Katherine Hepburnīs Bugatti

As you will probably all know by now, I had some discussions and more about the particular car shown above, the Bugatti T38 38435 with body by Murphy. As stated in the Bugatti Revue, the above picture is a promotional photograph for the movie "Chistopher Strong" of 1933, which stars Katherine Hepburn. Using the modern technology of the Internet, a copy of the movie can be located in mere minutes. It takes than almost a year to extract some digital footage of this movie, the footage is presented here. For background information, please refer back to the article.

Movie 1

Small movie 1(490kB)

Big movie 1(3.0 MB)

Movie 2

Small movie 2(397kB)

Big movie 2(2.4 MB)

Below are some screenshots of Miss. Hepburn at the wheel, out of the first movie.

Compare with the promotional picture at the top of the page. Is Miss Hepburn fitted in the promotional picture using trick photography, or is it just the way she is....
My opinion is, that she just sits very low, to make the car look more impressive. Compare especially the size of her head, with the height of the windscreen and steering wheel.

In this shot, also from the first movie, we can see that the car as it is now, does not have the original dashboard. Were there is wood now, there should be aluminium. Also the setting of the instruments is very much different.

Pictures from the second movie, which is a bit later in the "Christopher Strong" movie. Note that the car didnīt drive a mile in between both shots! Not surprisingly, probably the same shot has been used.

Thanks to Rinus Hendriks for digitalizing the movie!

28-12-2004

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