“I don’t make films to win prizes. I make films to make films.” – Norman Jewison

Toronto-born Norman Frederick Jewison served in the Canadian Royal Navy before studying at the University of Toronto, graduating with a liberal arts degree in 1949. He moved to London, working as a bit-part actor and scriptwriter for the BBC and supplementing his inadequate income with a variety of odd jobs.

When he returned to Canada in late 1951 he was offered work as a production trainee as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation prepared for the start-up of CBC Television. By the end of his first year Norman Jewison was an assistant producer and he wrote, directed and produced, musicals, comedies and dramas over the next seven years before moving to NBC, New York in 1958. There he took over responsibility for the American television show Your Hit Parade and when it ended in 1959, he directed television specials.

The television production that proved pivotal to Jewison’s career was the Judy Garland “comeback” special that aired in 1961, which included Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and led to a weekly show that Jewison was later called in to direct. Visiting the studio during rehearsal for the special, actor Tony Curtis suggested to Jewison that he should direct a feature film.

Damon Runyan wrote a story, Little Miss Marker, about a little girl held as collateral against a gambling debt. In 1934 it was made into a film starring Shirley Temple (in her major motion picture debut). Tony Curtis was decided to star in a remake (it had been remade once before as Sorrowful Jones, 1949) and engaged Norman Jewison as the director. Curtis played a casino manager who must take care of a five-year-old girl named Penny Piper (Claire Wilcox), which includes a trip to Disneyland.; this was the first time a company other than Disney had been allowed to film there. Claire Wilcox, playing the five-year-old girl was tricked into crying on camera when Norman Jewison calmly announced that her dog had died. The subject of the film, gambling, caused problems, when they were shooting in Las Vegas the set designer lost so much at a casino that he had to mortgage his house, Phil Silvers, playing the mob boss, Bernie. had a real-life gambling addiction and lost over $50,000.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times offered his opinion of Jewison’s first film: ” 40 Pounds of Trouble is a witless remake of a Runyon Story… Blunt promotion, thin humor fill script… The trouble with 40 Pounds of Trouble is that it is just too hackneyed and dull.”

Distributors Universal must have found something to like about the film as they signed Norman Jewison to direct three more films for the studio, including a pair of Doris Day comedies, The Thrill of It All (1963) and Send Me No Flowers (1964).

Norman Jewison wanted to do more than direct light-hearted comedies. He got the chance when he was brought in to replace Sam Peckinpah on a film that had already started production.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965) tells the story of Eric “The Kid” Stoner (Steve McQueen), a young Depression-era poker player, as he seeks to establish his reputation as the best. This quest leads him to challenge Lancey “The Man” Howard (Edward G Robinson), an older player widely considered to be the best, culminating in a climactic final poker hand between the two.

Peckinpah’s version was to be shot in black-and-white to give the film a 1930s period feel. Jewison scrapped the black-and-white footage, feeling it was a mistake to shoot a film with the red and black of playing cards in greyscale. He did mute the colours throughout, both to evoke the period and to help pop the card colours when they appeared. Norman Jewison considers this film one of his personal favourites because it was his first challenging drama.

Norman Jewison produced his next film as well as directing. The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) which depicts the chaos following the grounding of the Soviet submarine ????? (pronounced “sproot” and meaning “octopus”) off a small New England island during the Cold War. Jewison felt that doing “a plea for coexistence, or the absurdity of international conflict was important right at that moment”. While reaction to Russians was positive, Jewison was labelled as “a Canadian pinko” by right-wing commentators.

Although the setting is New England filming took place on the coast of Northern California, mainly in Mendocino. Norman Jewison decided to shoot the “sunrises” over the water at a precise moment just before dusk, after the sun was set over the Pacific, and did his best to augment pink colours in the final print. The film had a profound impact on both American and Soviet leaders. It is one of the few films mentioned in the Congressional record. Norman Jewison was also personally invited to Moscow, where he reported that the Russian crowd was transfixed by the scene featuring the little boy who falls from the bell tower, and the Soviets and Americans cooperate to save him.

