As You Like It, 1950: Katharine Hepburn as Rosalind and William Price as Orlando, Theatre Guild N.Y.

Hepburn managed to live in real life in the vein of Shaw's women, and this obviously carries over into the Shakespearean role of Rosalind here. Outspoken and intellectual with an acerbic tongue, she defied the era's conventions, preferring to wear pantsuits and disdaining makeup (cp. "breeches parts" in earlier theatre). Hepburn's strongly progressive social views also became a target of anti-communist hysteria. Hepburn lent her name to some liberal social and political causes, particularly family planning. Most of her films stress the difficulties that couples can have when they try to find an equitable balance of power. Hepburn's genealogy has been researched through the Whittier line back to King Louis IX of France (a great grandson of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom she played in The Lion in Winter). The overt sexual appeal of the boyish costumes of both the actress and actor is very apparent - a quite traditional effect, but only after Shakespeare's time. Hepburn's sexual assurance resembles that of most Shavian heroines. She actually played the lead in Shaw's The Millionairess in London in 1952. Some data from Wikipedia, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License. Image from Cleveland State University Library via Special Collections at clevelandmemory.org/copyright.