Katherine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy
Katherine Hepburn was one of the silver screen's true greats scooping four Oscars from twelve nominations in a career that spanned over sixty years.
But she was unlike any other actress that graced the screen at the time shunning the glamour and superficialities of the business she was an intelligent and individual woman who's career was very much in her own hands, refusing to work for less $1,500 in the forties.
She shunned Hollywood society and publicity above all keeping her private life just that... very private.
Despite being linked with the likes of Bette Davis, Rita Heyworth and Ginger Rogers it was Hepburn that captured the heart of American aviator, film producer and director Howard Hughes.
The pair were together for four years before Hepburn, who had seen her career slump, decided to leave Hollywood and go back to Broadway, where here career started.
However it was her relationship with actor Spencer Tracy that was to be the big talking point for Hollywood. The pair starred opposite each other for the first time in 1942 in Woman of the Year.
But behind the scenes the pair had fallen in love, despite Tracy being married to another woman Louise Treadwell. While the pair tried to keep their relationship out of the press it was an affair that lasted over two decades.
Despite the pair living separately for most of their relationship, long periods of estrangement and Tracy remaining married the pair were one of Hollywood's most recognisable couples off the big screen as well as on.
Hepburn took time off from her career to care for the ailing actor, he died in 1969 from a heart attack, just seventeen days after completing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with Hepburn.
Out of respect for his family Hepburn didn't attend Tracy's funeral.
However in 2006 author William J Mann questioned the pair's relationship. In Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, Mann draws on never-seen-before documents and interviews with people who wouldn't talk while Hepburn was alive.
The book includes the allegation Tracy had an on-off affair with a male mechanic - while Hepburn had flings with at least two girls.
Mann includes details about Hepburn's relationships with American Express heiress Laura Harding and Nightline anchor Cynthia McFadden, almost 50 years the screen legend's junior.
Katherine Hepburn died in 2003 aged ninety six, she had no children.
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