Hepfact! Diana Barry is related to Katharine Hepburn!

Did you know that Schuyler Grant (pronounced "Skyler"), who played Diana Barry in the Anne of Green Gables TV movies, was Katharine Hepburn's grand-niece? Schuyler Grant is the granddaughter of Katharine Hepburn's younger sister Marion, who married her high school sweetheart Ellsworth Grant. The couple had two sons, Schuyler's father John and uncle Toby. Their daughter Kathy Houghton co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967). Marion and Ellsworth were heavily involved in the historical preservation of Hartford, the Hepburn family's hometown.

Katharine Hepburn appeared in a TV movie with Schuyler Grant in LAURA LANSING SLEPT HERE (1988). Just as she encouraged her niece Kathy Houghton in her acting career, Hepburn helped Grant get the role of Diana. Hepburn had been asked to play Marilla Cuthbert, which she turned down (sadness), but she suggested her grand-niece for the role of Diana.

According to IMdB, Schuyler Grant was raised by her hippie parents in California. She majored in history and minored in theatre at Columbia. She is now a vegetarian and director of the Kula Yoga Project in New York. Sounds like a pretty cool chick.

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (1967): Love, Controversy, and Progress

Turner Classic Movies will conclude their month of Spencer Tracy today, 29 October, with an evening of the four films he made with director Stanley Kramer. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967) was Spencer Tracy's final film and will be showing at 1:30 am EST. It was the ninth film he and Katharine Hepburn had made together since WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942). It now stands as a touching tribute to their personal and professional relationship.

The film was controversial for its time because it is a love story about an inter-racial couple. Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier), the black son of a black mail man, and Joey Drayton (Katharine Houghton), the white daughter of a wealthy white newspaper editor, meet while on vacation in Hawaii and immediately fall in love. They fly home to introduce him to her parents and announce that they wish to be married. Unbeknownst to Joey, John has given her parents a sort of ultimatum: if they don't approve the marriage and give it their blessing, he will call the whole thing off. The situation is intensified when John's parents, still unaware that Joey is a white girl, decide to come out and meet the girl their son has fallen in love with.