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By:  Jimmy Don Ventura, Movie Reviewer for the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and Guest Contributor for the CMC Blog.

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Every month the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and the Grounds for Divorce sponsor a Classic Film in their continuing effort to advance the cultural development of Fort Stockton, which so far has produced mixed results. The movies have improved considerably. Fort Stockton remains Fort Stockton.

This month’s selection was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the 1967 Stanley Kramer film starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier, and I should acknowledge right up front that this is not what anybody would call an automotive picture.

There are no races.

Nobody rebuilds an engine.

Steve McQueen does not appear.

There is not a single scene in which a man raises a hood, looks inside and says, “Well, there’s your problem.”

Nevertheless, automobiles matter in this picture more than you might think, particularly because several of them make absolutely no sense.

We will begin with Spencer Tracy’s car.

Matt Drayton, Tracy’s character, is the wealthy publisher of an important San Francisco newspaper. His wife Christina, played by Katharine Hepburn, owns an art gallery. They live in a magnificent house overlooking San Francisco Bay. They have household help. They entertain people. Their daughter flies to Hawaii. Nobody appears to be wondering whether the electric bill has cleared.

Matt Drayton drives a 1967 Plymouth Valiant Signet two-door sedan.

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I want that to settle over you for a moment.

A Plymouth Valiant.

Not even the four-door.

The man apparently wakes every morning in a mansion overlooking one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the United States, walks down the driveway and climbs into one of Chrysler Corporation’s least expensive automobiles.

This would be roughly equivalent to discovering that Howard Hughes commuted in a Studebaker Scotsman.

There is nothing wrong with a Valiant. I want to make that clear before the Plymouth people begin writing letters. The Valiant was reliable, sensible, economical and durable. Slant Six engines have survived things that would kill livestock.

But this is Matt Drayton.

He publishes a major newspaper.

Where is the Imperial?

Where is the Chrysler New Yorker?

If he had decided to shop outside the corporation, where is the Cadillac Fleetwood? The Lincoln Continental?

Even a Buick Electra would have suggested that somebody in the household occasionally ordered the appetizer without checking the price.

Instead, Matt Drayton drives a Valiant.

And it is not merely sitting somewhere in the background. The Valiant appears more often than any other automobile in the movie.

Stanley Kramer wanted us to see this thing.

The only explanation I can offer is that Matt Drayton regards ostentation as vulgar and has decided a newspaper publisher should drive something sensible. Either that or somebody at Plymouth had photographs of Stanley Kramer.

The second-most-important automobile in the picture is a 1967 Dodge Coronet sedan used as a taxicab.

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Now we are beginning to see a pattern.

The Coronet is the taxi that brings Joanna Drayton, played by Katharine Houghton, and Dr. John Prentice, played by Sidney Poitier, from the airport to her parents’ home.

They have met in Hawaii.

They have fallen in love.

They intend to marry.

They have known each other ten days.

The cab driver looks disapproving.

Most people assume this is because John is Black and Joanna is white.

I am not entirely convinced.

He may simply have heard the part about ten days.

I have bought used cars after longer inspections.

The cab driver is played by John Hudkins, a veteran stuntman and longtime Spencer Tracy stunt double, which means the man driving the Dodge Coronet had more automotive qualifications than most of the principal cast.

Hudkins also did the location driving and later doubled for Tracy during the automobile accident sequence.

Which brings us back to the Valiant.

Matt eventually takes the Plymouth to an ice cream shop and manages to run into a 1932 Ford Deuce coupe.

This is automotive irony of the highest order.

A wealthy newspaper publisher driving one of the most ordinary cars available in 1967 manages to hit one of the most desirable hot rods in America.

The Deuce itself does not matter to the plot except as an object for Spencer Tracy to back into, but naturally I stopped paying attention to Spencer Tracy and began looking around the parking lot.

There is an early-1960s Corvette.

A 1955 Thunderbird.

An early-1960s Volkswagen convertible.

And several other automobiles suggesting that the local ice cream shop had become a gathering place for people who spent more money on hair products than Matt Drayton spent on automobiles.

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This was evidently where the Cool Cats went.

