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Show ENTERTAINMENT Can Niece Katharine Houghton Carry On the Hepburn Magic? She’s also honest, tough, and independent, but she'll try to prove that she’s not just a copy of her famous aunt By JACK RYAN ATHARINE HEPBURN parted with her beloved niece Katharine Houghton in New York recently with characteristic Yankee crispness—a quick embrace and terse “see you.” Katie was unawedplaying opposite old pros Spencer Tracy and her Aunt Kate. preciation of life not a bitterness toward it. But what of her niece? Though look alikes in coloring and facial structure, Katharine Houghton’s bones are less pronounced, her voice softer, and her mannerisms moredelicate. More important, though, is what's inside her—the Hepburn osity value of a Hepburn niece, When it comes to a more forthright answer, demure Katharine Houghton rings truer. She levels gray-green eyes at you, and an undercurrent of her aunt’s toughness tempers her voice, “Let me explain by telling you about my family. Oh, I don’t want to get into the ancestor Yet for both, appearing together in the film, “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,” this ended a turning point in their individual lives and the toughness, hopefully, for she faces an even great- er challenge than her aunt. Katie Houghton is the daughter of Ellsworth beginning of new futures. The Grants are a well-to-do Hartford, Conn., name-dropping. But I think you'll know mebetter—and my aunt—if you know ourhistory. “Our family came from Massachusetts to Connecticut before the Revolution because we For Katharine Hepburn, 58, and for 35 years one of Hollywood's greatest stars, it was a fullfledged return from nearly seven years of “retirement,” most of which she spent tending her longtime friend and costar, Spencer Tracy, through a heartillness that finally took his life last year. For Katharine Houghton, 22, and virtually designated as Hepburn’s heiress apparent, it meant stepping from her aunt's shadow and knowingthat, as an actress, she would be judged couple who write and film documentaries on New England history. Mr. Grant recently won elec- solely on merit—not relationship. Neither womai is likely to flinch at the tough tomorrows. Katharine Houghton Hepburn and niece Katharine Houghton Hepburn Grant proudly acknowledge a tough Yankee heritage that believes life’s griefs and challenges exist only to make us better humanbeings, ‘“I never let my dentist drug me,” Hepburn said after a recent extraction. “Some pain disciplines you.”) Hepburn,believing that hard work is a remedy for the emptiness left by Tracy’s death, is now in Englandfilming “The Lion in Winter” with Peter O’Toole. When the film is completed, she will return to star in the long-heralded musical, “Coco.” Tough tomorrows should pass easily for this hardened old pro who has run the gamut of great personal and professional success—and failure. With her memorable roles in “Morning Glory,” “The Philadelphia Story,” and “The African Queen”have been such disasters as “The Lake” (“ ... a frightening experience, and it made me terrified of the public”) and being labeled “box-office poison.” Through acclaim and ridicule, Hepburn has held her head imperiously high, never wavered in her aloofness from public and press, nor capitulated to filmdom’s capriciousness. And as one of her Yankee forefathers stated, adversity creates character not callousness and gives her an ap- 4 Family Weekly, February 11,1968 Grant and Aunt Kate’s younger sister Marion. tion to the West Hartford city council because “his New England conscience told him he should do more for his community.” Like her illustrieus aunt, Katie was raised in active political liberalism; she attended proper private schoo!s and Sarah Lawrence College, where shefirst became interested in filmmaking. (“Aunt Kate was always breezing in and out —we had a wonderful rambling summer home where all sorts of relatives would magically appear and vanish.”) She now studies and lives in New York, sharing with a pretty UN interpreter an apartment remarkable mostly for the noise from five birds. Her acting experience is relatively limited. Her most notable Broadway appearance was in a didn’t think Massachusetts gave us an oppor- tunity for independence. We've been dissenters ever since. And I don’t mean just the men,either. “My grandmother, to name one, was the disgrace of Hartford because she was always marching and making speeches for women’s suffrage and birth control. “I have an Aunt Meg, too—Aunt Kate's sister —who was so beautiful she was told she should go on the stage. She preferred to run a farm, and Ruth Gordon—close friends of Tracy and Hepburn. She won the choice part in her first film, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”—a film touted for Academy Awards—after only two meetings with producer Stanley Kramer. Now she must face two crue‘ questions. Did she get that choice part from Kramer because she was the star’s niece? And can she move in- though- -chores andall. She's still beautiful with calloused hands and weathered face, but she can do anything on a farm a man can do—and more. She raised five children. “You know how much trouble my Aunt Kate got into with herliberal ideas and outspokenness. Oh, I could name all sorts of women relatives who have stood on their own feet and lived their own lives. Aunt Kate is simply one of these women. I am simply one of them, too. “T believe I got the part in ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ because I was right forit. I’ve lost parts because I wasn’t right. “T tell you about my family just to explain that I went into acting not because I had a famous aunt but because of the woman I am—like those other Houghton-Hepburns, I saw in acting a dependently in her own direction? chance for my independence, not my dependence. Maybe the answer is in the way Hepburn and Houghton reply to that first painful question, Katharine Hepburn, noted for her caustic honesty, replies: “Do you think—do you really think—the people who put so much money and talent in this film would risk it on an unknown simply because she was my niece?” I saw a chance to do something I respect. “I suppose people will say: ‘That Houghton girl got the part because her aunt is Katharine Hepburn.’ | can't stop them, but I know what I will do—the same thing my grandmother did whenpeople in Hartford whispered about her. “She smiled at them, greeted them warmly— then proved that they were wrong.” No wonder Katharine Hepburn left her niece without qualms, Little Katie is more than just a specially written part in a play by Garson Kanin The begging answer is a great disappointment coming from Katharine Hepburn. The fact is that Hollywood producers, including Stanley Kramer, would not be above exploiting the curi- look-alike to Aunt Kate. . |