GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER: Blu-ray reissue (Columbia, 1967) Sony Home Entertainment

In hindsight, Spencer Tracy’s final screen appearance proves one of his most memorable; as the doting, curmudgeonly and slightly conflicted patriarch in Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967); at once, a fitting epitaph to Tracy’s career, as well as a beginning in Hollywood’s fight against racial prejudice. For although the Civil Rights Movement was well underway by the time Kramer and screenwriter, William Rose sought to make it the crux of their iconic rom/com, Hollywood had been exceptionally slow on the uptake to explore – much less, embrace any debate that had already transformed college campuses across the nation into hotbeds of political protest for social change. When Rose, who had been instrumental in bringing the topic to Stanley Kramer’s attention, inquisitively asked Kramer whether he thought the nation was ready for a picture like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Kramer astutely replied, “No…but we’re going to make it anyway.” Kramer’s timing could not have been more apropos. Yet, in bringing race relations to the forefront of popular entertainment both Kramer and Katherine Houghton (Katherine Hepburn’s niece in real life – alas, a virtual novice in the art of making movies – and slightly miscast as Kate’s daughter, Joanna Drayton) received vicious letters and death threats; Houghton’s one passionate kiss with co-star, Sidney Poitier (glimpsed in the rear view of a taxi), igniting a powder keg of controversy about miscegenation.

Rose had originally approached Kramer with the idea of doing a story about a young white girl who goes to Africa as a missionary, only to fall in love with one of the locals; the black boy taking her home to his village to meet his parents. Considering the idea, Kramer reportedly told Rose “If you reverse the roles and set the story in America you really got something.” Ripping a page from the Disney playbook – coating the pill with sugar – Kramer would soften the blow, if not of the message, then decidedly its content, by approaching the toxicity of the subject matter employing the conventions of the classic – and classy - romantic comedy. He also wisely reasoned that for the picture to succeed, though more importantly, to make its point, and, have the point stick, two criteria would have to be met; first, the black man in question needed to be beyond reproach; a veritable paragon of virtue that any prospective father-in-law should embrace with unequivocal pride…if only the prospective son-in-law were also Caucasian. Second, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner needed to address the issue of racism from both sides; revealing both white and black prejudices (the latter do exist after all, despite the skew in more recent times to politicize and/or merely ‘white-wash’ the definition of racial prejudice from a purely ‘white on black’ perspective).

Kramer’s decision to cast Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - two of filmdom’s iconic sparring romantic partners (both on and off the movie screen) – proved inspired; as did Kramer’s choice of Sidney Poitier, the first black leading man in American movies, as his star.  Alas, in the eleventh hour of pre-production, Columbia Studios began to get cold feet; using the excuse of Tracy’s rapidly declining health, presumably making it virtually impossible for the studio to insured him. With wounded frustration, Kramer elected bravely to call the studio’s bluff; offering to his own, as well as Kate Hepburn’s salary as collateral to cover the costs.  Having narrowly averted cancellation of his pet project, Kramer now turned to Tracy, who had misgivings about committing to the part. “You can either sit in that chair and rot until you die,” Kramer reportedly told Spencer, “Or you can do something really important for the first time in your career!”; a cause célèbre Tracy took to heart. There has never been another actor quite like Spencer Tracy – nor has anyone come close to rivaling his naturalist approach to acting since. In casting Tracy as the voice of integrity in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Kramer was satisfied he had achieved one of the movie’s major coups; the actor’s actor in a part seemingly tailor-made to his strengths. Regrettably, every day on set seemed to crystallize Kramer’s growing anxiety that Tracy’s rapidly declining health might preclude his finishing the picture on time and under budget. Pro that he was, Tracy diligently toiled with his life-long companion, Kate Hepburn at his side; his penultimate speech in the movie shot just two weeks before his untimely passing at the age of 67.