I cannot prove whether any of them used the expression “Cool Cats.”

I am merely reporting what the parking lot tells me.

Another important car is a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda coupe.

Again, Chrysler Corporation.

At this point I began wondering whether Columbia Pictures had struck some sort of arrangement with a local Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge dealer.

If a Chrysler Town & Country had pulled into the kitchen before the movie ended, I would not have been surprised.

The Barracuda belongs to Hilary St. George, Christina Drayton’s employee at the art gallery.

Hilary reacts badly to the news that Joanna intends to marry John.

Christina walks her outside, escorts her all the way to the Barracuda and fires her before sending her on her way.

This may be the only time in motion picture history anyone has been terminated beside a first-generation Plymouth Barracuda by Katharine Hepburn.

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The woman playing Hilary was Virginia Christine.

Fort Stockton residents of a certain age will immediately recognize her by another name.

Mrs. Olson.

Yes.

Mrs. Olson from the Folgers coffee commercials.

The Swedish woman who spent approximately twenty years appearing unexpectedly in American kitchens with coffee and information nobody had requested.

She informed America that Folgers was mountain grown.

She also informed us that mountain-grown coffee was “the richest kind.”

For years Mrs. Olson apparently had nothing else to do except wander through neighborhoods waiting for marriages to enter caffeine-related difficulty.

A wife would pour her husband a cup of coffee.

He would make a face.

Suddenly Mrs. Olson would be standing in the kitchen.

If that happened today, the husband would probably call the police.

In 1967 he switched coffee brands.

Fort Stockton drank a great deal of Folgers in those days, so Virginia Christine probably enjoyed more local recognition as Mrs. Olson than as Hilary St. George.

I personally find it comforting that Christina Drayton fires Mrs. Olson in this movie.

Not because she deserved to lose her job.

She did.

But because afterward she could always fall back on coffee.

There is also, sitting in the Draytons’ driveway, a Ford Falcon Squire station wagon from somewhere around 1963.

Nobody explains who owns it.

It certainly does not appear to belong to Matt because he has already made his inexplicable commitment to the Valiant.

It could belong to Christina, although I have difficulty picturing Katharine Hepburn selecting fake woodgrain.

My personal theory is that the Falcon belongs to Tillie, the Draytons’ longtime housekeeper.

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Tillie, played by Isabel Sanford, does not approve of John and Joanna’s proposed marriage either.

She is suspicious of John from the moment he arrives.

This creates the intriguing possibility that the most socially conservative person in the Drayton household may also be the only person there willing to drive a compact Ford wagon covered in simulated timber.

Tillie does not get fired.

Isabel Sanford eventually goes on to greater things, first playing Louise Jefferson on All in the Family and then moving, as we all know, “on up to the East Side” in The Jeffersons.

Apparently the deluxe apartment in the sky had better parking.

There are other automobiles scattered throughout Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner the way there are other people scattered throughout Fort Stockton. They may not affect the story, but if they appear in public, somebody is going to identify them.

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On the streets of San Francisco I spotted a 1957 Pontiac Star Chief, a 1967 Lincoln Continental, a 1961 Ford F-100 and a 1956 Mercury Monterey station wagon, among others.

The Continental particularly caught my attention because there, finally, was the sort of automobile Matt Drayton ought to have owned.

It passes through the background.

Matt keeps the Valiant.

Life is not fair.

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Back at the mansion, a 1964 Dodge A100 delivery van arrives from Larry’s Fine Foods carrying dinner.

Again, a Dodge.

At this point the Chrysler theory is becoming difficult to dismiss.

My theory is that the Draytons spent so little money on Matt’s automobile that they were able to have dinner catered.

There is another possibility.

After Christina sees what her husband does to the Deuce coupe at the ice cream shop, she may have decided it was safer not to send him to the Piggly Wiggly.

Either way, Larry brought the groceries.

So no, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is not an automotive gold mine.

But it has enough cars to qualify under the extremely flexible rules governing this column, which I wrote myself.

Once we get past the automobiles, there is also a movie.

And it is a very good one.

The story begins when Joanna Drayton arrives home unexpectedly with John Prentice.

John is thirty-seven years old.

