In Films from ‘High Noon’ to ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,’ a Firebrand Who Stirred Consciences — and Controversy
By Gregory N. Joseph
STANLEY KRAMER, whom Steven Spielberg called “an incredibly talented visionary,” made some of the most important and influential “message” films in Hollywood history — but Kramer hated that word and vehemently refused to be labeled as such.
But how else would you describe a filmmaker responsible for such works as “Inherit the Wind,” “Judgment at Nuremberg,” “The Caine Mutiny,” “Home of the Brave,” “The Defiant Ones,” “The Men,” “High Noon,” “On the Beach” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”?
Even his cleverly frenzied epic comedy “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” the latter featuring a cornucopia of the top comic talents of the day, might be classified as a message film about greed.
In May of 1983, I profiled Kramer (1913–2001) and served as the host of “An Evening With” him for a live stage event and screening of “On the Beach” in San Diego’s Balboa Park sponsored by the local film society.
A half dozen years before, he had spurned Hollywood and moved to Bellevue, Wash., to begin, as he put it,”making movies the way I used to … and want to.” From 1980–96, he also wrote a column for The Seattle Times.
But about this message thing.
After all, he produced or directed 23 actors in Oscar-nominated performances — and Gary Cooper, Katharine Hepburn, Jose Ferrer and Maximillian Schell won.
“I don’t believe in message films and never did,” he insisted, referring to them instead as movies that “say something.”
Kramer, never once to mince words, thought many films of the day — citing as a prime example Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” a Vietnam War epic based on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” — as unsuccessful because they didn’t, in his opinion, have a clear message (there’s that word again) to convey to audiences.
“I grew up in an era of great social change,” he explained, “and I thought entertainment would take its definition from the things that were happening during that time, which were very exciting.
“I think it’s the responsibility of the producer or director to make a piece of material which is entertaining and provocative out of that background.
“I never said to myself, ‘This is something that’s good for people to know about,’ or ‘This is the message.’ I always figured it would be dramatic and it was what I believed at the time, and so I did it. Sometimes it was judged harshly and sometimes people objected when it wasn’t done well.
“(But) people don’t object to message pictures — that includes the exhibitors and distributors — they object to message movies that don’t make money. There’s a big difference.
“Columbia didn’t want to make ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ — Katharine Hepburn and I had to put up our salaries in lieu of life insurance for Spence (Spencer Tracy), who couldn’t be insured (the actor was in ill health during shooting of the movie and died of a heart attack three weeks after its completion). But I suppose with the grosses they received ($86 million), Columbia was very happy with it.”
Kramer acknowledged that he had attended two dozen retrospectives of “On the Beach” in the last six months, including ours.
He attributed that to the renewed debate over the nuclear arms race at the time. He said he was asked to do a remake of the film not long before our talk, but refused because the movie had appeared so often on television and “other films on the general subject are being made all the time.”
The film, released in 1959, an adaptation of Nevil Shute’s novel starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astaire, is a story about Australians who are awaiting the effects of a nuclear explosion that has destroyed the rest of the world.
The movie seemed to be well ahead of its time, but Kramer rejected that theory, and not because of false modesty.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s always dangerous to say something is ahead of its time,” he said. “Because of all the nuclear meetings that have been happening, ‘On the Beach’ has been in demand — suddenly there’s been a resurgence of about 25 occasions in the last six months.
“Frankly, I’m alarmed to look at something that’s almost 25 years old and to see the shortcomings of the producer and the director of the film, both of which I was (he especially disliked a shot at the end of the film showing a religious reference on a banner and called it ‘too much’).
“It’s like standing naked in front of an audience, particularly a contemporary audience of students, film buffs and so forth.
“But almost all of it is worth it, when you get a reaction to Fred Astaire’s line, when he says, ‘We’ve finally come up with a weapon … we’ve managed to destroy ourselves.’ That brings down the house all the time and that was 25 years ago.
“When one talks about being ahead of one’s time, I think that was in its time, proper. We were worried very much about nuclear weapons then. And I remember the arguments where some people said, ‘How could radioactive dust travel all over the world?’ Well, after Mount St. Helens here, the ash went as far as Europe — that was just from a volcano.
“Also, at that time (during the filming of ‘On the Beach’), we went to some of the people in Washington, D.C., and asked to borrow a nuclear submarine to photograph outside of Pearl Harbor. But they didn’t give us a submarine.
“They said I took myself too seriously, that if there were a nuclear holocaust, there might be 500 or 600 million casualties, but that wouldn’t be the end of the world, like I said. I said that was as close to the end of the world as I’d like to get.”
At the time we talked, Kramer’s most recent hit was “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a 1967 film he produced and directed about a racially mixed marriage, starring Tracy and Hepburn as the parents of the prospective bride, and Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton as the young couple. The film earned Hepburn a best actress Oscar.
Kramer’s most recent movie at the time we spoke — and as it turned out, his last film — was 1979’s “The Runner Stumbles,” a story based on Milan Stitt’s Broadway play starring Dick Van Dyke as a tormented priest in love with a nun played by Kathleen Quinlan. It was a critical and box office failure — much of which the outspoken producer-director blamed on Van Dyke, claiming in his conversation with me that the actor-comedian could or would not let go of his comic sensibilities. Not everyone faulted Van Dyke for the film’s shortcomings. Some pointed at what they regarded as a flawed, simplistic plot, and even at Kramer himself.
Kramer, who was nearing 70 years old when we spoke, was still hoping to do more film work. He mentioned another project he wanted to do, one based on the play “Division Street,” about a 1960s activist who joins the establishment, and finds, in Kramer’s words, “There’s more reason to be an activist today than there was then.”
Until then, he said he would continue writing his daily column for The Seattle Times “about everything from junk food to nuclear plants,” teaching at Bellevue Community College, and doing shorts on local news programs.
“I’m determined, in what I call my ‘minor dotage,’ to be an activist again,” he concluded.
In 2002, the year after Kramer’s death at the age of 87, the Producers Guild of America created The Stanley Kramer Award for those whose work “dramatically illustrates provocative social issues.”
Kramer, a member of the first group to have a star installed on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame — a man who bravely confronted everyone from the military to ex-Nazis and the court system in his long, distinguished career — might have settled for that description.
It sent the right message.
