Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a really fantastic movie. It's such a hard film to watch though! Spencer Tracy portrays Joanne "Joey" Drayton's father in this very controversial (for the time, 1967) story about a young white girl who falls in love with an older African American, Dr. John Prentice.

The film was Tracy and Hepburn's last movie together. Which is what makes it so hard to watch. Only 17 days after the end of filming Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Spencer Tracy sadly died. But what a wonderful way to end his career. The speech that Tracy, as Mr. Drayton, gives at the end of the movie is very moving indeed. Tracy stands there and tells the world that it doesn't matter that a white woman and a black man are getting married to each other. In fact it's a beautiful thing. Up until that point there were still states in the United States of America that didn't allow interracial marriages. Is it only coincidence that after this movie was released that all the states now legalized it?

Katherine Hepburn never saw the completed Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, because she thought it was just to painful, seeing Spencer in his last few days. What a wonderful movie couple they were too! What fun they must have had. Together they starred in Women of the Year (1942), Keeper of the Flame (1942), Without Love (1945), The Sea of Grass (1947), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).