Joanna is twenty-three.

He is a physician of international reputation.

He has worked in Africa and Asia.

He is financially secure, educated, cultured, courteous and accomplished.

He is also Black.

Joanna is white.

As I mentioned earlier, they have known each other ten days.

Everybody in the movie is deeply concerned about the racial issue.

I remain concerned about the ten days.

I once spent longer than that deciding whether to buy a set of red sunglasses.

Joanna has no doubts whatsoever. She loves John. She expects her parents, who have raised her to reject racial prejudice, to approve.

That turns out to be considerably easier in theory than in the living room.

Matt and Christina Drayton have always considered themselves progressive people.

Matt publishes enlightened opinions.

Christina believes in equality.

They have taught Joanna that racial prejudice is wrong.

Then their daughter announces that she intends to put those principles on the wedding invitations.

That is when the movie becomes interesting.

There is a difference between believing something and having that belief pull into your driveway in a Dodge taxicab.

Christina gets there faster than Matt does.

Once she understands that Joanna genuinely loves John, and once she sees what sort of man John is, her resistance begins to disappear.

Matt struggles longer.

He knows what the couple will face.

He also begins to discover that some of his concern for their future is mixed up with concerns he has never had to examine closely before.

The movie was made at precisely the moment America itself was being forced into the same examination.

This is the historical rabbit hole I fell into.

John’s father warns him that in numerous states his marriage to Joanna would make them criminals.

That was true when the film went into production.

When Stanley Kramer began making Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, interracial marriage was still prohibited by law in a number of American states.

Then came Loving v. Virginia.

On June 12, 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage violated the Constitution.

That was two days after Spencer Tracy died.

By the time most audiences saw the finished picture, one of its central legal dangers had just disappeared.

Think about that.

This movie is now regarded as an old-fashioned treatment of interracial marriage.

When they started making it, the marriage depicted in the movie could still have been illegal depending upon where John and Joanna lived.

That sent me looking at the states.

Oklahoma was one of them.

I found this especially troubling because for approximately six months in my youth I was involved in what I now realize was a mixed relationship.

She was from Oklahoma.

I was from Texas.

Neither family approved.

At the time I thought this was because her father disliked me personally.

I now realize he may have been trying to preserve two distinct cultures.

There were warning signs.

She said “pop.”

I said “Coke.”

She believed Oklahoma football represented civilization.

I believed Oklahoma football represented Oklahoma.

Eventually we admitted there were differences love could not overcome.

Mainly her father.

I have not seen her in many years, but I hope she is well.

I also hope she eventually learned to say Coke.

That particular rabbit hole made the movie much more powerful for me, because it reminded me how easy it is to watch an old film and judge it entirely from the present.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner can seem cautious now.

John Prentice is practically flawless.

He is so accomplished that the screenplay deliberately removes almost every possible objection except his race.

If John were irresponsible, unemployed, rude or dishonest, Matt Drayton could hide behind something else.

Instead John is a respected doctor.

He has money.

He has manners.

He is devoted to Joanna.

He even leaves $2.20 on the desk to cover the long-distance telephone call he places to his parents in Los Angeles.

I have never in my life voluntarily left money beside a telephone.

This man is almost unnaturally responsible.

That is deliberate.

Stanley Kramer and screenwriter William Rose take away every escape route.

If Matt objects, eventually he has to confront why.

The same thing happens on John’s side of the family.

His father opposes the marriage too.

The scene between Sidney Poitier and Roy Glenn, playing John’s father, is one of the best in the picture because the argument stops being exclusively about race.

Mr. Prentice reminds John of everything he sacrificed so that his son could become a doctor.

John does not deny any of it.

But he refuses to accept the idea that his father’s sacrifice gives him ownership of his adult life.

Parents sometimes believe sacrifice creates an obligation.

Children sometimes believe sacrifice creates opportunity.

There is enough truth on both sides to keep that argument going until somebody dies.

Tillie objects too, which prevents the movie from arranging everyone conveniently by race.

She believes she is protecting Joanna.

Christina initially hesitates.

Matt hesitates longer.

John’s parents worry.