In as in life, Tracy and Hepburn play the idealized American couple; Matt and Christina Drayton – a pair of liberal-minded, affluent San Franciscans who inadvertently discover – to one’s pride and the other’s temporary chagrin – they have reared a headstrong daughter to whom love truly is color-blind. Katherine Houghton’s casting as the Drayton’s daughter, Joanna was not all that auspicious and predicated even less on familial nepotism; Hepburn’s terse reply to Kramer’s inquiry as to whether or not Houghton could act, met with an even more frank, “How the hell should I know? I haven’t seen her since she was three!” In viewing Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner today, Houghton’s performance is arguably the most insincere, her plucky comment, about “It never occurred to me I would fall in love with a Negro, but I have, and nothing's going to change that” irritatingly tinny and bordering on pie-eyed optimism in the face of some very real social concerns. Houghton would, in fact, confess to being uncomfortable playing ‘an idealized girl’ – referring to her alter ego as artificially naïve, not to be believed as the upwardly mobile offspring of a progressively-minded newspaper magnet and his social butterfly/trendy art gallery owner/wife.

Houghton was later to reminisce about the experience of working with her aunt as one of the most uncomfortable in her career - not because Kate found it difficult to bond with her estranged niece, but rather because a distinct rigidity – nee tenseness – had formed around Hepburn’s every thought where Spencer’s ailing health was concerned. Hepburn, who never had trouble ‘turning on the juice’ in movies, would weep genuine tears for several key sequences in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; the penultimate exchange of tellingly affectionate glances between she and Tracy (as he delivers his summation at the end of the plot) leaving virtually no dry eye in the theater when the rushes were screened.  On his last day of shooting, Tracy turned to Kramer with a warm embrace, declaring, “If I die on the trip home, at least you’ve got it all there in the can”; in hindsight, a bone-chillingly prophetic statement. In casting the parts of Sidney Poitier’s parents, Mary and John Prentice Sr., the latter, a pensioned off mailman, Kramer turned to veteran character actors, Beah Richards, already shooting in a much younger part in Norman Jewison’s racially charged drama, In the Heat of The Night (1967) and Roy E. Glenn; each delivering high caliber performances. Kramer was to also have excellent instincts in hiring Cecil Kellaway as the Drayton’s close personal friend, Monsignor Mike Ryan. More than any other character in the picture, Kellaway’s breezy spiritual advisor remains the grounding force; a sort of albino Dr. Martin Luther King, mirroring King’s message of peace, love and harmony, while helping to bridge the chasm of understanding for Tracy’s conflicted, Matt who, until the eleventh hour in his deliberations, has decided he cannot accept Joanna’s marriage, even to this perfect specimen - because of his race.

Sidney Poitier had been heavily criticized for playing ‘perfect Negros’ in the movies; feel-good and fun-loving African American stereotypes, watered down and made nonthreatening for white audience. Nevertheless, Poitier’s Dr. John Wade Prentice is a fairly well-rounded incarnation of the upwardly mobile black man, caught mildly unawares by the minor strife he has brought into the Drayton serene household, simply by existing. Kramer was adamant Poitier’s good doctor be the epitome of Friedrich Nietzsche’s superman, thus crystalizing for the audience that the only reason the Draytons could reject their future son-in-law would be on the basis of their own racial biases. To Kramer’s credit, he counterbalances Matt and Christina’s frosty initial reception to John with an even more caustic encounter between John and his father – the second greatest scene in the movie; the Prentice’s introduction to Joanna played strictly for laughs, with Roy E. Glenn’s gaping mouth offset by Beah Richard’s look of utter and faintly tragic bewilderment.  In all, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a film primarily defined by its political statement rather than political correctness, occasionally handled with a heavy hand, but mostly with great reverence for the Civil Rights Movement; using its genre - as an intimate drawing room comedy of errors - to bring a more relevant message to the big screen. Several key sequences have not aged since the movie’s release some fifty years ago; each addressing the issue of racial prejudice head on. The first such scene remains a tour de force for the trademarked Kate Hepburn audiences had come to know and love: forthright, no-nonsense and of very few minced words; herein addressing the faux empathy of her gallery manager, Hilary St. George (Virginia Christine), who has come to offer her ‘condolences’ over the pending union. 

