Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was a family affair; the 1967 movie not only starred Katharine Hepburn, but also featured her niece Katharine Houghton as well. The movie, directed by Stanley Kramer, was groundbreaking because it was the first film of the era to cast a positive light on an inter-racial marriage. The film was also controversial; inter-racial marriage had been illegal in most of the United States until only a few weeks before its release, when, in June 1967, anti-miscegenation laws that promoted racial segregation were declared illegal by the Supreme Court. This timing made the film incredibly relevant to its audience.
For Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, the movie would prove to be bittersweet. It was the ninth time they had appeared together on the big screen, but Tracy passed away under three weeks after filming finished, mirroring the demise of Clark Gable five years earlier, who had died only a month after completing the filming of The Misfits. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was released six months after Tracy's death, and Hepburn chose never to see it because it reminded her of how much she missed him; it would be too painful. For Sidney Poitier, the film was the third movie in a banner year in his career, each being a great success at the box office, and each garnering him a slew of award nominations.
The movie's plot is relatively simple, as all of the action takes place on one day, and is a sort of snapshot of a day in the life of the Drayton home; free-thinking white Joanna Drayton meets black doctor John Prentice whilst on vacation in Hawaii, and the two become engaged. Joanna's parents, Christina and Matt Drayton, are wealthy liberals whom Joanna believes will be more than happy with her choice of husband, and so the couple travel to San Francisco to visit with them. The film consists of many conversations between the parents and their daughter, most of which are at cross-purposes, and the introduction of Prentice's parents as well who fly in to attend dinner. They are vehemently opposed to the engagement.
Director Kramer, and original writer William Rose, wanted to fly in the face of traditional cultural stereotypes. The handsome and well-respected young doctor (Sidney Poitier) was so perfect that the only thing that his future in-laws could possibly find wrong with him would be the fact that he was black, or the whirlwind nature of their relationship. His leading men and woman liked this theory so much that they signed on to appear in the movie without ever reading a word of the script.
Although there had been concern about how the film would be received in the southern states because of a history of racial tension, but it performed surprisingly well among white audiences; black audiences were more critical, accusing Kramer of making Poitier's character "too white" and therefore obviously acceptable to her liberal parents.
The film was also a critical success, and was nominated for an impressive twenty two Academy Awards, although ultimately it only came away with two statuettes, one for Katharine Hepburn, in the category of Best Actress in a Leading Role, and one for Best Original Screenplay. This was Hepburn's second win, and she would follow this win up with another Oscar the following year for her performance in The Lion in Winter.
