“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” one of the more important
films of the 1960s, opened at the Victoria and Beekman theaters in Manhattan
fifty years ago today. The movie, which
focused on interracial marriage, featured the legendary actors Spencer Tracy
and Katherine Hepburn and the younger star Sidney Poitier; all three were Academy
Award winners.
Tracy, who was in poor health and died shortly after the
film was completed, played the father of a young white woman who falls in love
with a black physician. That woman, “Joanna,”
was played by Katherine Houghton, Hepburn’s niece.
In the movie Tracy and Hepburn are wealthy liberal parents
who raise concerns about their daughter entering into an interracial marriage. The story is enhanced by the perspectives of
their black maid, an elderly Catholic priest, and the parents of the
groom-to-be.
After much angst, the characters become reconciled to the
prospect of a marriage that would seem to have confronted various challenges at
that time. The Supreme Court decision
Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated
state miscegenation laws, was rendered soon after the film wrapped.
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” became successful after it was
more broadly released in 1968 and received two Academy Awards, including one
for Hepburn, and eight other nominations, including one for Tracy.
It was the last film that Hepburn and Tracy, a long-time
acting team and real-life lovers, did together. Among their notable collaborations since 1942 were
“Woman of the Year,” “Keeper of the Flame,“ and “State of the Union.” I have long been a Tracy fan, and I
especially enjoyed his acting in “Judgment at Nuremberg” and “Inherit the Wind.”
One of Hepburn’s most well-known roles was in “The
Philadelphia Story”. Among Poitier’s important
performances were those in “Lilies of the Field” and “To Sir with Love.” Hepburn died in 2003 while Poitier is
currently ninety years old.
The photograph of Hepburn and Tracy is from the film
trailer.
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