sparklejamesysparkle:Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton in the groundbreaking Columbia Pi
sparklejamesysparkle: Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton in the groundbreaking Columbia Pictures/Stanley Kramer comedy drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which premiered in theaters on December 12th, 1967. Acclaimed for its progressive and positive depiction of interracial marriage during the Civil Rights era, the film went on earn ten Academy Award nominations, winning two—Best Story and Screenplay for writer William Rose, and Best Actress for Katharine Hepburn, who also happened to be Katharine Houghton’s aunt. Houghton was cast at Hepburn’s suggestion, who later explained: “There was a lovely part for Kathy, my niece. She would play Spencer Tracy’s and my daughter. I loved that. She’s beautiful and she definitely had a family resemblance. It was my idea.” When production of the film started on location in San Francisco, Columbia Pictures tried to cancel the project, claiming there were problems with insurance regarding Spencer Tracy’s poor health (Tracy died at the age of 67, seventeen days after production wrapped). Stanley Kramer, the movie’s producer and director, explained that this roadblock was solved when “Kate (Hepburn) and I put up our own salaries to compensate for the lack of an insurance company for Spence. And we were allowed to proceed.” The stars of the film remained dubious about Columbia’s reasons, however, believing the film’s then-controversial subject matter was the actual catalyst for the studio’s nervousness, which Katharine Houghton later confirmed during a 2017 interview with the Associated Press. “When they found out what the film was about, they didn’t want to do it,” she stated. “And they did everything they could to stop filming. They kept saying, ‘Nobody’s going to ever come and see this film. We’re going to lose millions of dollars on this film.’” Made for $4,000,000, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner banked an impressive $56.7 million at the box office and later became the most watched show of 1971 when it made its television debut on CBS, earning a 26.8 rating and an audience share of 44%, numbers which very few television broadcasts achieve today. -- source link
#sidney poitier