The film was nominated for foour Academy Awards, including Best Picture for producer/director Norman Jewison and Best Actor for Alan Arkin in his first credited feature film role,

Having produced a comedy about Russians on American soil at the height of the Cold War Norman Jewison again provoked controversy with his angry, anti-racist mystery drama set in the Deep South, In the Heat of the Night (1967). Sidney Poitier played the black homicide detective arrested while waiting for a train who is asked by the local police chief (Rod Steiger) for his help in solving a local murder.

Sidney Poitier insisted that the movie be filmed in the North because of an incident in which he and Harry Belafonte were almost killed by Ku Klux Klansmen during a visit to Mississippi. That’s why Sparta, Illinois, was chosen for location filming. Nevertheless, the filmmakers and actors did venture briefly into Tennessee for the outdoor scenes at the cotton plantation, because there was no similar cotton plantation in Illinois that could be used. Poitier slept with a gun under his pillow during production in Tennessee. He did receive threats from local racist thugs, so the shoot was cut short and production returned to Illinois.

In the scene where Detective Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) is slapped by Endicott (Larry Gates), Norman Jewison had Gates slap him in rehearsal to ensure that Gates could slap hard enough. The scene was shot in two takes. Potier claims that his retaliatory slap of Endicott was not in the original script nor in the novel on which the film is based. Poitier insisted that Tibbs slap Endicott back and wanted a guarantee that the scene would appear in all prints of the film. According to Stirling Silliphant who wrote the screenplay, the slap was in the original script, though not in the novel. n a San Francisco pre-screening, Jewison was concerned when the young audience was laughing at the film as if it were a comedy. The audience’s stunned reaction to the slapping scene convinced Jewison that the film was effective as drama. That scene helped make the film so popular for audiences, finally seeing the top black film actor physically strike back against bigotry, that the film earned the nickname, Super-spade Versus the Rednecks.[11] During the film’s initial run, Steiger and Poitier occasionally went to the Capitol Theatre in New York to amuse themselves seeing how many black and white audience members there were, which could be immediately ascertained by listening to the former cheering Tibbs’s retaliatory slap and the latter whispering “Oh!” in astonishment

Tragically and ironically the shooting of civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 delayed the Academy Awards for two days from April 8 to April 10, 1968 when In the Heat of the Night was awarded Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium and, for Rod Steiger, the Best Actor Oscar.

Norman Jewison produced his next film, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), re-uniting with star Steve McQueen. Both had seen a film from Expo 67, Christopher Chapman’s “multi-dynamic image technique” using production, A Place To Stand. McQueen especially was impressed and, post-production, persuaded Norman Jewisontoincorporate the technique into the film, inserting the scenes into the already finished product.

The film was moderately successful at the box office, grossing $14 million on a $4.3 million budget. Reviews at the time were mixed. Critics praised the chemistry between McQueen and Dunaway and Norman Jewison’s stylish direction but considered the plotting and writing rather thin. The Thomas Crown Affair won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for The Windmills of Your Mind by Michel Legrand (music), Marilyn Bergman and Alan Bergman (lyrics). It was also nominated for Original Music Score.

Norman Jewison then turned his attention to adaptations of Broadway musicals: Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Fiddler was shot at Pinewood, England and in Yugoslavia as Jewison, had become disenchanted with the political climate in the United States and moved with his family to England. Superstar was filmed in Israel where he also filmed a Western, Billy Two Hats (1974) with Gregory Peck.

Superstar was controversial for its religious subject matter, Rollerball (1975) was criticised in some quarters for its violence but the film game was so realistic that the cast, extras, and stunt personnel played it between takes on the set. Audiences who saw the film so loved the action of the game that Jewison was contacted multiple times by promoters, requesting that the “rights to the game” be sold so that real Rollerball leagues might be formed. Jewison was outraged, as the entire point of the movie was to show the “sickness and insanity of contact sports and their allure.”

