Katharine Houghton

Katharine Houghton (born Katharine Houghton Grant; 10 March 1945) is an American actress and playwright. She portrayed Joanna "Joey" Drayton, a white woman who brings home her black fiancé to meet her parents, in the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Katharine Hepburn, who played the mother of Houghton's character in the film, was Houghton's aunt. Houghton was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance. She is also known for her role as Kanna, the grandmother of Katara and Sokka in the film The Last Airbender (2010).

Early life

Houghton was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the second child of Marion Hepburn and Ellsworth Grant.<ref name="HartfordCourant">Template:Cite news</ref> Houghton was named after her maternal grandmother, Connecticut suffragist and reformer Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn.<ref>Template:Cite interview</ref>

Houghton attended Kingswood-Oxford School and Sarah Lawrence College, where she majored in philosophy. Partially influenced by her aunt, actress Katharine Hepburn, she pursued acting as a way to help alleviate her osteoarthritis.<ref name="HartfordCourant" /> During her junior year, Houghton began appearing in summer stock theater. In 1965, she made her Broadway debut in A Very Rich Woman and appeared in minor television roles.<ref name="Backstage">Template:Cite news</ref>

Career

Acting

Houghton made her film debut in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) as the daughter Joanna Drayton opposite Sidney Poitier. She auditioned for the role and believed that her aunt, who was also appearing in the film, was influential in her casting.<ref name="Backstage" /> During filming, the film's director Stanley Kramer decided her character was appearing too articulate and intelligent. He decided instead to have her character portrayed as an ordinary and sweet girl.<ref name="HartfordCourant" /> Arthur D. Murphy, the chief film critic for Variety, praised Houghton's performance, writing she is "an attractive, talented girl who is off to a running start."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Because of the interracial kiss depicted in the film, Houghton and Kramer received hate mail and death threats.<ref name="HartfordCourant" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Following Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Houghton became typecast as the woman in interracial relationships. However, Houghton decided to leave behind her Hollywood career due to lackluster scripts. "I turned down these projects and returned to the theater," she explained. "It was fate. I went on to play Hedda and Nora and Nina and Kate."<ref name="Backstage" /> Since then, she has appeared in leading roles in over 60 productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatres throughout the United States. In 1970, she won the Theatre World Award for her performance in the Off-Broadway play A Scent of Flowers (written by James Saunders).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She returned to film acting in the 1988 comedy-drama Mr. North.<ref name="InSearch">Template:Cite news</ref>

Houghton has presented lectures at venues across the country including the 2001 Fall Concert & Lectures Series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at The Cosmopolitan Club in New York. She lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art again in June 2008, presenting "Saucy Gamine, Reluctant Penitent, and Glorious Victor", a review of her aunt's career in Hollywood as reflected in three of her films.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>

Writing

Houghton has also worked as a playwright, and by 1990, she had written nine Off-Broadway and regional productions.<ref name="InSearch" /><ref name="NYTimes">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1975, Houghton wrote a children's story, "The Wizard's Daughter", which is collected in the book Two Beastly Tales, illustrated by Joan Patchen. The second story in the book is written by John Grant, Houghton's elder brother. During the early 1980s, she wrote and starred in a one-woman show To Heaven in a Swing, detailing Louisa May Alcott's life with her Transcendentalist father, Amos Bronson Alcott.<ref name="Backstage" /><ref name="InSearch" />

She also co-wrote a one-act play titled Buddha, exploring a psychological power struggle between a man and a woman. The play was subsequently published in The Best Short Plays of 1988–1989.<ref name="InSearch" /> Her musical Bookends premiered at the New Jersey Repertory Company on July 19, 2007. It is loosely inspired by rare book dealers Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern, whom Houghton had met while researching Alcott.<ref name="Backstage" /> The musical's lyrics were composed by Dianne Adams and James McDowell.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It received rave notices, and garnered the theater the highest box office sales in their 11-year history. Since then, it has twice been part of The York Theatre's Developmental Reading Series.<ref name="NYTimes" />

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role
1967	Guess Who's Coming to Dinner	Joanna 'Joey' Drayton
1974	Template:Sortname	Ellen Bennett
1982	Template:Sortname
1988	Mr. North	Mrs. Skeel
1991	Billy Bathgate	Charlotte
1993	Ethan Frome	Mrs. Hale
1993	Template:Sortname	Less / More Cheese Lady
1995	Let It Be Me	Homeless Woman
2004	Kinsey	Mrs. Spaulding
2010	The Last Airbender	Kanna, Katara and Sokka's Grandmother

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1966	ABC Stage 67	Bonnie	"The Confession"
1966	Hawk	Ophelia	"How Close Can You Get?"
1968	Judd, for the Defense	Suzy Thurston	"In a Puff of Smoke"
1974	CBS Daytime 90	Gabby	"Legacy of Fear"
1976	Template:Sortname	Abigail Adams Smith	TV miniseries
1981	ABC Afterschool Special	Miss James	"The Color of Friendship"
1987	I'll Take Manhattan	Pepper Delafield	TV miniseries
2017	Mr. Mercedes	Elizabeth Wharton	"Cloudy, with a Chance of Mayhem", "The Suicide Hour"

See also

• Houghton family

External links

• [https://www.imdb.com/{{#if: 0396455

 | name/{{#if:{{#invoke:ustring|match|1=0396455|2=^nm}}
   | Template:Trim/
   | nm0396455/
   }}
 | {{#if: {{#property:P345}}
   | name/Template:First word/
   | find?q=%7B%7B%23if%3A+%0A++++++%7C+%7B%7B%7Bname%7D%7D%7D%0A++++++%7C+%5B%5B%3ATemplate%3APAGENAMEBASE%5D%5D%0A++++++%7D%7D&s=nm
   }}
 }}{{#if: 0396455  {{#property:P345}} | {{#switch: 
 | award | awards = awards Awards for | biography | bio = bio Biography for
 }}}} {{#if: 
 | {{{name}}}
 | Template:PAGENAMEBASE
 }}] at IMDb{{#if: 0396455{{#property:P345}}
 | Template:EditAtWikidata
 | Template:Main other

}}{{#switch:{{#invoke:string2|matchAny|^nm.........|^nm.......|nm|.........|source=0396455|plain=false}}

 | 1 | 3 =  Template:Main otherTemplate:Preview warning
 | 4 = Template:Main otherTemplate:Preview warning

}}{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:IMDb name with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|showblankpositional=1| 1 | 2 | id | name | section }}

• {{#if: {{#property:P1220}}

| [https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/{{#if:

 | {{{id}}}
 | Template:First word
 }} {{#if: 
 | {{{name}}}
 | Template:PAGENAMEBASE
 }}] at the Internet Broadway DatabaseTemplate:EditAtWikidataTemplate:WikidataCheck{{#ifeq:0|0|{{#if:||}}}}

| {{#ifeq:0|0|}}

}}