Norman Jewison, the versatile, acclaimed filmmaker behind motion pictures like Fiddler on the Roof and Within the Warmth of the Night time, died Saturday at house, his publicist introduced Monday. He was 97.
Jewison was a seven-time Oscar nominee and earned the Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Movement Photos Arts and Sciences in 1999. He earned each Greatest Director and Greatest Image nods for the 1971 musical Fiddler on the Roof and the 1987 rom-com Moonstruck, starring Cher.
He additionally was nominated for an Academy Award for Greatest Image for 1976’s Within the Warmth of the Night time. The movie was based mostly on John Ball’s e book of the identical identify. The movie instructed the story of Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective concerned in a homicide investigation in Mississippi. The movie was chosen for preservation within the Nationwide Movie Registry by the Library of Congress in 2002 and was declared one of many 100 biggest motion pictures in American cinema by the American Movie Institute.
“The largest grossing image just isn’t essentially the perfect image, so simply inform tales that transfer us to laughter and tears and, maybe, reveal a bit fact about ourselves,” Jewison stated in 1999 as he accepted the Thalberg Memorial Award.
Within the Warmth of the Night time was one in every of quite a few motion pictures Jewison directed that centered on race relations, together with 1984’s A Soldier’s Story and 1999’s The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington. (The Washington movie adopted the story of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was wrongly accused of a triple homicide in New Jersey.)
“Each time a movie offers with racism, many Individuals really feel uncomfortable,” he wrote in his autobiography This Horrible Enterprise Has Been Good to Me, per the Related Press. “But it needs to be confronted. We now have to take care of prejudice and injustice or we are going to by no means perceive what is sweet and evil, proper and flawed; we have to really feel how ‘the opposite’ feels.”
Amongst his biggest work was Moonstruck, which earned Cher her Oscar for Greatest Actress, Olympia Dukakis the award for Greatest Supporting Actress, and John Patrick Stanley the prize for Greatest Authentic Screenplay. The 1987 favourite was a rom-com that adopted a widowed Italian-American girl in love together with her fiancé’s youthful brother. The movie additionally earned Cher and Dukakis Golden Globe Awards that 12 months.
On Monday, the music icon took to social media to pay tribute to the director. “Farewell Candy Prince,” she wrote on X (previously Twitter). “Thank U For One Of The Biggest, Happiest, Most Enjoyable Experiences Of My Life.”
In 1989, Jewison directed Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd in In Nation, which explored the painful legacy of the Vietnam Warfare. He additionally directed motion pictures corresponding to Ship Me No Flowers in 1964, The Cincinnati Child in 1965, and Jesus Christ Celebrity in 1973. In 1991, he launched Different Folks’s Cash, starring Danny DeVito and Penelope Ann Miller. Jewison’s final movie got here in 2003 with The Assertion, starring Michael Caine, which was based mostly on Brian Moore’s 1996 novel about Paul Touvier, a Nazi police officer who was indicted years after World Warfare II. That movie, which additionally starred Alan Bates, was his final theatrical position earlier than he died in 2003.
Jewison was born in Toronto on July 21, 1927. He began working in leisure as a baby, performing on the Malvern Collegiate Institute, the place he attended, earlier than going to Victoria Faculty on the College of Toronto, the place he acquired his bachelor’s diploma in Common Arts in 1949.
He drove a taxi for a dwelling after that earlier than discovering work on the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). He additionally labored as a author on the BBC throughout a two-year work-study program in London, earlier than he got here again to Canada for the CBC.
In 1958, he joined CBS, the place he directed the music collection Your Hit Parade, later the Andy Williams Present, and likewise The Broadway of Lerner and Loewe, which served because the TV debut of comic Danny Kaye.
Jewison’s first main success got here in 1966 with the Russians Are Coming, starring Alan Arkin. The movie, like lots of his different works, shared a message of tolerance and earned him a Greatest Image Oscar nomination. (Russians dropped the 12 months earlier than Warmth of the Night time.)
He launched an autobiography known as This Horrible Enterprise Has Been Good to Me in 2004, and later acquired a Administrators Guild’s Lifetime Achievement award in 2010.
From 2004 to 2010, he served because the Chancellor at his College of Toronto alma mater. Following his retirement from the put up, Canadian philanthropist Blake Goldring donated $1,000,000 to Victoria College (previously Faculty) to begin a first-year liberal arts program in Jewison’s identify.
Jewison’s first spouse, Margaret Ann Dixon, died in 2004. Jewison married once more in 2010, and is survived by his second spouse, Lynne St. David, and his youngsters, Kevin, Michael, and Jenny, alongside together with his grandchildren Ella, Megan, Alexandra, Sam, and Henry.
This text was up to date on Jan. 22 at 8:06 p.m. ET to incorporate a press release from Cher.
