Katharine Thalberg, who died Friday at age 70 in Aspen Valley Hospital, owned Explore Booksellers, an independent bookstore that secured international renown thanks to Aspen’s well-traveled patrons and connections made through her famous parents.
The daughter of Hollywood movie potentate Irving Thalberg and actress Norma Shearer – who named her after their chum Katharine Hepburn – she grew up in Santa Monica, Calif. Thalberg learned to ski at age 3 and later schussed in the company of Friedl Pfeiffer, Klaus Obermeyer and other powerful players who turned Aspen into a winter getaway for the wealthy and famous.
Schooled in France and Switzerland, where she developed a flawless Parisian accent, Thalberg graduated from California’s Westlake School for Girls. She married ski racer Jack Reddish and later earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her marriage to Reddish ended in divorce.
With her second husband, actor Richard Anderson, she had three daughters.
In 1973, when that marriage ended in divorce, she moved to Aspen. Two years later, she opened Explore Booksellers on East Main Street.
With its cozy warren of bookshelves stocked with more quirky novels and unusual titles than best sellers, Explore became a favorite hangout.
So, eventually, did the vegan bistro Thalberg established on the bookstore’s top floor. An ardent proponent of animal rights despite her innate shyness, Thalberg refused to serve meat products and relied on her Malamute, Knute, to screen people.
“If you were a friend of Knute, then you were OK,” said longtime friend and business associate Sandra Patterson.
Keenly sensitive to the plight of over-scrutinized luminaries, Thalberg rarely mentioned her famous parents or other celebrated acquaintances.
Instead, Aspenites generally associated Thalberg less with her pedigree than with her continuing animal-rights crusade. Thalberg married Bill Stirling at about the time he was elected mayor of Aspen in 1983.
She energetically campaigned alongside Stirling during the widely publicized 1989 effort to legally ban the sale of fur in Aspen. The ultimately unsuccessful crusade attracted international media attention, adding a new dimension to Aspen’s eccentric reputation.
With the exception of her animal-rights politicking, Thalberg guarded her personal life. Only her family and closest friends knew she was fighting cancer during the last two years of her life.
Despite her bookstore’s reputation for stocking unconventional titles, Thalberg’s favorite book was “The Forsythe Saga,” which she owned in every media form in which it was available.
In addition to her husband, survivors include daughters Brooke Anderson of Washington, D.C., Ashley Anderson of Boulder and Deva Anderson of Los Angeles.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