The younger couple simply cannot understand why everybody has turned dinner into the Yalta Conference.

Monsignor Ryan, an old family friend played by Cecil Kellaway, is one of the few people who seems to enjoy any part of the evening.

Mostly he drinks and waits for everyone else to catch up.

I admired his method.

There are some remarkable facts behind the production.

Spencer Tracy was desperately ill.

The studio was so worried that he might die before completing the picture that Katharine Hepburn put her own salary at risk to help guarantee production.

Stanley Kramer did the same.

Two versions of the shooting schedule were maintained, one that included Tracy and another that allowed the film to continue if his health failed.

Hepburn would bring Tracy to work in the morning, and when she believed he had done enough, they left.

Sidney Poitier, despite already being an Academy Award-winning actor, was intimidated by working opposite Tracy and Hepburn. At times he preferred rehearsing or performing toward empty high-backed chairs rather than having the two legends sitting there watching him.

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Tracy finished his scenes.

Seventeen days later, he was dead.

Katharine Hepburn never watched the completed movie.

She said the memories of Tracy were too painful.

That knowledge makes the final scene almost impossible to watch casually.

Matt gathers the family together and gives his answer.

Spencer Tracy talks about love.

The camera cuts to Katharine Hepburn.

She is crying.

On one level Christina Drayton is listening to her husband.

On another level Katharine Hepburn is listening to Spencer Tracy near the end of a relationship that had defined a large part of both their lives.

You cannot separate the two entirely.

Maybe you are not supposed to.

The movie opened in December 1967 and became a major success.

It received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Screenplay.

Katharine Hepburn won Best Actress.

William Rose won for his screenplay.

Spencer Tracy received a posthumous Best Actor nomination, although the award went to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night, another 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier.

Poitier, incidentally, had quite a year.

He also starred in To Sir, with Love.

If Sidney Poitier had been any busier in 1967, he would have needed two agents and an oil change.

There is another historical moment in the picture that became painful almost immediately.

At one point Joanna tells Tillie that someone else is coming to dinner.

Tillie sarcastically guesses, “The Reverend Martin Luther King?”

The movie was still playing in theaters when Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The studio contacted theaters and asked them to remove the line.

That is how close this movie sits to the events it is talking about.

It is not looking backward at the civil-rights era.

It was made inside it.

When Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner first played in Fort Stockton, I suspect the experience was somewhat different from the one we had this month at the Classic Film Series.

In 1967 there would have been people sitting in the theater who considered the premise courageous, people who considered it dangerous, people who considered it overdue and probably several who spent the entire picture wondering why Spencer Tracy was driving that cheap Plymouth.

I choose to believe those were my people.

The movie would not have felt historical.

It would have felt contemporary.

Possibly uncomfortable.

Certainly discussable.

Nearly sixty years later, the Grounds for Divorce and the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch showed it in the name of bringing culture to Fort Stockton.

Lucinda served pie before the movie.

Someone behind me snored during the middle section.

Angus Hopper wanted to know why a doctor as successful as Sidney Poitier did not have his own airplane.

Hairless B29 became interested in the Barracuda.

Rex Hall tried to explain Loving v. Virginia afterward and was interrupted by Brother Bob, who had not heard the first half of the explanation but disagreed with it.

So culture continues its slow advance.

I give Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner four and a half stars out of five.

As a car movie, two and a half.

There simply are not enough cars, and the wealthiest man in the picture drives the wrong one.

As a movie, though, it earns the rest.

It is dated in places.

It is earnest.

It sometimes explains itself more than a modern film would.

John Prentice has been polished until there is almost nothing human left for anyone to object to.

But criticizing it only from the present misses what it was attempting in 1967.

When the movie was conceived, the marriage at the center of the story was illegal in parts of the United States.

Before it reached theaters, the Supreme Court changed that.

While it was still playing, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Spencer Tracy died before it opened.

Katharine Hepburn could never bring herself to watch the finished picture.

And yet there it remains, almost sixty years later, asking the same basic question.

How much do we actually believe the things we say we believe when believing them suddenly costs us something?

That is worth watching.

Even if Spencer Tracy should have bought the Imperial.

I remain firm on that.

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