Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Overview:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) was a Drama - Romance Film directed by Stanley Kramer and produced by Stanley Kramer and George Glass.

SYNOPSIS

A liberal white couple (Hepburn and Tracy, in Tracy's last appearance) put their platitudes to the test. They always taught their daughter (Houghton, Hepburn's niece) that all people are created equal, regardless of race or religion...until she unexpectedly brings home a black doctor (Poitier) and announces that they're engaged. Mostly interesting for a look at '60s attitudes toward race and the performances of Tracy and Hepburn.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

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Academy Awards 1967 --- Ceremony Number 40 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best ActorSpencer TracyNominated
Best Supporting ActorCecil KellawayNominated
Best ActressKatharine HepburnWon
Best Supporting ActressBeah RichardsNominated
Best Art DirectionArt Direction: Robert Clatworthy; Set Decoration: Frank TuttleNominated
Best DirectorStanley KramerNominated
Best Film EditingRobert C. JonesNominated
Best Music - ScoringDeVolNominated
Best PictureStanley Kramer, ProducerNominated
Best WritingWilliam RoseWon
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BlogHub Articles:

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (1967): Love, Controversy, and Progress

By Margaret Perry on Oct 28, 2012 From The Great Katharine Hepburn

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (1967): Love, Controversy, and Progress Turner Classic Movies will conclude their month of Spencer Tracy today, 29 October, with an evening of the four films he made with director Stanley Kramer. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967) was Spencer Tracy's final film an... Read full article


GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (1967): Love, Controversy, and Progress

By Margaret Perry on Oct 28, 2012 From The Great Katharine Hepburn

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (1967): Love, Controversy, and Progress Labels: 1960s, Beah Richards, Civil Rights, Isabel Sanford, Kathy Houghton, Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, Stanley Kramer, TCM Turner Classic Movies will conclude their month of Spencer Tracy today, 29 October, wit... Read full article


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Quotes from

[first lines]
John: You know, I just had a thought. Why don't I go check into a hotel and get some rest, and you go find your folks?


John: You listen to me. You say you don't want to tell me how to live my life. So what do you think you've been doing? You tell me what rights I've got or haven't got, and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you're supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don't own me! You can't tell me when or where I'm out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don't even know what I am, Dad, you don't know who I am. You don't know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life you will never understand. You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you've got to get off my back! Dad... Dad, you're my father. I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man. Now, I've got a decision to make, hm? And I've got to make it alone, and I gotta make it in a hurry. So would you go out there and see after my mother?


Christina Drayton: I don't think I'm going to faint, but I'll sit down anyway.


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Facts about

Like Katharine Hepburn, the film's producer and director Stanley Kramer also put his salary in escrow as backing in order to placate the studio who was nervous about having Spencer Tracy star due to his poor health.
Katharine Hepburn had to use her salary as backing in order to make this movie because Spencer Tracy was so ill that the studio didn't think that he would make to the end of the picture
When the movie was conceived and launched by producer-director Stanley Kramer, one of Hollywood's greatest liberal movie-makers, intermarriage between African Americans and Caucasians was still illegal in 14 states. Towards the end of production, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Loving v. Virginia. The Loving decision was made on June 12, 1967, two days after the death of star Spencer Tracy, who had played a "phony" white liberal who grudgingly accepts his daughter's marriage to a black man. In Loving, the High Court unanimously ruled that anti-miscegenation marriage laws were unconstitutional. In his opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person
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Best Actress Oscar 1967






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Also released in 1967




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