{"id":22978,"date":"2024-01-22T21:53:41","date_gmt":"2024-01-23T03:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=22978"},"modified":"2024-01-22T21:53:46","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T03:53:46","slug":"norman-jewison-acclaimed-director-of-in-the-heat-of-the-night-and-moonstruck-dies-at-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=22978","title":{"rendered":"Norman Jewison, acclaimed director of \u2018In the Heat of the Night\u2019 and \u2018Moonstruck,\u2019 dies at 97"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Norman Jewison<\/a>, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and \u201cMoonstruck\u201d<\/a> to social dramas such as the Oscar-winning \u201cIn the Heat of the Night,\u201d<\/a> has died at age 97.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died \u201cpeacefully\u201d Saturday, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson. Additional details were not immediately available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout his long career, Jewison combined light entertainment with topical films that appealed to him on a deeply personal level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Jewison was ending his military service in the Canadian navy during World War II, he hitchhiked through the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation. In his autobiography \u201cThis Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me,\u201d he noted that racism and injustice became his most common themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery time a film deals with racism, many Americans feel uncomfortable,\u201d he wrote. \u201cYet it has to be confronted. We have to deal with prejudice and injustice or we will never understand what is good and evil, right and wrong; we need to feel how \u2018the other\u2019 feels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He drew upon his experiences for 1967\u2019s \u201cIn the Heat of the Night,\u201d starring Rod Steiger as a white racist small-town sheriff and Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia trying to help solve a murder and eventually forming a working relationship with the hostile local lawman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Baldwin condemned the film\u2019s \u201cappalling distance from reality,\u201d and thought the director trapped in a fantasy of racial harmony that would only heighten \u201cBlack rage and despair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But The New York Times\u2019 Bosley Crowther was among the critics who found the movie powerful and inspiring, and in a year featuring such landmarks as \u201cThe Graduate\u201d and \u201cBonnie and Clyde,\u201d Jewison\u2019s production won the Academy Award for best picture while Steiger took home the best-actor Oscar. (Jewison lost out for best director to Mike Nichols of \u201cThe Graduate.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and \u201cMoonstruck\u201d to social dramas such as the Oscar-winning \u201cIn the Heat of the Night,\u201d has died at age 97. Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died \u201cpeacefully\u201d Saturday, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson. Additional details […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[26086,26085,26087,1247,5368,26084,26083],"class_list":["post-22978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-in-the-heat-of-the-night","tag-moonstruck","tag-comedy","tag-death","tag-director","tag-hollywood-movies","tag-norman-jewison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22980,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22978\/revisions\/22980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}