Guess Who's Coming To Dinner Analysis

Laura Wisenbaker
Niki Cox
English 101

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner The film is about a woman and man who are telling their parents they are going to get married. It is an interracial couple in 1967. At a time when black people were still fighting for their rights. Some Brief Words on the Legal and Social Situation Concerning Biracial Couples in 1960’s America: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner came out in 1967, which was also the year that the United States Supreme Court ruled in a case called Loving v. Virginia that all laws which banned interracial marriages violated the United States Constitution. In fact, until that year, over 15 states still had statutes which prohibited a black and white person from getting married! The Loving case reflected
And as this film showed, even among socially liberal people who lived in such cities as San Francisco, the idea of a black and white person getting married was still shocking. Miss Hepburn takes the news rather well ("Just let me sit down a moment and I 'll be all right"), but Tracy has his doubts. Although he is a liberal newspaper publisher and a crusader against prejudice, he doesn 't want to be hurried into making up his mind. And that 's the trouble. Poitier has to catch the 10 p.m. flight to Geneva, you see, so Tracy has to decide before then.
It also shows how the blacks felt about the situation. The maid let her thoughts be known and so did the Irish Monsignor. The maid Tilly right from the beginning was disapproving and suspicious. She said he was getting above himself. She even confronted him in the bedroom and told him she was watching him and he better not hurt the girl or the family. The Monsignor on the other hand was delighted in the whole thing. He approved right away and was very happy for the couple. He loved antagonizing the girls’ parents, but in a nice
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... cause I think you 're wrong, you 're as wrong as you can be. 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 110. 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. As for you two and the problems you 're going to have, they seem almost unimaginable, but you 'll have no problem with me, and I think when Christina and I and your mother have some time to work on him you 'll have no problem with your father, John. But you do know, I 'm sure you know what you 're up