Canadian film director Norman Jewison, whose eclectic array of masterpieces included the 1967 racial drama In the Heat of the Night, the 1987 tart romantic comedy Moonstruck and the 1971 musical Fiddler on the Roof, has died at the age of 97, his publicist said.
Jewison died at his home on Saturday, publicist Jeff Sanderson said on Monday.
The Toronto native, whose films also included the 1966 Cold War satire The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and the provocative 1973 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, was considered one of the most important directors for the last four decades of the 20th century. He was widely admired for his ability to craft powerful films in many different genres.
Jewison won multiple awards
His movies won multiple Academy Awards and Jewison received a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999. In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, won the best picture Oscar for 1967.
Norman Frederick Jewison was born in Toronto on July 21, 1926. He served in Canada’s navy during World War II, became a TV director in Canada, then moved to New York in 1958 and made TV shows with stars including Judy Garland, winning three Emmy Awards.
In a 2022 documentary on the making of Fiddler on the Roof, Jewison relayed a by-now familiar anecdote: When producers of the Broadway musical approached him for the directing job, he had to sheepishly inform them that he wasn’t actually Jewish.
He got the job anyway, leading generations of Jewish families watching Fiddler to associate that big title card displaying the “Jewison” name with a fellow member of the tribe.
His work on Fiddler sealed Jewison’s reputation among Jewish viewers. He earned the job on the basis of his work on the Cold War satire The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, starring Carl Reiner and Alan Arkin, with producers reasoning that the director had what it took to convincingly depict Russian life to Westerners.
Holding the reins to Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein’s Broadway smash adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s classic folktales, Jewison went all-in on verisimilitude. He filmed Fiddler in the former Yugoslavia and got Israeli actor Chaim Topol, who starred as Tevye in the West End production, to reprise his role on screen (not without some controversy over bypassing better-known Broadway star Zero Mostel).
Over the years, Jewison would deny rumors that he had considered converting to Judaism. But he took his connection to the Jewish story seriously. In that same 2022 documentary, he also shared that he had a Jewish wedding in 2010, to his second wife Lynne St. David Jewison. The wedding included a rabbi and a chuppah.
Jewison remembered being taunted as a boy in Toronto by people who thought he was Jewish because of his name. He came from a Christian family but the misperception persisted.
Jewison's 1987 Moonstruck became one of Hollywood’s most popular romantic comedies. It tells the story of a Brooklyn widow, played by Cher, who agrees to marry a man she does not love and then falls in love with his brother, played by Nicolas Cage.
Jewison’s travels as a young man in 1940s America – seeing blatant white racism against blacks in the South – influenced his films, especially his three race dramas: In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier’s Story (1984) and The Hurricane (1999).
In the Heat of the Night focused on the relationship between a black police officer (Poitier) and a white sheriff (Steiger) in a racist southern town. The sight of Poitier’s character striking a rich white landowner shocked some moviegoers at that time.
Jewison was an unabashed liberal who took part in 1960s civil rights marches and knew former US attorney general Robert Kennedy and civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr.
Jewison received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, in March 1999.
“My parting thought to all those young filmmakers is this: Just find some good stories,” Jewison told the audience.
“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.”