940; and in a production of “As You Like It,” in 1951.