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Norman Jewison, director of In the Heat of the Night, dies aged 97
Canadian-born director of Moonstruck and Fiddler on the Roof was a three-time Oscar nominee
Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and Moonstruck to social dramas such as the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night, has died at the age of 97. He drew upon his experiences for 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, starring Rod Steiger as a white racist small-town sheriff and Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia trying to help solve a murder and eventually forming a working relationship with the hostile local lawman. James Baldwin condemned the film’s “appalling distance from reality”, and thought the director trapped in a fantasy of racial harmony that would only heighten “Black rage and despair”.
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