Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition)
I didn't realize until long after watching the movie that it's star Spencer Tracy was so ill during production of the film. It's rather incredible that he was able to make it through production, for those who aren't familiar with production a standard day is twelve hours. It would also turn out to be the last picture he and Katherine Hepburn would work on together. In total Katherine Heburn worked with Tracy on nine pictures, that's a lot of time to spend together with someone.
It took Katherine Hepburn and director/producer Stanley Kramer's salary to back funding of the movie for a studio to proceed with the picture knowing that one of the key cast members was fatally ill. As a back up, the cast was always filming two versions of the script in the event of Tracy passing away before wrapping the picture. As a Script Supervisor, this makes me a cringe a little inside to have to think about. Sadly, Spencer Tracy died nineteen days after production wrapped. Because of the twenty-three year relationship between Hepburn and Tracy, it was said that Hepburn has never seen the film in it's entirety because it would often bring back painful memories of Tracy.
Despite all the drama behind the scenes, I loved this movie for it's dramatic plot. However I must admit that I found it a little more difficult to imagine why it would have been such a big deal for a white girl to bring a black boy home and introduce him as her fiance. But let's all save ourselves the history lesson, I know it was a big deal in 1960s America, I guess I'm more interested in the modern day civil rights movement for gay and lesbian couples. Having never consider myself a racists, race really isn't a big issue to me. If I were a parent, I think my greatest concern would be that my daughter thinks she's in love with a boy she hardly knows. The color of his skin just seems like such a small issue in comparison.
Actually, a couple of weeks after watching this movie a friend of mine was flipping through one of those "see these 1001 _____ before you die" books that The Boyfriend thought for movies and was surprised to see this movie in the Drama Chapter of the book. While I agree with the book, my friend thought it would have been more properly placed in the Comedy Chapter. The point in me sharing this story isn't to point out how strange of an opinion this is, but that even though I don't entirely agree with my friend I can kind of see their point. This movie isn't all drama all the time, that would be Who's Afraid of Viriginia Woolf but Guess Who's Coming to Dinner does have it's lighter moments when it's comical.
OFFICIAL COUNT: 164 DOWN 201 TO GO
Next up: The Hours
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