Acclaimed director of “In the Heat of the Night” and “Moonstruck” was 97 – The Denver Post

NEW YORK — Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood movies ranged from Doris Day comedies and “Moonstruck” to such social dramas because the Oscar-winning “Within the Warmth of the Evening,” has died at age 97.

Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 obtained an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died “peacefully” Saturday, in line with publicist Jeff Sanderson. Extra particulars weren’t instantly accessible.

All through his lengthy profession, Jewison mixed mild leisure with topical movies that appealed to him on a deeply private degree. As Jewison was ending his army service within the Canadian navy throughout World Struggle II, he hitchhiked by way of the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation. In his autobiography “This Horrible Enterprise Has Been Good to Me,” he famous that racism and injustice turned his most typical themes.

“Each time a movie offers with racism, many People really feel uncomfortable,” he wrote. “But it needs to be confronted. We’ve to cope with prejudice and injustice or we are going to by no means perceive what is nice and evil, proper and mistaken; we have to really feel how ‘the opposite’ feels.”

He drew upon his experiences for 1967’s “Within the Warmth of the Evening,” starring Rod Steiger as a white racist small-town sheriff and Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia making an attempt to assist clear up a homicide and ultimately forming a working relationship with the hostile native lawman.

James Baldwin condemned the movie’s “appalling distance from actuality,” and thought the director trapped in a fantasy of racial concord that may solely heighten “Black rage and despair.” However The New York Instances’ Bosley Crowther was among the many critics who discovered the film highly effective and provoking and in a yr that includes such landmarks as “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” Jewison’s manufacturing gained the Academy Award for finest image whereas Steiger took house one of the best actor Oscar. (Jewison misplaced out for finest director to Mike Nichols of “The Graduate”).

Amongst those that inspired Jewison whereas making “Within the Warmth of the Evening”: Robert F. Kennedy, whom the director met throughout a ski journey in Solar Valley, Idaho.

“I instructed him I made movies and he requested what type I make,” he recalled in a 2011 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “So I instructed him that I used to be engaged on ‘Within the Warmth of the Evening’ and that it’s about two cops: one a white sheriff from Mississippi and the opposite a black detective from Philadelphia. I instructed him it was a movie about tolerance. So he listened and nodded and mentioned ‘You recognize, Norman, timing is every part. In politics, in artwork, in life itself.’ I by no means forgot that.”

He obtained two different Oscar nominations: For “Moonstruck,” the beloved romantic comedy for which Cher gained an Academy Award, and “Fiddler on the Roof,” the basic musical a couple of Jewish village in Russia that Jewison has mentioned was provided to him below the mistaken perception he was Jewish.

His different notable movies included the Chilly Struggle spoof “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” the Steve McQueen thriller “The Thomas Crown Affair” and a pair of flicks that includes Denzel Washington: the racial drama “A Soldier’s Story” and “The Hurricane,” starring Washington as wrongly imprisoned boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

A 3rd undertaking with Washington by no means made it to manufacturing. Within the early Nineteen Nineties, Jewison was set to direct a biography of Malcolm X, however backed out amid protests from Spike Lee and others {that a} white director shouldn’t make the movie. Lee ended up directing.

5 Jewison movies obtained finest Oscar nominations: “Within the Warmth of the Evening,” “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” “Fiddler On the Roof,” “Moonstruck” and “A Soldier’s Story.”

Jewison and his spouse Margaret Ann Dixon (nicknamed Dixie) had three youngsters, sons Kevin and Michael and daughter Jennifer Ann, who turned an actress and appeared within the Jewison movies “Agnes of God” and “Greatest Buddies.” The Jewisons had been married 51 years, till her demise in 2004. He married Lynne St. David in 2010.

Jewison, honored by Canada in 2003 with a Governor Common’s Performing Arts Award, remained near his house nation. When he wasn’t working, he lived on a 200-acre farm close to Toronto, the place he raised horses and cattle and produced maple syrup. He based the Canadian Movie Centre in 1988 and for years hosted barbecues throughout the Toronto Movie Competition.

The Toronto-born Jewison started appearing at age 6, showing earlier than Masonic lodge gatherings. After graduating from Victoria School, he went to work for the BBC in London, then returned to Canada and directed applications for the CBC. His work there introduced presents from Hollywood and he shortly earned a fame as a director of TV musicals, with stars together with Judy Garland, Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte. Jewison shifted to characteristic movies in 1963 with the comedy “40 Kilos of Bother,” starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette.