Stanley Kramer and William Rose‘s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was arguably already dated when it opened on 12.12.67. It wouldn’t have been dated if it had opened, say, in ’62, ’63 or even ’64. But ’67 was too activist, too strident, too Stokely Carmichael‘ed, too rioted, too Black Power-ed, too Vietnam War-ed, too Sgt. Pepper-ed and too psychedelicized. It just didn’t fit.
I’ve never seen Kramer’s film, by the way. I avoided it like the plague when it came out, and I’ve never felt sufficiently motivated to watch it at home. But Spencer Tracy‘s soliloquy in this climactic scene, which I only just watched a few minutes ago, is fairly terrific.
Tracy dropped dead in his kitchen on 6.10.67, 17 days after Kramer’s film was completed. He was only 67, but he looked at least 80 by today’s standards.
As noted, GWCTD opened six months later (12.12.67). Four months later Martin Luther King was murdered.