In 1978 Norman Jewison moved back to North America, this time settling in the Caledon area in Ontario. His filmmaking activities were coordinated between bases in Toronto and Californa. He made …And Justice for All (1979) with Al Pacino, directed Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn in the romantic comedy Best Friends (1982), and he produced The Dogs of War (1981) and Iceman (1984). Returning to his In the Heat of Night theme of racial tension he made A Soldier’s Story (1984), based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play,

A Soldier’s Story is about a black officer sent to investigate the murder of a black sergeant in Louisiana near the end of World War II. It is a story about racism in a segregated regiment of the U.S Army commanded by white officers and training in the Jim Crow South, in a time and place where a black officer is unprecedented and bitterly resented by nearly everyone.

Norman Jewison and many of the cast members worked for scale or less under a tight budget with Columbia Pictures. “No one really wanted to make this movie… a black story, it was based on World War II, and those themes were not popular at the box office”, according to Jewison. The film was shot in Arkansas, Bill Clinton (then Governor of the state) dropped by during the shooting. He became very enthused about the project and later helped by providing the Arkansas Army National Guard in full regalia for a grand scene since Jewison could not afford to pay an army of extras. The film cost $6 million and grossed nearly $22 million domestically. It received three Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Adolph Caesar), Best Adapted Screenplay (Charles Fuller) and Best Picture

Moonstruck (1987) starred Cher in a rom-com about a widowed, 37-year-old, Italian-American woman who falls in love with her fiancé’s estranged, hot-tempered younger brother. Both Anne Bancroft and Maureen Stapleton were considered for the part of Cher’s mother but their fees were too much for the budget. Casting director Howard Feuer knew of the long-established character actress Olympia Dukakis and recommended her to Norman Jewison. She read for him and was hired on the spot. Olympia Dukakis went on to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this film

Norman Jewison has stated that the climactic kitchen sequence was the most difficult scene that he ever shot in his career. The crew were dismissed and Jewison rehearsed with the cast for some time, using a stage production approach. Only after the actors perfected their timing did he decide where to put the camera. That caused Jewison to be fined by the actors’ union for not allowing his actors to go to lunch until they perfected the moods of their characters. Cher may not be too worried though, as well as Moonstruck winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards she picked up the Best Actress Oscar. It was also the third film for which Norman Jewison was nominated for Best Director

For the next decade Jewison continued to direct feature films released by major studios: In Country (1989), a drama concerned with Vietnam veterans and the daughter of a war casualty; Other People’s Money (1991), a social comedy about greed in the 1980s; Only You (1994), a romantic comedy set in Italy; and Bogus (1996), a fantasy about a young boy and his imaginary friend. He also served as producer for the film January Man (1989), executive producer for the Canadian movie Dance Me Outside, and branched back into television both as director and producer, including the series The Rez (1996–1998).

returning to his examination of racism Norman Jewison directed Denzel Washington in The Hurricane (1999) telling the story of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who had been falsely convicted for a triple murder in New Jersey during the mid-1960s Jewison got interested in a “Hurricane” Carter biopic in 1992. Armyan Bernstein purchased the filming rights through Beacon Pictures and went on to write the first scripts.

Filming began on November 1998, with locations in both New Jersey – East Jersey State Prison in Trenton and the cities of Avenel and Paterson – and Toronto. Two weeks before its opening in North America, a premiere for The Hurricane was held at the Mann Village Theater in Los Angeles. Many of the depicted people were in attendance. When asked about being portrayed by Denzel Washington, Rubin Carter replied that “I didn’t know I was that good-looking.” Denzel Washington won a Best Actor Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar

Norman Jewison’s last film was the thriller The Statement (2003) with Michael Caine as a Vichy French police official, who was indicted after World War II for war crimes. The film was a commercial flop and opinion on Roten Tomatoes is that “The movie bores despite a splendid performance by Michael Caine.”

“I still get a lot of material but I find that as one gets older you get more fussy. You know you’re going to spend a year or a year and a half on this and you know there are only so many films in you so you get a little bit more selective.” – Norman Jewison

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