Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

What sticks in the mind from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is the dismissal of Hilary. Throughout the film, Kat Hepburn is presented as a virtuous liberal, much like her husband (Spencer Tracy in his last film), who is then presented with Sidney Poitier joining her family, and struggling to come to terms. It’s the fight between passive and active anti-racism, as prevalent now as it was in the 1960s. “Racism is bad but don’t protest too loudly, or in my neighbourhood, etc etc”… When the odious Hilary shows up, a living cancer of racism in a film where nearly every other character is live and let live… then you’d expect Christina Drayton to hum and haw and handwring, but do little of consequence. Instead we get Hepburn’s best moment in the film, as she fires her assistant and makes it clear why. “Get permanently lost! Don’t speak, just go…” The clincher? When she returns to the living room, her daughter complains about Hilary and Christina doesn’t go “Yes, I fired her! Me me me!” She’s stopped thinking about herself, and it’s the only implication – bar the obligatory happy ending – that the Draytons are moving from passive to active anti-racism. And lord knows the world needs more of that than “down with this sort of thing, careful now!”

In that way, the Draytons strike me as being more realistic than Rod Steiger’s police chief in In the Heat of the Night. (Even if ItHotN has the best moment – who, other than a racist, can watch Mr Tibbs slap that racist back and not cheer?) By the end of that film, you are led to believe that Steiger has become a better person through working with Poitier, and indeed, he won the bloody Oscar for it. But… that’s not how racists work. It seems more to me that that police chief would be like the taxi driver Sir Lenny Henry once mentioned gave him a lift: “Britain will be better when we get rid of all the [black people]. Not you, of course, you’re funny, I like you.” Steiger’s police man ain’t changing permanently six months down the line. Whereas the Draytons could be anyone of us. Those who preach tolerance, but can we practice it when it arises? Or are we just passive? Stanley Kramer isn’t just making a film about an interracial marriage proposal, he’s holding up a mirror to the liberal audience. 

Of course, Kramer spent his career challenging people, making films like Inherit the Wind (in which he criticises the whole church and state connection in the US), or challenging anti-semitism, racism and so on. Probably has a CV never seen by any Trump supporter, to be honest. The studios didn’t want to make a film which might not sell to the South, and used Spencer’s frailty (he was dying) as an excuse, only for Kramer to forgo his own salary in lieu of the held back insurance. 

But really, the star here is and has to be Sidney Poitier. He has a dignity and presence on screen, the equal to the greats in his midst. As an intelligent doctor who abstains from pleasure and vice, he is “too perfect”, bemoaned contemporary critics. Contemporary white critics, it goes without saying. It implies choice in the matter. This century, Denzel Washington could (justly) take the Best Actor Oscar for playing a corrupt cop. In the 1960s, Sidney Poitier got death threats purely for playing a character who spoke politely. When the aging Kramer was at a presentation of the film in the late 90s, the AARP note that students thought the film dated as “old fashioned as we’re fine with interracial marriage” – the age of privilege. Oh no, perhaps it might look idealised, but it presents people who had little to no voice previously in the US (and I don’t mean Katharine fucking Hepburn here), and was an important film at a fractious time. If you wonder if it still seems old-fashioned to you, just turn on the evening news on any given day...