'guess Who's Coming To Dinner' Legacy Debated On Anniversary

The movie made more money for Columbia than any film before it, earned 10 Oscar nominations — winning two — and landed among the 100 greatest movies selected by the American Film Institute. The film, with its radical-for-its-time interracial romance, marked the first time a white actress and a black actor kissed in a major motion picture. Fans see its effects in modern films, like Jordan Peele's new hit, "Get Out," and in commercials for Cheerios and Chase Bank celebrating interracial couples. Houghton played a young white woman studying in Hawaii who brings home an accomplished African-American doctor and informs her parents — played by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy — that she intends to marry him. The film, re-released this spring in a Blu-ray edition , served as a challenge to liberals, a sort of modern-day fable made palatable with comedy. Most parents would be supportive of their daughter's involvement with Poitier's character — a handsome, charming, well-educated doctor on his way to work with the World Health Organization. Interracial romance was such an explosive topic that Beah Richards, who played Poitier's mother in the film, couldn't see it in her hometown of Vicksburg, Mississippi. More Hollywood attempts to tackle interracial relationships would follow, including Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, Anthony Drazan's Zebrahead, ''Something New with Sanaa Lathan, Guess Who with Bernie Mac and Loving starring Ruth Negga. Monica White Ndounou, author of "Shaping the Future of African American Film," said "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" could have done a better job of forcing liberal audiences to confront their prejudices and of reaching out to black audiences. "If anything, we can take what we've learned from this film, whether it's the failure or accomplishment of it, and we can continue to work toward telling more stories about the humanity of people and the ways in which they love each other," she said.