Norman Jewison, the versatile, acclaimed filmmaker behind movies like Fiddler on the Roofand, In the Heat of the Night, died on Saturday at his home, his publicist announced Monday. He was 97.
Jewison was a seven-time Oscar nominee and earned the Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1999. He earned both Best Director and Best Picture nods for the 1971 musical Fiddler on the Roof and the 1987 rom-com Moonstruck, starring Cher.
He also was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture for 1976s In the Heat of the Night. The film, based on John Balls book of the same name, told the story of Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective involved in a murder investigation in Mississippi. In 2002, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and was declared one of the 100 greatest movies in American cinema by the American Film Institute.
“The biggest grossing picture is not necessarily the best picture, so just tell stories that move us to laughter and tears and, perhaps, reveal a little truth about ourselves”, Jewison said in 1999 as he accepted the Thalberg Memorial Award.
In the Heat of the Night was one of numerous movies Jewison directed that focused on race relations, including 1984s A Soldiers Story and 1999s The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington. (The Washington film followed the story of boxer Rubin HurricaneCarter, who was wrongly accused of a triple murder in New Jersey.)
“Every time a film deals with racism, many Americans feel uncomfortable”, he wrote in his autobiography This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, per the Associated press. “Yet it has to be confronted. We have to deal with prejudice and injustice or we will never understand what is good and evil, right and wrong; we need to feel how ‘the other’ feels”.
Among his greatest work was Moonstruck, which earned Cher her Oscar for Best Actress, Olympia Dukakis the award for Best Supporting Actress, and John Patrick Stanley the prize for Best Original Screenplay. The 1987 favorite was a rom-com that followed a widowed Italian-American woman in love with her fiancés younger brother.
Ugochi Olivia Ubah is an Educator and a Writer