By Judy Samelson
02 Aug 2011

	Katharine Houghton

Of all the parts you've played over the years, is there one that stands out for you or that was especially rewarding?
KH: It's hard to say, to pick one. They're all so different. And they all involve such different experiences and different places and different people. Let me put it this way: There are very few roles I've played that I didn't like, that I felt under duress to have to do. And the only reason I ever did those roles was either that I was desperate to earn money or it was a tradeoff — a director saying to me in a rep company, "If you'll play this, I'll let you play Major Barbara." Something like that.

Yeah, well, that's an actor's life, right? Especially in the theatre.
KH: Yeah. You have your tradeoffs, but by and large I really did get to play the roles that I wanted to play. And gosh I've had a helluva good time.

And what about as a playwright? Who would you say has had the most influence on you as a writer?
KH: I would certainly say my heroes are Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, O'Neill, Williams . . .

Oh, them.
KH: [Laughs] Oh, them, the obvious choices. And then here and there an extraordinary writer like James Saunders, who wrote A Scent of Flowers. Doing that play Off-Broadway for me many, many years ago was an extraordinarily wonderful experience. His creation of that girl — Zoe — it was just a part that I felt I was meant to play. It was just sort of destiny — Oh, my God, here's my part. With new plays, that happens rarely, where you read a part and you feel, I know exactly who this person is and what she's thinking and what she's feeling. With the classics, whether it's Nora or Kate or whoever, it's different because so many people have played them and you have a sense of how the story goes and you just feel a wonderful challenge of trying to give something, if possible, new to that part. But I would say, for me anyway, to meet up with a new play where I felt that the part was just absolutely perfect for me — that's been rare.

Have you ever been in a classic play that has been "reinvented," as sometimes happens?
KH: No, not in any drastic way. [Pause] Oh, Yes! Oh, YES! There is one. I forgot [laughs]. I did a production of Anouilh's Antigone in Nashville, Tennessee, and the director had the idea to set it in outer space. That was quite an experience. Fortunately I had a brilliant Creon, Tom Klunis — a wonderful actor, so sensitive and dignified and actually Greek! — who just held down the other end of the stage brilliantly, and we got through it, but it was pretty silly. [Laughs] Pretty silly.

	Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."
	Columbia Pictures Corporation

You're constantly asked questions about "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," but I feel I have to ask at least one. In one of his memoirs, "This Life," Sidney Poitier wrote, "When I went to play a scene with Tracy and Hepburn, I couldn't remember a word. Finally [director] Stanley Kramer said to me, 'What are we going to do?' I said, 'Stanley, send those two people home. I will play the scene against two empty chairs. I don't want them here because I can't handle that kind of company.'" Your situation on that set — certainly you were coming at it from a different perspective than Sidney Poitier — but was it at all daunting for you to act with them? When you look back at that period, what memories or feelings does it evoke?
KH: There are lots of feelings that I had on that set because of Spencer's health. Maybe there are still people who don't know that Spencer was dying the whole time we were making that movie. So there was a lot of tension on the set. And I think that because I was still very young and hadn't seen a lot of Spencer's and Kate's films— we didn't have Turner Classic Movies in those days—I really just knew them as Aunt Kat and Uncle Spence, and it wasn't the same kind of awe that one might have had if one were a consummate professional who'd been in the business and had a great track record like Sidney Poitier.

Someone like Poitier, who would have known their work and about their standing in the industry . . .
KH: [For me,] it was more like making a home movie. However, the hard part of it was that they were both very stressed. Both Spencer and Kate were very stressed — Spencer because he was just trying to stay alive from one day to the next, and Kate because she knew what was happening. She wasn't an easy person to deal with in the best of circumstances. But under those circumstances, the tension level was just gigantic. I was there the day that Sidney did that, came into the library [to play that scene]. And they were sent home, and my aunt said later, "I don't blame him. Two old owls looking at him, I don't blame him for getting rid of us." But there was no rancor about the fact that they were sent home. She and Spencer totally understood. I was just too inexperienced and probably stupid to realize the situation I was in. I was more in awe of Sidney than I was of Spencer and Kate because I knew more of his work. I knew that my aunt and Spencer were great, were pioneers in the business and icons and all of that, but I didn't know their work. When I was a kid, I'd seen my aunt play As You Like It — and then not a heck of a lot. It's hard to imagine that one could be so ignorant of their legacy, but it wasn't available.

	Director Stanley Kramer

In addition to the very real issue of Spencer Tracy's declining health, though, I imagine the set was stressful in general because of what the movie was about.
KH: Right. I didn't know till after we'd made the film that Columbia Pictures hadn't wanted to make it. And Stanley told me later on that when he first broached the idea to Leo Jaffe, the head of Columbia at that time, he said it's a family picture, and we're going to get Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Well that all sounded fine, especially Sidney Poitier. He was the biggest of them all, the most bankable one at that point. And Jaffe kept saying, "Well, yeah, but Stanley, what's the plot?" And Stanley kept [putting him off] until finally he just had to say, "the daughter of Spencer and Kate brings home Sidney Poitier and the liberal family is faced with having to walk the walk and not just talk the talk." They said, "Oh. No. No, we're not making this movie." They tried to get out of the commitment by saying that Spencer could not be insured. And actually after we had shot the first day up in San Francisco, which was the only location shooting that was done, Kate called me and said, "The film has been cancelled because we can't insure Spencer." Well then they side-stepped the whole thing by telling Columbia that Kate, Spencer and Stanley said, "Okay we won't take any salary till this film is in the can."

And then the studio was stuck . . .
KH: Then they were stuck. They said, "All right, if we don't have to put any money into it" — because I didn't get paid much; $500 a week or something — then they said okay. But they had no faith that it was going to be a success. They thought it would be a bomb.

That's really amazing, that they really can't know those things and don't foresee them.
KH: There are a lot of films like that where the producers have no faith in them doing anything at the box office, and this was one of them. They just wrote it off.

Looking at it now it's hard to believe that it was so controversial at the time, but I guess it really was.
KH: Yes, it was very controversial. Even on the set, it was controversial. There were people involved in the making of the film that didn't approve of it. That I was aware of. It was very uncomfortable.

It was also an incredible opportunity for you. You were presented in that movie with such care. That's sort of unusual for a first time out. Was that your first film?
KH: It was my first big film. Not my first film, but my first big film. Someone told me a couple of years after the film came out that Sidney and I were huge stars in China. I just thought that was wonderful. I said, "Why?" And he said because even though they're all Chinese, they're all from different parts of that huge country, and if somebody from one part of the country wanted to marry somebody from another part of the country, there was a prohibition against it. So when they saw that film, they identified with it because of prejudice . . .

Yes, it's a universal subject . . .
KH: Yes. But it never would have occurred to me that this would have had relevance in China because you think, well they're all Chinese. No, they're not all Chinese. They're all different . . .

Well, isn't that good to know. That prejudice is everywhere . . .
Yes [laughs]. Doesn't that make your day?

You've done so many things in your career and traveled the world to do it. You seem to enjoy the diversity.
KH: I guess I've always liked to do lots of different things and probably if I had focused more on one thing or another I would have become more affluent than I am. But life is short, and there are just so many things in this life that fascinate me to do that I guess I've sacrificed fame and fortune to curiosity — to satisfy my curiosity.

Well that has its rewards, doesn't it?
KH: It does. It does. I'm very glad to have done all these different things. It's been a great adventure.

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The Pretty Trap plays with a limited engagement through Aug. 21. For more information go to Cause Célèbre.