'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner': 40-year-old film may have foreshadowed president of color

Jet, August 18, 2008 by Margena A. Christian

Stanley Kramer was one of the few filmmakers who got behind the cause for civil rights and put his reputation and finances on the line to present subject matter that meant something, Kramer's widow, Karen, recently told JET magazine.

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She said that her husband forfeited his $200,000 salary to make certain that his groundbreaking film Guess Who's Coming To Dinner could be completed.

Now, forty years after the movie's debut, Karen Kramer has released a five-box DVD set, The Stanley Kramer Film Collection, which includes the hit film.

When the movie was released in 1967, Karen said they received hate mail and threatening phone calls because the story focused on a Black doctor (Sidney Poitier) and his White fiancee (Katherine Houghton) coming home to meet her parents.

"He brought subject matter to the screen for the first time that made people very uncomfortable," she said of her Academy Award-nominated husband. "People got uncomfortable seeing African-Americans stand where they are today, but he liked to challenge them."

Stanley Kramer died in 2001.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was released just after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court 1967 decision that overturned interracial marriage laws (JET, May 26).

In a scene that portends the possibilities of the present presidential campaign, Poitier's character said that his fiancee "feels that every single one of our children will be president of the United States and they'll all have colorful administrations."

Stanley Kramer "paved the way and paid the price," said Karen. "He was ahead of his time and it certainly has caught up now. It would be wonderful had Stanley lived to see [Barack] Obama run for president. He would have been very happy to know we've come a long way."