Film Review: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

In an era where contemporary Hollywood clamours to position itself on the Right Side of History, virtue-signalling its progressive credentials with varying degrees of sincerity, one must look to the past to find filmmakers who tackled societal issues with genuine conviction, artistic integrity, and unflinching passion. Few exemplify this better than Stanley Kramer, a director-producer whose oeuvre persistently interrogated the moral and political crises of mid-20th-century America. Among his most celebrated works, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) stands out as a film that sought to confront racial prejudice head-on, blending social commentary with mainstream entertainment. While its execution may now seem dated, even sanitised, the film remains a compelling artefact of its time, elevated by powerhouse performances and a prescient vision of societal change.

The narrative revolves around 23-year-old Joanna “Joey” Drayton (played by Katharine Houghton), who returns to her affluent San Francisco home with Dr. John Prentice (playede by Sidney Poitier), a man she met just ten days prior in Hawaii and now intends to marry. Her parents—Matt Drayton (played by Spencer Tracy), a progressive newspaper editor, and Christina (played by Katharine Hepburn), a gallery owner—are confronted with a dilemma that tests their self-professed liberalism. Prentice, a 37-year-old widowed physician with an impeccable academic pedigree and a career in the World Health Organisation, is, by any measure, an ideal suitor. The catch? He is Black, and the Draytons, despite their enlightened views, must reconcile their principles with the visceral reality of their daughter’s interracial union.

Premiering in 1967, the film emerged during the twilight of the African American civil rights movement. While Jim Crow laws had been dismantled and institutional segregation was in retreat, racial tensions simmered, particularly in the American South. Hollywood, however, often filtered these conflicts through a lens of middle-class respectability. That same year, Poitier—the era’s pre-eminent Black leading man—also starred in In the Heat of the Night, another Oscar-winning exploration of race relations. Yet where that film confronted Southern bigotry with visceral intensity, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner opted for a more genteel, if no less provocative, approach.

The film’s central tension hinges on what was then among the last bastions of societal taboo: interracial marriage. Anti-miscegenation laws, criminalising such unions, persisted in 17 states until June 1967, when the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia ruling struck them down mere months before the film’s release. This context is explicitly acknowledged in the script, with Prentice noting the legal barriers their marriage would have faced in certain jurisdictions. The timing was fortuitous, allowing the film to position itself as both a commentary on and beneficiary of shifting cultural mores. Yet Kramer’s focus remains narrowly fixed on the anxieties of white liberalism—how “tolerant” elites respond when abstract ideals collide with personal stakes.

As a piece of social advocacy, the film is undeniably earnest. Kramer’s direction is workmanlike, prioritising dialogue over visual flair, while William Rose’s script deftly balances wit with moral urgency. The message of tolerance is underscored by Jacqueline Fontaine’s melancholic rendition of “The Glory of Love,” its lyrics echoing the protagonists’ hopeful idealism. Yet for all its competence, the film feels curiously inert, constrained by its staginess and lack of cinematic ambition. Confined almost entirely to the Draytons’ modernist home, the drama unfolds like a theatrical piece, reliant on verbose exchanges rather than dynamic storytelling.

This staginess is compounded by the film’s aesthetic conservatism. Despite being a product of the late 1960s—a period of radical experimentation in cinema—Kramer’s style harks back to the classical Hollywood of the 1950s. Save for fleeting references to the Beatles and a jazz-infused score, there is little to anchor it in the countercultural ferment of its era. The result is a film that feels paradoxically both ahead of its time and stubbornly old-fashioned.

The film’s most glaring flaw lies in its contrived central conflict. By setting the story in San Francisco—a bastion of progressivism—and among hyper-articulate, upper-class intellectuals, Rose sidesteps the visceral racism that might have lent the narrative greater heft. Instead, the tension derives largely from Matt Drayton’s internal struggle, as his wife and daughter (and even the family’s Black maid) champion the union. This insulated approach renders the stakes curiously low, reducing the drama to a series of polite debates rather than a visceral clash of ideologies.

Equally problematic is the characterisation of Dr. Prentice, whose near-saintly perfection strains credulity. Poitier, then typecast as the “unthreatening” Black intellectual, is denied any real complexity until the film’s final act, where he briefly confronts the Draytons’ patronising assumptions. His earlier scenes paint him as a paragon of reason and restraint—a man so devoid of flaws that he becomes less a character than a symbolic vessel for white audiences’ guilt. This idealisation, while understandable in a film aiming to challenge stereotypes, ultimately neuters the story’s emotional impact.

What elevates the film above its limitations is its cast, particularly the legendary pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Their off-screen romance and decades-long collaboration infuse their scenes with palpable chemistry and depth. Tracy, in his final role, delivers a profoundly moving performance, his frailty and gravitas underscoring Matt Drayton’s moral awakening. (Tracy died just 17 days after filming wrapped, adding poignancy to lines like “I don’t care what people think—I’m just tired of all the talk!”) Hepburn, meanwhile, earned her second Oscar for a role that channels her trademark blend of wit and vulnerability. Even Hepburn’s niece Katharine Houghton, though uneven as the naïve Joey, brings a guileless charm that softens the script’s didactic edges.

Time has been kind to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in one respect: its startling prescience. In a climactic exchange, Prentice posits that his future children—mixed-race and ostensibly “disadvantaged”—might one day become President of the United States. Forty years later, Barack Obama’s election seemed to vindicate this optimism, momentarily casting the film’s themes as relics of a bygone era. Yet the resurgence of racial animus in recent years underscores the naïveté of such conclusions, reminding us that Kramer’s vision remains as relevant as it is incomplete.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a film bold yet cautious, progressive yet paternalistic, timeless yet unmistakably dated. Its shortcomings—the stilted dialogue, the sanitised setting, the didactic characterisation—reflect the constraints of its era and Kramer’s own artistic conservatism. Yet within these limitations lies a work of sincere moral urgency, buoyed by performances that transcend the material. For all its flaws, the film endures not merely as a historical curiosity, but as a testament to Hollywood’s halting, imperfect attempts to mirror—and perhaps even shape—the arc of justice.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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