HINTON, OKLAHOMA — Like a long, lost relative actress Beth Grant came back home Saturday morning.
She and Catherine Dougherty were actual dorm mates at the same college.
Beth and six of Catherine’s children happened to share screen time in a movie called ‘Rain Man’, in a scene shot just down the road from the Dougherty farm.
It’s been more than 27 years since they spent two days with a film crew to shoot the ‘Judge Wopner’ scene, but the memories poured out like it was yesterday.
“Y’all have been in my heart all these years,” said Grant at a first time reunion that took place recently.
Patrick Dougherty told her, “Anytime you were ever in anything we all told ourselves, ‘there she is. we know her.”
Catherine remembered almost missing the audition and piling her brood into the car to make it.
“They didn’t have shoes. They were dirty. It was crazy,” she said.
Beth Grant recalled visiting the family prior to shooting so they could all get to know each other.
It worked.
Beth pointed to the boys, now men, and said, “Who was it who thought I was his actual mother? He asked his mom, ‘Is that my mother?'”
They all remember the sealed windows with no air conditioning, how you couldn’t touch the prop toys.
“There were toys and cartoons promised but never provided,” joked John Dougherty, then 8, who remembered feeling a little ripped off.
They all recalled how Dustin Hoffman kept chasing everyone around with a cloth diaper.
“He could pop it,” said Beth.
‘Rain Man’ was Grant’s first big movie role.
It was the only role for the Dougherty boys but still a landmark in their lives.
“These boys, these young men,” said Grant, “have been part of my life for 27 years.”
People around here still call the rambler where they shot the scene the Rain Man House.
The countryside still looks the same.
The actors still remember that summer when Hollywood came to a little spot on the prairie, and when a make believe family became a lot like a real one too.
Beth Grant was in Oklahoma to shoot another movie called ‘Great Plains’.
The Dougherty family, including the six boys who were in ‘Rain Man’ all still live in the Hinton area.
