I agree that after 37 years this film is dated, but it's still interesting, and the ensemble performances are excellent. That moving speech by Spencer Tracy makes me puddle up every time. Roy Glenn had the finest speaking voice ever heard on film.
Here are my quibbles: Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were both marvelous in their parts, but way too old-looking to play the parents of a 23-year-old. They were and looked older than the parents of Sidney Poitier's character, who was 37! (The wonderful Beah Richards, who like Angela Lansbury often played older parts, was only a few years older than Poitier!) For Tracy to tell Cecil Kellaway (who gave a delightful performance) that black Americans won't be accepted in Kellaway's lifetime and not even in his (Tracy's) was ludicrious. Tracy was at death's door, and it showed. Kellaway may have been older than Tracy but was obviously healthier. I also thought it rather presumptious of Katherine Houghton to say that Poitier's parents could afford to fly to Europe for the wedding, just because they flew to San Francisco to L.A. Europe is a long way from California and involves a lot more air fare.
I wanted to address some of the comments made by another reviewer below. I found it interesting that one of the other reviewers felt it wasn't realistic for Roy Glenn's character to be completely against his son marrying a white woman. This may come as a shock to you, but prejudice works both ways. It's not the exclusive domain of WASPs. Black families don't rejoice at the thought of intermarriage, and my guess would be that American Indians, Asians, Hawaiians, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, or any other group who want to retain their ethnicity don't like it much either. I don't think anyone is comfortable with the thought of their descendants, having evolved into a completely different ethnic heritage than the original ancestors (i.e., from black to white, from Asian to white, from white to Middle Eastern, etc.,) sitting around the table talking about how much they dislike the people of the same culture as their ancestors.
Regarding class, I feel the producers *shouldn't* have made this a big issue. The doctor, despite his modest upbringin, was now wealthy, and Joey's character had grown up with money. Tracy and Hepburn weren't worried about Poitier not being able to support their daughter in the manner to which she was accustomed. That was the least of their problems. The wedding announcements in the New York Times show plenty of marriages between women whose mothers are school headmistresses and fathers who are inventors and artists and men who are corporate VPs and attorneys but whose mothers sell girdles at Macy's and whose fathers are bus drivers. What's important was that the parents know how to carry themselves, know how to speak, and can walk into a mansion and feel like they belong there, as opposed to coming in dressed inappropriately, saying "dese" and "dose," and stare open-mouthed at their surroundings. Glenn and Richards were the picture of elegance and decorum.
Here are my quibbles: Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were both marvelous in their parts, but way too old-looking to play the parents of a 23-year-old. They were and looked older than the parents of Sidney Poitier's character, who was 37! (The wonderful Beah Richards, who like Angela Lansbury often played older parts, was only a few years older than Poitier!) For Tracy to tell Cecil Kellaway (who gave a delightful performance) that black Americans won't be accepted in Kellaway's lifetime and not even in his (Tracy's) was ludicrious. Tracy was at death's door, and it showed. Kellaway may have been older than Tracy but was obviously healthier. I also thought it rather presumptious of Katherine Houghton to say that Poitier's parents could afford to fly to Europe for the wedding, just because they flew to San Francisco to L.A. Europe is a long way from California and involves a lot more air fare.
I wanted to address some of the comments made by another reviewer below. I found it interesting that one of the other reviewers felt it wasn't realistic for Roy Glenn's character to be completely against his son marrying a white woman. This may come as a shock to you, but prejudice works both ways. It's not the exclusive domain of WASPs. Black families don't rejoice at the thought of intermarriage, and my guess would be that American Indians, Asians, Hawaiians, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, or any other group who want to retain their ethnicity don't like it much either. I don't think anyone is comfortable with the thought of their descendants, having evolved into a completely different ethnic heritage than the original ancestors (i.e., from black to white, from Asian to white, from white to Middle Eastern, etc.,) sitting around the table talking about how much they dislike the people of the same culture as their ancestors.
Regarding class, I feel the producers *shouldn't* have made this a big issue. The doctor, despite his modest upbringin, was now wealthy, and Joey's character had grown up with money. Tracy and Hepburn weren't worried about Poitier not being able to support their daughter in the manner to which she was accustomed. That was the least of their problems. The wedding announcements in the New York Times show plenty of marriages between women whose mothers are school headmistresses and fathers who are inventors and artists and men who are corporate VPs and attorneys but whose mothers sell girdles at Macy's and whose fathers are bus drivers. What's important was that the parents know how to carry themselves, know how to speak, and can walk into a mansion and feel like they belong there, as opposed to coming in dressed inappropriately, saying "dese" and "dose," and stare open-mouthed at their surroundings. Glenn and Richards were the picture of elegance and decorum.