Critical consensus is overrated. Rotten Tomatoes may have trained moviegoers to quantify a movie's worth with a percentage score in recent years, but some of the best movies ever made deeply divide critics and audiences. Early Hollywood star Katharine Hepburn made many divisive films in her career, from the John Wayne Western Rooster Cogburn to her first Oscar-winning film, Morning Glory, to the gutsy interracial marriage dramedy Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Time out once called the latter, which earned 10 Academy Award nominations upon release, "a reckless, sanctimonious plea for tolerance, delivered with Kramer's usual loquaciousness and swagger."

It's a truth universally acknowledged that good films are sometimes trashed by certain critics, but that makes the rare film that achieves complete critical consensus all the more interesting—if not always necessarily better—than more polarizing films. Many great actors only have one 100% Rotten Tomatoes, but much-loved Golden Age celebrity Hepburn there are three. The trio of films that reached peak freshness include three rom-com stage play adaptations, two George Cukor credits and at least one classic.

Holiday was Hepburn's earliest film to impress a number of critics. Released in 1938, the film starred Cary Grant as a working-class man who experiences a bit of culture shock when he meets his wealthy future in-laws. Grant's Johnny is set to marry Doris Nolan's Julia, but he soon develops an eye for her sister, Hepburn's Linda. "Holiday" may not be the flashiest or best-known Grant-Hepburn collaboration (the pair also starred in "Bringing Up Baby," "The Philadelphia Story" and "Sylvia Scarlett"), but critics agree it's one of the best.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, 30 critics gave "Holiday" a thumbs up. There are probably some older print reviews of the film from the 30s that haven't been digitized, since most of these critics are looking back at the film through a modern lens, but they still make a compelling case for it. "The light comedy reaches perfection, but beneath it lies Cukor's serious concern with the ways we choose to live our lives," wrote Dave Kerr for Chicago Reader in 1985. Hepburn, who had understudied the Broadway stage version a decade earlier, was also critically praised.

Hepburn was already a household name by 1940, having starred in "Holiday" and "Bringing Up Baby" and won Oscars for "Morning Glory" and "Alice Adams" (although she lost the latter to Bette Davis). She was famous but not always popular: a 1941 Time column noted that a Manhattan theater owner made headlines with calling Hepburn and others "box office poison" two years earlier. But "The Philadelphia Story," another Cukor collaboration that impressed every critic listed on Rotten Tomatoes, ended up making money and cementing her legacy for decades to come. "Come back, Katie, all is forgiven," the Time columnist claimed the theater owner said after seeing The Philadelphia Story.

The Philadelphia Story is another winning romantic comedy about a family with money and a love triangle involving an engaged person who has second thoughts. This time, Grant plays Hepburn's ex, while John Howard is her fiance and James Stewart is another man who catches her eye. At the time of its publication, The New York Daily Times he called it the best comedy of the year, while The New Yorker he called it "Hepburn's Triumph." Its excellent reputation remains as strong today. "You find so much joy in every scene that almost any pairing that could happen would end up being satisfying, because the fun you've had makes every possibility a pleasure," Mike Shutt. wrote for /Film in 2022.

The last 100% fresh film in Hepburn's filmography is also the least durable today, although it is perhaps the most cautious of the bunch - and it's a christmas movie! "Desk Set," a 1957 picture starring Spencer Tracy, follows a group of librarians at a broadcasting company (led by Hepburn's delightfully named rabbit Watson) who are threatened with the addition of an early computer to their workplace—one that seems designed to take over their jobs. As the technophobia plot unfolds, Bunny also finds herself caught between two men: Gig Young's CEO, Mike, and Tracy's inventor character, Richard.

As with other films of its era, there appear to be few reviews of Desk Set available only in print, meaning that its perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes may not fully reflect reality. Online criticism has been mixed with responses to her collaborations with Cukor, with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times calling him "out of the dramatic middle" and without "much of everything" besides the charm of the main actors. "This might have been a feeble undertaking if it weren't for Hepburn and Tracy," LA Times. Mark Chalon Smith wrote in retrospect to the '90s, "but director Walter Lang's silky touch and screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron's clever dialogue also elevate it."

All three films are worth watching, as is the vast majority of Hepburn's filmography. As of this writing, "Holiday" is available to stream on Prime Video, while "The Philadelphia Story" is on Tubi. Meanwhile, The Desk Set can be rented digitally wherever you get your movies.