Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [525]
Jones and Kramer grappled as well with a tremor Hepburn had developed, which, at times, caused her head to bobble, particularly during close-ups. Kramer would minimize the problem by discreetly calling for another take, but Jones still had to be on the lookout for it when assembling a sequence. Editing scenes that contained both Tracy and Hepburn became especially tricky, bolstering Tracy’s energy level while diminishing any involuntary movements on the part of Kate. “We tried to hide it as much as possible,” Jones said.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was scored at the Goldwyn studios over the week of September 18, 1967. Previews had demonstrated a profound impact on audiences, but Kramer knew that he was in for rough sledding, given his reputation for issues-oriented moviemaking. A true believer in film as an agent of social change, Stanley Kramer could come off as needlessly pompous in interviews where he alternately disparaged the “message” angle while embracing the notion that a truly important film had to be about something of size and weight. Pauline Kael declared open season on him in her 1965 essay “The Intentions of Stanley Kramer,” a withering review of Ship of Fools prefaced by a snarky career overview. That Kael misunderstood Kramer’s work as a producer didn’t seem to matter, and her views gained traction with a generation of critics eager to tear down the shrines of their elders. Branded as hopelessly old school, Kramer was seen as simplistic and naive, a throwback to the sedate fifties when he was first making his mark.
For his part, Sidney Poitier knew that Kramer and Rose had pushed the major studio envelope as far as it would go. He had previously explored interracial romance in A Patch of Blue, but that film was art house fare compared to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which would have to win broad favor with the moviegoing public to justify its cost.
“How possible was it then, in 1967, to make a film like that in America? It was close to impossible,” Poitier said in 2006. Early on there was criticism that he was too perfect to be realistic, that the filmmakers, in their zeal to make the dilemma about race and nothing else, had robbed him of human frailties and, in the minds of some, his blackness. Poitier, however, had to be an equal and balancing force to Tracy, to push back in a way that would have been impossible had he been a mechanic or a short-order cook. Could the average black man identify with the character of John Wade Prentice? Or was the identification, as Kramer contended, more generational than racial?
“Who says it’s a story only about the black man?” Kramer demanded. “It’s about young and old viewpoints, and in this case the bone of contention happens to be the acceptance of interracial marriage. But this film says that the new generation won’t live like the last generation simply because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Life has moved on.”
Ideally, the film would appeal to older viewers as the ninth and final teaming of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. To younger audiences, the presence of Sidney Poitier and the theme of interracial marriage would be the drawing cards, Poitier having appeared in two recent hits, To Sir, With Love (released June 14) and In the Heat of the Night (released August 2). Hepburn, eager for audiences to see Tracy’s last performance, agreed to a press conference in late October, a side-by-side with her niece at the New York restaurant 21. Acknowledging she had regularly avoided the press in the past, she said brightly, “I’m getting nicer in my old age. Most people become grumpy.” In tan slacks and a black turtleneck sweater, she cut a striking figure, her finely chiseled features belying even her official age of fifty-seven. In good form, she told a female reporter that