Hepburn is in her element here, as Christina Drayton casually ejects St. George from her home and into a waiting convertible in the driveway, leaning in with a tight-lipped grin as she commands, “Now I have some instructions for you. I want you to go straight back to the gallery. Start your motor. When you get to the gallery tell Jennifer that she will be looking after things temporarily. She’s to give me a ring if there's anything she can't deal with herself. Then go into the office, and make out a check, for cash for the sum of $5,000. Then carefully, but carefully Hilary, remove absolutely everything that might subsequently remind me that you had ever been there, including that yellow thing with the blue bulbs which you have such an affection for. Then take the check, for $5,000, which I feel you deserve, and get - permanently – lost! It's not that I don't want to know you, Hilary - although I don't - it's just that I'm afraid we're not really the sort of people that you can afford to be associated with.”

Herein, William Rose’s screenplay gives us a prelude of the monumental platitudes yet to be expounded upon; the trick and the magic in the exercise being that none of what follows ever devolves into preachy sentimentalized tripe. The second great moment in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is the confrontation between John and his father. Isolated in Matt’s study, John Sr. attempts to clarify for his son the colossal mistake he is making, while outlining the sacrifices he and his mother have made John’s whole life to ensure his success, and doing more than implying John is about to dismantle all of their hard work on a romantic whim; pride owed his parents. In this pivotal sequence the balance of power repeatedly shifts from Roy E. Glenn’s portly figure with his embittered racism cutting both ways, to Sidney Poitier’s ever-growing displeasure at being condescendingly treated like a petulant child who does not know even his own mind; the scene reaching its critical mass as Poitier takes the reigns from his old man. In a shocking moment of revelation, John’s speech swerves to avoid any backlash of cruelty, crescendoing on a resuscitated declaration of familial warmth, tenderness, love and respect.

“You listen to me,” John sternly tells his father, “You say you don't want to tell me how to live my life. So what do you think you've been doing? You tell me what rights I've got or haven't got, and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you're supposed to do, because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don't own me! You can't tell me when or where I'm out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don't even know what I am, Dad. You don't know who I am. You don't know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life you will never understand. You are thirty years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believe the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you've got to get – off – my – back!” Herein, Poitier’s riveting benediction, complete with piercing eyes, a glowering brow, and clenched fists, miraculously surrenders to a crushing empathy as he continues, “Dad... Dad, you're my father. I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man. Now, I've got a decision to make, hmm? And I've got to make it alone, and I gotta make it in a hurry. So would you go out there and see after my mother?”

Kramer allows this scene to play in an uninterrupted two shot, the kinetic sparks of these polar perspectives on a black man’s ‘place’ in the eroding Caucasian power structure – nee, the changing world of tomorrow – made awkwardly apparent and perhaps even a tad unsettling to the average ticket buyer. Again, we must reconsider the era in which the picture was released; and with renewed reverence bow our heads to Stanley Kramer’s poetic license in crystalizing both the racial and generational gap for his audience within these relatively few lines of crackling monologue; the seemingly outrageous claim of racial equality made palpably acceptable. Kramer is, of course, working first, with exceptional material, and second, with an equally as extraordinary cast; the invisible ‘handshake’ between artistry and the artists selling it serving up some top-flight cinema magic with zero saccharine or faux incredulity.

Arguably, the most memorable moment in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner remains Spencer Tracy’s penultimate resolution of his struggle within. Earlier, Tracy’s Matt Drayton reasons that no matter how much the outside world’s attitudes toward racial equality are changing, he suspects nowhere is that gestalt more seismic than in the confines of his own living room at this particular moment. This statement cleverly kicks off what is ultimately Matt Drayton’s nearly ninety-minute treatise of intense soul search, culminating with the inevitable, if uniquely summarized conclusion; Matt’s stubbornness buffeted on all sides with contradicting opinions; receiving critical advice from both his best friend and spiritual advisor, Monsignor Ryan, who openly tells Matt he is ashamed of his inability to accept John, to Christina’s defiant declaration of “for what it’s worth, when she (Joanna) defies you, I’ll be on her side.” Yet, in this penultimate resolution to what Kramer and Tracy’s Matt affectionately refer to throughout the movie as ‘the problem’, there seems to be yet another tug o’ war at work; one that rings truer sentiments for the cast – particular Hepburn; all of whom are aware of Tracy’s grave and declining health. Yet, for nearly eight minutes Tracy commands the screen as few actors of any generation can; his air of certainty and confidence spellbinding.

