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From: Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-07 (Friday)
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2024 11:51:31 -0700
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On 6/8/2024 11:09 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
> 
>> Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (4K disc) Slowly working my way through
>> another Sony Classics box set, and working my way through some Sidney
>> Poitier movies, I kicked it off this this 1967 drama starring Poitier as
>> a young man who meets his fiance's parents (Katharine Hepburn and
>> Spencer Tracy in his final role).  The movie was mostly background noise
>> with a pretty good commentary track full of lots of trivia I didn't
>> know.  For example the actress who played the fiance was Hepburn's real
>> life niece.  And while others were probably well aware of this, I think
>> this was the first I realized (also thanks to the commentary track) the
>> family maid was played by Isabel Sanford (from the Jeffersons).
> 
> She got a number of good scenes in it and was quite funny. There's a
> good story about how she got cast but I've forgotten.
> 
> Poitier, would you believe, was 40 during production. That guy had a
> picture of Dorian Gray in his attic.

He must!  I just finished "To Sir, with Love" which came out the same 
year and was thinking to myself he must have been about 20 something 
when he made it.

> 
> I really don't like this movie. The Poitier character was too perfect, a
> doctor and a great humanitarian and his parents were black intellectuals.

This was discussed extensively on the commentary track.  A lot of 
critics and civil rights leaders at the time hated the movie with a 
burning passion because the character was too perfect.  But they said 
the director was very deliberate in what he was doing and considered the 
movie more of a fantasy and not meant to be realistic.


> It's not like she was marrying a plumber. The racial discussions were
> hard to take seriously. The only thing that really worked was the humor
> and a little bit of how characters who had taken harder positions had
> softened.
> 
> Tracy was quite ill. He was seated most of the time. Hepburn worked with
> him on his scenes. He could work only a few hours a day and she made
> sure he was ready. Still, what we saw on screen, when Tracy had to give
> one of his profound speeches, he was quite powerful. Amazing.
> 

Yes.  They talked a lot about that on the commentary.  In particular 
they discussed the editing which did wonders to hide just how sick Tracy 
was during filming.  His speech at the end was cobbled together from 
multiple takes picking and choosing the best line or phrase where his 
sickness didn't come through.  And the tears in Hepburn's eyes at the 
end were very real.

> He died days after production wrapped.