Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967)
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Directed by: Stanley Kramer
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Houghton
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner ranked # 99 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 American Films list.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a 1967 Academy Award-winning comedy-drama film starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine
Houghton.
The movie concerns Joanna Drayton, a young White American woman (Houghton) who has had a whirlwind romance with Dr. Prentice (Poitier), an African American she met while on a holiday in Hawaii. The two plan to marry and she will return with him to Switzerland.
The plot is centered on Joanna's return to her liberal upper class American home bringing her new fiance to dinner to meet her parents, and the reaction of family and friends.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner won the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for screenwriter, William Rose. (Katharine Hepburn also won the Academy Award for Best Actress.)
The 1967 groundbreaking story dealt with the controversial subject of interracial marriage which had been illegal historically in most of the United States, and was still illegal in 17 Southern U.S. States up until June 12 of that year. Although legalized throughout the U.S. following the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, the topic was still taboo in many areas.
Criticism was more positive than negative, with most critics praising the elegant, understated performances. The film also attempted to touch upon black-on-black racism, as when both the doctor's father and the household cook Matilda 'Tillie' Binks, played by Isabel Sanford in a small but memorable role, take the young man to task for his perceived presumption.
The film was also memorable for being the last on-screen pairing of Tracy and Hepburn (Tracy died seventeen days after the shooting ended). In Tracy's final speech of the film, Hepburn's tears were real - they both knew that this would be the last line of his last film, that he hadn't much longer to live. Hepburn never saw the completed film. She said the memories of Tracy were too painful.
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