“This has been a very strange day,” Tracy’s Matt begins, “I don’t think that’s putting it too strongly. I might even say it’s been an extraordinary day. I’ve been out there thinking about the day – the way it has gone – and it seems to me that now, I need to make a few personal statements; for a variety of reasons. The minute I walked into this house this afternoon, Miss Binx (the Drayton’s housemaid and cook, played with superb bitterness by Isobel Sanford) said to me ‘all hell done broke loose’. I asked her, naturally enough, what she meant by that and she said, ‘you’ll see’…and, I did. Then after some preliminary guessing games, a which I was never very good at, it was explained to me by my daughter that she intended to get married…and that her intended was a young man, whom I had never met, who happened to be a Negro. Well, I think it’s fair to say that I responded to this news in a manner that any father would respond to it, unless of course, his daughter also happened to be a Negro too. In a word, I was flabbergasted.” The impetus in Matt’s summation; basically a recap of the movie’s entire plot, is brilliantly diffused by William Rose’s superb writing style; the infusion of an ingenious streak of screwball comedy, completely given over to Spencer Tracy’s glib eloquence as Matt addresses virtually every participant one on one.

“And while I was still being flabbergasted I was informed by my daughter, a very determined young woman – much like her mother – that the marriage was on no matter what her mother or I might feel about it. It became clear we had one day to make up our minds how we felt about this situation. So, what happened? My wife, typically enough, decided to simply ignore every practical aspect of the situation and was carried away in some kind of romantic haze which made her, in my view, totally inaccessible to anything in the way of reason. Now I have not as yet referred to his Reverence who began by forcing his way into this situation and then insulting my intelligence by mouthing three hundred platitudes and ending just a half hour ago by coming to my room and challenging me to a wrestling match. Now, Mr. Prentice, clearly a most reasonable man, says he has no wish to offend me but wants to know if I'm some kind of a nut. And Mrs. Prentice says that. like her husband. I'm a burned-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it's like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And strange as it seems, that's the first statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue... because I think you're wrong, you're as wrong as you can be.”

From this moment forward, Rose’s miraculous prose take on an almost Shakespearean timber, made palpable by Tracy’s immeasurable gift to take even the most moralizing bits and transform them into a celebration of paternal love. “I admit that I hadn't considered it, hadn't even thought about it, but I know exactly how he feels about her and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that you son feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina. Old- yes. Burned-out- certainly, but I can tell you the memories are still there- clear, intact, indestructible, and they'll be there if I live to be a hundred and ten. Where John made his mistake, I think, was in attaching so much importance to what her mother and I might think. Because in the final analysis it doesn't matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel - for each other. And if it's half of what we felt… that's everything.”

