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Which is not the worst way to begin examining Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
I think we forget how little interracial romance there is onscreen, and how virtually none of it depicts a black man and a white woman, never mind positively. I have to be up front and say, this is not theoretical for me: my Dad was black and my Mom is white (um... yes, like Barack Obama... without the cool Africa part), and I yearned then, and now, to see something that showed me them on a movie screen.
But Guess is frustrating - there's little in the way of physical romance (it is, to Kramer's credit, displayed up front, under the credits... but it's brief). Much of it is conveyed - and well, I'd say - by Houghton's and Poitier's passionate performances... but it only goes so far. There's little physical intimacy, and much of what is - or should be - a romance is subsumed to the politics and the "important idea" of interracial acceptance.
There's no doubt Tracy gives an amazing performance, even for one assembled in editing; his frailties aren't entirely hidden, but his vigorousness overcomes a lot of the film's flaws. Not the least of which is that he's saddled with a lot of speech-making that overthinks what is, at heart, not that hard. As someone - I can't remember who - pointed out about the absurdity of Guess, she brings home a well known surgeon who's practically ready to win the Nobel Prize... and her parents aren't sure? Come on.
Which is why , I think, it's Hepburn's movie and why she won the Oscar; though she's there to support Tracy, nothing can stop her from doing some of her best, most subtle work. She's very present, intense, yet she's part of an ensemble (look at how she scales her performance to Houghton's, so that they seem as Mother/Daughter as possible). Look at how much she conveys in glances, or knowing looks. And through it all, the journey of the film - to total acceptance - is really hers: it's not that it's okay to love a black man... it's that her daughter is in love. And it's why she has the film's most bravura sequence, when she dismisses the bigoted Gallery manager Hillary, in an aria of a speech that she takes pain to turn into a gracious, yet firm dismissal. It's Hepburn's value set that makes the film, and gives a preposterous set of circumstances a sense of grounding and of place. She's not perfect... but she's trying. We couldn't ask for more.
As I said, this is personal... and I looked forward to this entire series because of this film, because I find it one of the most brilliant, maddening examples of sixties cinema: at its best, the films of the period really do break new ground (Poitier playing opposite a white woman in a major commercial release? Unthinkable only a few years prior), and yet, they are often just as remarkably tame, nervous exercises unsure of really taking a stand. 40 years later, and what has Hollywood given us since? Precious little... which is why, perhaps, even Hairspray can seem transgressive casting a major star like Amanda Bynes opposite a black actor. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner is, I think, what we'd all like to think we are... but we're not, and the film, itself, is something of a lie. But that's hard to face, and harder still to fight. Much like the "romance of Tracy and Hepburn" to which we still cling.
I have been a lifelong Tracy fan. Yet I had mixed feelings about this discussion. I knew there would be some blockheads who just don't get it, don't get Tracy. Maybe you have to be Irish but I'm sure he had a lot of nonIrish fans.
The scene in which he baits Robert Ryan with questions in "Bad Day at Black Rock" is some of the best acting I have ever seen.
It is forgotten now but during their careers Tracy was much more popular than Hepburn. MGM even got complaints asking why they were always paired. Tracy from the late 1930s until the early 1950s usually made the list of top ten box office stars as picked by exhibitors.
I think the average man knew he wasn't as good looking as Gary Cooper or as charming as Cary Grant but he knew he was down to earth, focused and humorous like Spence.
So the speech at the end was shot over several days. I didn't know that. Tracy films often had long speeches by the star. Stanley and Livingstone, Judgment at Nuremburg, Boom Town, Inherit the Wind, etc.
Did he lose it? Was he not as good in his later films? I don't see it.
Which of his contemporaries could have replaced him in his big roles and made as good of an impression?
Tracy's boyhood buddy was Pat O'Brien, who, of course was excellent when teamed with Cagney. And O'Brien, like Tracy, played priests. But imagine how inept O'Brien would have been in "Guess Who Is Coming to Dinner?" Or any of the other great ones.
Have you read Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution? He does a scary job of depicting Tracy's deterioration during the shooting of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. It shocked me to find out that Tracy lasted several months after the movie wrapped. He was that sick.
Someone want to offer thoughts on the "ice cream" scene? Is it supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing? - i.e., that daddy dearest can get used to something new that he initially finds unpalatable?
I'll admit I was actually rather pleasantly surprised by GWCTD overall. I came into it expecting to hate it, and I didn't, though it definitely has problems. I even teared up at the end, esp when Tracy looks over at Hepburn. But I'm sure I wasn't the only one who winced when he follows up that lovely speech with that line to Tilly ordering her to get dinner ready, or something to that effect. Was it intended that that be the last line of the movie?
I'll have to sign off soon, too, though. I'm getting the weird security warnings as well.
I think she's meant to inject class issues into the situation, but I admit it was clumsy.
There's a lot about Guess Who's Coming to Dinner that's dated, but I think it earned its wings just for the scene where Katherine Hepburn is giving Mrs. Olson detailed instructions about how to get her racist ass out of their lives with all deliberate speed.
I watched it with my 15 year old. He loved that scene, mainly because it took him a bit to figure out that what he hoped was happening was in fact happening.
Trailer
Hepburn confronts racism, boots her friend
Poitier and father have it out
Can't seem to locate any good Tracy, alas....
Tracy was truly great, but - and this won't be popular - it seems to me his career kind of flattened out a bit. Health in the 60s limited his work (though Nuremberg is a great one) and the 50s, I dunno, Black Rock is wonderful, but...in some ways, it's almost DeNiro-like, if you look at the list.
My favorite Tracy is the stuff like Northwest Passage and the 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, and even Boys Town.
And for that matter Boy's Town.
He had a real talent for grabbing you in what should have been laughable material.
VAN HEFLIN???????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtNdYsoool8&feat...
Judgment at Nuremberg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLFEW0Hq7-0&feat...
http://www.adriftinmanhattan.net/press.htm
The other Tracy-Hepburn I need to see again is Keeper of the Flame. I remember that one as being very neurotic.
Angela Lansbury was great in that, at age nineteen. The scene at the beginning where her evil publisher father (Judge Hardy!) passes on the torch of subverting the country to her before he blows his brains out (despite the fact that he never wanted her because she's a female) is chilling.