Someday, I want to hear someone explain why Katharine Hepburn left all her money to Cynthia McFadden. No one will tell me, except to say they were good friends.
Thanks!
She helped with her carpet cleaning
Say what!?
huh?
Are you serious?
McFadden, 50, coanchor of Nightline and Primetime and ABC's senior legal correspondent, met the legendary actress on the beach in Fenwick, Conn., while visiting her Bowdoin College freshman roommate. Hepburn lived one house away, by the water.
At the time, McFadden was about 19, Hepburn in her late 60s. McFadden was rigging a sailboat with her roomie's brother when the actress came upon them.
"We started a conversation that went on for the next 30 years," McFadden says. "Why she fascinated me was easy to understand. What she possibly saw in this kid on the beach was a mystery to me."
McFadden's theory is that Hepburn, who was childless, "was at a point in her life where she wanted to tell somebody the way she thought a good life should be lived. I was in the right place at the right time."
Over the years, the two women bonded. Hepburn took McFadden on trips to California and Florida, among other places. McFadden brought Hepburn home to Auburn, Maine, for Christmas.
McFadden was married at Hepburn's Connecticut summer home. (Hepburn helped with the tab.) She named her own son Spencer, after Hepburn's longtime paramour, Spencer Tracy.
McFadden was in the room when Hepburn died in June '03 at 96. Three years earlier, Hepburn had named McFadden, a lawyer, executor of her estate.
"I always joke that I thought she liked me. Now I'm not so sure," McFadden says. "Being executor is a lot of work."
Given Hepburn's vast collection of paintings, furniture, theater and movie memorabilia and personal correspondence, the settlement "is a work in progress," McFadden says. "It won't be over for years."
For McFadden, traveling in "Aunt Kat's" charmed inner circle "was like a junior Olympics for life."