The movie’s centrally themed race-relations takes the proverbial backseat to this unscripted exchange between Tracy and Hepburn; his heavy brow unexpectedly elevated with a look of complete acquiescence, her eyes welling up with a fountain of uncontrollable tears. Arguably, it is this real-life couple and their fictional counterparts who have always been at the crux of our story, and our enduring love affair with the movie itself. Indeed, Kramer seems to be heavily relying on the old Tracy/Hepburn screen chemistry, yet even moreso to carry the middle act of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; particularly in the scene where Matt frustratingly urges Christina to indulge him in an escapist outing to the local ice cream drive-in, only to be confronted by the disharmonious sounds of youth and a belligerent black teen (D'Urville Martin), into whose roadster Matt unintentionally backs. The rest of Matt’s concluding speech to the young aspiring newlyweds is mostly in support of the Civil Rights Movement; Kramer and Rose running just a tad too long and obnoxious on the obvious challenges facing an interracial couple in 1967. Thankfully, Kramer shifts from the severity of these adjuncts back to the featherweight comfortableness of comedy as Matt leans back to inquire, “Tillie, when the hell are we going to get some dinner?”: the ensemble retiring to the dining room, presumably to mull the matter a little further, mercifully, out of the audience’s earshot.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner begins with John and Joanna’s plane landing at the airport; the pair taking a cab to Christina’s chichi art gallery in downtown San Francisco.  Alas, Christina is not around and the couple attended by her second in command, Hilary St. George, who feigns congeniality that quickly devolves into a tight-lipped grimace of disapproval after they have gone. Arriving home, John and Joanna are greeted by housemaid, Matilda ‘Tillie’ Binx, who wastes no time objecting to John’s unassuming ability to fit into this ‘white, upper class’ setting. Shortly, Tillie will voice her displeasure over the union, first to Joanna, then Christina and finally Matt – the last to arrive home en route to a golf game with Monsignor Ryan. Stanley Kramer and William Rose’s screenplay interjects a fairly absurd moment here; John becoming momentarily distracted by the sultry glances of Tillie’s kitchen helper, Dorothy (Barbara Randolph), indulging in a few steps of the Watusi with the decidedly white-bred delivery boy (Skip Martin). Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner never intentionally misfires, but in these few moments it comes dangerously close to succumbing to a sort of rank silliness unbecoming the rest of its socially conscious and progressive storytelling. Tilly corners John in an upstairs bedroom, making it perfectly clear she is not about to let him intrude on the Drayton’s serenity without a fight. Joanna encourages John to use the study to phone his father and tell him about her; Joanna isolating Christina – newly arrived from the gallery – to explain the poignant tale of how she and John met. Christina’s initial reaction to meeting John in the flesh is fairly priceless; her elation over the engagement turned to awkward disbelief as Sidney Poitier’s dark features appear from behind the study’s closed door and fill the screen.  Christina maintains her composure, but her initial reception is decidedly chilly. The mood turns more comedic with Matt’s arrival; Spencer Tracy playing the moment with an obtuse misunderstanding as to why John is there, before discovering the truth.

From here, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner momentarily devolves into a series of isolated contemplation; Matt and Christina forced to consider their daughter’s marriage plans and render either a harsh verdict or acceptance within only a few short hours; John and Joanna planning to fly away together and wed in Geneva. Prior to the couple’s brief departure to meet up with another engaged couple; Peter (Tom Heaton) and Judith (Grace Gaynor), John makes it clear to Christina and Matt, should their decision be to oppose the marriage he will quietly bow out of Joanna’s life for good – despite being in love with her. It is a noble, if utterly flawed gesture and only serving to further complicate Matt’s abject refusal. Adding to this proverbial fly in the ointment is Monsignor Ryan’s giddy joy over the news; encouraging Matt to step back and take a more clear-eyed view of the changing world all around them. John is exceedingly reluctant to divulge Joanna’s race to his father over the telephone; revealing only that he has met a girl with whom he plans to become more seriously involved. In reply to this ‘good news’ John’s father elects to fly out to Frisco; Joanna seizing upon the opportunity to invite the Prentices to dinner. The initial shock of Mary and John Sr. after being introduced to this willful, if plucky, white girl is compounded by John Sr.’s bitter refusal to condone even the prospect his son might be genuinely in love with Joanna. Meeting Matt and Christina merely exacerbates this blow; Christina attempting to glean a little compassion from Mary Prentice while Matt and John Sr. hammer out the perceived difficulties as potential in-laws in their own way.

In the middle of this mess is Monsignor Ryan, who maintains his sense of compassion and respect for the ‘happy couple’ already begun to consider the conundrum their engagement has created for all concerned. Ultimately, Matt comes to his own revelation about the marriage; that it matters not whether any of them disapprove because, in the final analysis, love is really the only answer to the many questions everyone has for Joanna and John. Matt’s summation of the day’s events is poignantly rendered; Christina and Mary in cahoots with his sound reasoning and Matt determined to work on John Sr.’s lingering apprehensions over dinner. Viewed today, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’s 'love is colorblind' social critique remains timely and tied to the Civil Rights Movement, and yet refreshingly perennial at a time and place still struggling to overcome its checkered race relations past. William Rose’s screenplay offers us an honest – if marginally genteel look at racism from both sides; the specter challenged and almost, though not entirely, defeated in the final reel; the marriage destined to unsettle the status quo, but ultimately have come to redefine the demographic of the traditional American family these many decades since. It must be pointed out, the glue keeping this enterprise together for its first two acts – and arguably, even its third – is the old Tracy/Hepburn star magic. Without it, Stanley Kramer is left with just a heavy-handed critique, superficially quelled by William Rose’s thin veneer of comedic genius.

