A film director who can work with different genres touching on many facets of life is a chameleon. One of these film directors is Norman Jewison. Alive today aged 97, Jewison is a living treasure who has worked with talent across multiple generations in films that remain landmarks in filmmaking. He talked about racial matters, political follies, and traditional moments in life under a comic umbrella. Jewison was a particular mainstream director who also kept his independence and avoided getting caught up in the Hollywood glam that would also spit out A-list directors who ended their careers earlier.
Opening Takes
Norman Jewison was born in 1927 in Toronto, Canada. In contrast to his last name, he is not Jewish but was raised a Protestant. As a kid, he became interested in theatre and would attend college as a writer and director of amateur productions. After graduating, Jewison moved to London as a part-time writer and actor for the BBC before returning to Canada and getting work as an assistant director for the newly established Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC. He wrote, directed, and produced numerous shows that got the attention of executives for NBC in New York who subsequently hired him. Working with Andy Williams, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Gleason, and July Garland, Jewison developed a positive reputation that led to Tony Curtis hiring him to direct his first feature film, 40 Pounds of Trouble, in 1962.
Jewison’s first movies were comedies. After he directed the Rock Hudson-Doris Day vehicle Send Me No Flowers in 1964, Jewison sought to get into more serious ground and made his breakthrough with The Cincinnati Kid starring Steve McQueen in 1965. The Cold War satire followed this up, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming in 1966 with Alan Arkin and Carl Reiner, which resulted in four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. It was the first Oscar nomination for Jewison, who was the producer. There would be more nominations coming, but it would come from much more serious material.
Studying The Racial Divide
After he served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the latter half of the Second World War, Jewison traveled to the American South. Encountering the Jim Crow laws and witnessing open segregation influenced the director to make stories that combated such prejudice. His chance came with In The Heat Of The Night (1967), the story about a Philadelphia cop (Sidney Poitier) coming through a Mississippi town and being forced to work with a racist sheriff (Rod Steiger) to investigate a murder. It was a story in the thick of the Civil Rights movement where racial views remained even after laws that abolished segregation were enacted. Jewison’s touch, however, made it more accepted by audiences who would not be as interested in more serious subjects.
In The Heat Of The Night won five Oscars, including Best Picture, while Jewison was nominated for Best Director. The ceremony was delayed by two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Two more films by Jewison returned to the subject of racism. First, another Best Picture nominee, A Soldier’s Story (1984), is about a Black JAG Officer who investigates the murder of a Black soldier in Jim Crow Louisiana, and then in 1999 with The Hurricane. It told the true story of boxer Rubin Carter (Denzel Washington), who is falsely convicted of murder and gets help to fight for his freedom with the help of Canadian activists who see his conviction based on racial profiling.
Gift Of Tone
Jewison’s experience in musicals from TV, namely Judy Garland’s comeback special in 1961, allowed him to direct two notable films: Fiddler on The Roof (1971) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). For Fiddler, a musical set in 1900s Russia with themes of anti-Semitism it would mean more Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Lead Actor (the enchanting Topal), and winning three. He went from Judaism to Christianity for Superstar, adapting the acclaimed rock opera from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, but did not have the same acclaim as Fiddler did.
Other genres were touched on by Jewison. 1975’s Rollerball was a science-fiction dystopia drama starring James Caan that told about a future with a violent sport controlled by computers and run by corporations where death is part of the game. Next, came 1978’s F.I.S.T., a labor union crime drama with Sylvester Stallone and Rod Steiger loosely based on the Teamsters and their former disappeared leader, Jimmy Hoffa. Jewison returned to the religious film drama in 1985 with Agnes of God, set in a convent in Quebec, Canada. After a nun (Meg Tilly) suddenly gives birth to a stillborn child and claims her pregnancy was from an immaculate form, a psychologist (Jane Fonda) investigates to see if the nun is mentally fit for trial.
Heart Of Charm
In between, Jewison would go back to comedies with films like Gaily, Gaily (1969), …And Justice For All (1981), Best Friends (1982), and Other People’s Money (1991). But it was in 1987’s Moonstruck that Jewison struck gold with this Italian-American tale of a widow (Cher) being wooed by a one-handed opera aficionado (Nicholas Cage). Cher and Olympia Dukakis took acting Oscars in addition to Best Original Screenplay while also being nominated for Picture and Director for Jewison. His last films were the HBO teleplay Dinner With Friends in 2001 and The Statement with Michael Caine in 2003.
Rooted in his native Canada, Jewison left Hollywood for London in the late 60s due to its politics and then returned to Toronto a decade later. In 1988, Jewison opened the Canadian Film Centre, a film school that helped new writers, directors, and producers get involved with establishing their careers and starting new projects for multiple production outlets. Jewison is Chair Emeritus of the CFC. Having never won a competitive Oscar, Jewison was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1999 and later the Director’s Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.
Norman Jewison’s range of work is legendary and more than daring to try serious topics while also fading back to more lighthearted movies. The quality was consistent from his days on TV in the 1950s to the 2000s upon retirement, completing a filmography equal to other legends of Hollywood. His autobiography, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, tells of how he was able to work within the system, give behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and keep his creative freedom to have such a roaring success.
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