Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Directed by Stanley Kramer
108 minutes
Floor 3 Pink zone 791.4372 GUE
In the Heat of the Night
Directed by Norman Jewison
109 minutes
Floor 3 Pink zone
791.4372 IN
Sidney Poitier was the first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role; he was nominated twice, for The Defiant Ones (1958)and winning for Lilies of the Field (1963). Though not the first black person to win an Oscar, that honour going to Hattie McDaniel for her supporting role in Gone with the Wind (1939), Poitier’s work came at height of the Civil Rights Movement and often explored the division of America. His films have often been categorised as ‘social thrillers’, today we look at two such ‘social thrillers’ made in 1967 at the peak of Poitier’s popularity as an actor.
On the face of it Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night have very little in common. Indeed, one is a romance and the other a who-done-it crime thriller. Yet, both present themes of acceptance, equality, and racial-tension – all issues paramount to 1960s American society. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Joanna ‘Joey’ Drayton (Katharine Houghton) surprises her parents, Matt (Spencer Tracy) and Christina (Katharine Hepburn), with the news that she is engaged. She arrives at her family home in San Francisco after a holiday in Hawaii with her new fiancée John Prentice (Sidney Poitier); her parents have always taught her to treat all races as equal, but struggle to live-up to their own teaching upon the news of John and Joey’s engagement.
Chief among Matt’s concerns is the persecution his daughter may face if the two were to marry; his concerns risk splitting the engagement as John will only marry Joey with her parents consent. This sparks a family conflict as Matt and Christina disagree – torn between romance and the reality of racism. Though much of the film deals with questions of equality, the narrative has much to say about the beauty and power of love and family. A nice touch to the film is found in the casting, Katharine Houghton is the niece of Katharine Hepburn, the family resemblance is there and adds to the film’s detail. It was actually Houghton’s first film role, a sizable part for such an unknown actor (especially considering the rest of the star-studded cast).
One of the most interesting characters in the film is Tillie (Isabel Sanford), the Drayton’s maid for over twenty years. Though she is also black, she distrusts John who she claims is getting ‘above himself’. Her character is one to pounder, there is the underlying suggestion in the film that the 1960s black community must also expect more for each other in a progressive America. It is interesting too that Matt accepts Tillie into the family, but not the John, a Doctor. It is easy for Matt to be liberal when the black community are not his equal – surely, a form of internalised (perhaps systematic) racism. Last year, for Halloween and Black History Month we reviewed Get Out (2017), it’s interesting to see how themes of guilt, internalised racism, and supposed-progression have changed (or not) in the last 50 years.
In contrast to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night sees Northern Detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) travel south to visit his family, he ends up working a homicide case with an openly racist Mississippian police force. Tibbs has an opposite number in Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger), who takes a dislike to him, but is not too proud to realise he needs Tibbs’ help. The narrative works on two levels; firstly it is a classic who-do-it murder mystery as the audience attempt to figure out the murderer and are thrown as Tibbs and Gillespie reveal new evidence. Secondly, the story is also one of acceptance, as both Tibbs and Gillespie challenge their own prejudices. It is now slightly cliché but In the Heat of the Night offers a good example of the ‘odd-couple’ cop-drama. Tibbs challenges Gillespie’s racism by demonstrating his quality as a detective, just as Poitier challenged audiences with his quality as an actor – proving that the police force, and Hollywood, have no cause or right to be segregated environments.
I am not going into too much about In the Heat of the Night, partly as this article is already quite long and partly to keep the suspense of the film. What I do want to highlight, however, is Poitier’s bold performance in both films (though Oscars eventually went to his counter-parts). In both Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night his characters demonstrate strong, even fierce, attributes. Yet, in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner John is also warm and open, whereas Tibbs can be cold and standoffish. With these performances I find Poitier an absorbing actor, I just want to watch more – as did the American audiences of the 1960s, that after all is what is most important. With his roles, Poitier challenged not only Hollywood’s standards, but the nation’s.
Why They Are Significant?
At the 40th Academy Awards, against films such as The Graduate, these two films were nominated for a combined 17 Oscars winning 7 in total: Best Picture, Best Actor (Rod Steiger), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, and Best Editing for In the Heat of the Night and Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn) and Best Original Screenplay for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. More importantly these films reinforced social changes, for example upon the release of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states; these films showed that there was no cause, ever, for such division and racism.
If You Like This, You May Also Like From the Library:
A Raisin in the Sun, dir. by Daniel Petrie (Columbia Pictures, 1961) – The Library has many other Poitier films, such as A Raisin in the Sun. Based on the 1959 play of the same name, the film sees a black family attempt to make a better life for themselves away from the city. Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil were nominated for Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards for their performances.
Aram Goudsozian, Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004) – If you want to learn about Poitier try this book which offers an in-depth insight of the man, particularly his acting years. It is also available to users as an ebook.
Written by Phil Wintle
