This week (December 10-16) in Hollywood history – Victor
McLaglen was born (December 10, 1886); Douglas Fairbanks Sr. died (December 12,
1939); Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
opened in theaters (December 12, 1967); Frank Sinatra was born (December 12,
1915); Anne Baxter died (December 12, 1985); Dick Van Dyke was born (December
13, 1925); Christopher Plummer was born (December 13, 1929); Myrna Loy died
(December 14, 1993); Walt Disney died (December 15, 1966); Charlie Chaplin
began his movie career (December 16, 1913).
Highlighted Story
of the Week –
On December 12, 1967, Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Sidney
Poitier and Katharine Houghton, opened in theaters. The film followed the story
of a young white woman (Houghton) who brings her fiancé (Poitier), an
African-American doctor, home to meet her parents, played by Hepburn and Tracy
in their last film together. Off-screen, the couple had a long romance,
although Tracy was married to another woman. He died on June 10, 1967, a short
time after the movie wrapped. Directed by Stanley Kramer, who was known for
other films such as Inherit the Wind and
Judgment at Nuremberg; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner examined
the reactions of the young couple’s various family members and friends to their
taboo relationship. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including
Best Picture, and collected two Oscars, including Best Actress for Hepburn, the
second of her career.
Hepburn (1907-2003) won four Academy Awards (out of 12
total nominations) over the course of her long career. The legendary screen
star followed her Oscar win for Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner with Best Actress wins for The Lion in Winter (1968) and On
Golden Pond (1981). Her final feature film was 1994’s Love Affair, with
Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
Sidney Poitier, earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for 1958’s
The Defiant Ones, directed by Stanley
Kramer and co-starring Tony Curtis and Theodore Bikel. For his performance as a
handyman who builds a chapel for a group of German nuns in 1963’s Lilies of the Field, he became the first
black man ever to win an Academy Award for Best Actor. Among Poitier’s other
well-known films are To Sir, With Love
(1967) and In the Heat of the Night
(1967).
Spencer Tracy (1900-1967) took home his first Best Actor
Oscar for 1937’s Captains Courageous,
having been previously nominated in the category for 1936’s San Francisco. He won again for 1938’s Boys Town and went on to earn five other
nominations. Tracy received his ninth and final Best Actor Oscar nomination for
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
Check back every
Wednesday for a new installment of “This Week in Hollywood History.”
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