Sidney Poitier is, of course, magnificent as John, his best moment coming late in the picture in the aforementioned confrontation with his father. But his exchanges with Katherine Houghton are homogenized, distantly playful and antiseptically naïve. Even if Joanna Drayton cannot see the issues their romance is about to spark, John ought to be more significantly aware of the brewing subtext and chords of dissention.  But the screenplay never shares any of these more frank and realistic debates with the audience. What we know of Joanna and John’s love affair we get in idealized snippets and sound bytes played almost entirely for their comedic value. As in the scene where Christina awkwardly begins, then withdraws, from her inquiry about the couple’s sexual relationship; Joanna attacking the issue head on by admitting she and John have not slept together, adding “He wouldn’t”, the inference, of course being ‘she would!’ In the final analysis, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is supremely satisfying as both a time capsule and a still relevant piece of art imitating life, and thoroughly rife for cultural debate. At once, it illustrates how far America has come and renews just how much further there is yet to go.

A bit of head scratching going on at the old homestead these days with regards to Sony’s commitment to Blu-ray – first, for instigating their ‘Choice Collector’s Series’ on burn-on-demand Blu-ray (rather than legitimately authored discs) and second, for their re-re-re-issuing of movies we already own in multiple ‘region free’ discs, adding virtually no new content or upgrades to the transfers. That said, we can tip our hats to this Blu-ray from Sony (previously made available in Europe by Sony, in the U.K. by Indicator; in North America as a ‘limited edition’ via Twilight Time, and finally, as a ‘legit’ Sony mainstream release under their own label on this side of the pond).  If you already own any of the aforementioned incarnations of this timely classic then there really is no good reason to repurchase this disc. The 50^th Anniversary is identical to the 40^th Anniversary Euro release and TT’s ‘limited edition’ with one minor caveat (we lose TT’s isolate score track). And while nothing has been done to ‘improve’ upon the transfer quality, quite honestly, there was nothing all that wrong with it. So, Sony is up to their usual high standards and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner in 1080p looks marvelous!

A clarification: this disc is not perfect; derived from older archived elements with occasional fluctuations in color density.  Detail toggles between razor-sharp to slightly soft focused. Grain ranges from moderate to light and looks indigenous to its source. Flesh tones occasionally lean toward an unnatural orange pallor but not obtrusively so. Everything tightens up as it should and colors in general pop with remarkable vibrancy. Christina’s red scarf, as example, is blood-red. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a studio-bound production for the most part. Under controlled lighting conditions colors are very bold and fully saturated.The few actual exteriors shot in San Francisco exhibit exceptional clarity. Blu-ray’s overall clarity reveals the shortcomings of Kramer’s stage-bound sets designed by Robert Clatworthy; unconvincing as they try to mimic the breathtaking panorama of the city from the Drayton’s balcony view with a rather cartoony Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Contrast is superb. There are still one or two minute hints of age-related dirt and extremely light scratches; minimal but present nonetheless. The DTS 5.1 audio greatly benefits Frank De Vol’s score, dialogue sounding impressively natural too. Extras are mostly ported over from Sony’s 40th Anniversary DVD; everything remastered in hi-def; a two part documentary on the making of the movie with interviews from Katherine Houghton and Stanley Kramer’s widow, Karen – among others; introductions from Tom Brokaw, Karen Kramer and Steven Spielberg; a solid documentary on Stanley Kramer’s search for truth, as well as his 2007 Producer’s Guild acceptance speech, plus a photo gallery and theatrical trailer.  Bottom line: if you don’t already own this one you should. TT’s version has been available for more than two years and the Euro imports are everywhere for the asking, begging the question why Sony should now endeavor to re-re-reissue Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner under their own banner. So, very highly recommended if you don’t already own it. Skip if you do.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

4