MovieChat Forums > Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) Discussion > What if Prentiss was a ghetto thug??

What if Prentiss was a ghetto thug??


They made him out to be the most perfect man. A Doctor, impeccable vocabulary, classy parents
I mean, even in 1967, he'd be ard find a flaw.
But, what if he was Tyrone, from the ghetto? All militant, and angry "Black Power"

In '67, they HAD to present the "Perfect Man"

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I agree.

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Perfect, yet the father is against the marriage...
Perhaps that was what the author meant : he is black and they are not suited for each other in the father's opinion, no matter how perfect he is.

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No, the whole idea was to present a minimum of objectionable material in her selection of a mate so that the primary consideration was race only. If Dr. John were a ghetto thug his race would not have mattered.

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Great ones! Does "Pressure Point (1962)" make the list?

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Yeah (I don't think I even saw all of that one). Perhaps the original charm of Poitier was provided by the "conflict of race" and his never fitting the stereotypical black man image. He was a "Superman" and he could always be counted on do well as the underdog protagonist. In his later films he was still the hero but no longer dealing with racial issues and I think we preferred him to be as he was in those earlier films....and those were indeed some great films!

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The interesting thing is that this film focuses so much attention on making John a perfect man that it fails to develop Joey as a worthy mate. He's actually the one marrying "down"! The fact that the film focuses so much on proving that he's worthy to marry her only further demonstrates the level of paternal racism at the core of the film and the filmgoing public. Tillie's line about John acting "above" himself is all wrong (and is revealing of who this script was written by and for). She would surely have been disgusted that such an accomplished young man was marrying outside of the race to such a flighty, self-centered, and childish young woman.

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I just watched the film for the first time, and was wondering something along these lines. Not what if John was a ghetto thug, but what if he was just a regular person - a mechanic or a grocery store manager, or a mailman like his father. They made him out to be not even a doctor, but probably on his way to winning a Nobel Prize kind of doctor, and that's extremely rare regardless of a person's race. If Joey came home and said she fell in love with the guy who fixed her car 10 days ago, would her parents have even taken the day to think about whether they approve the marriage? They didn't have to make John superman to make him a decent human being. Having him work a blue collar job would have been more interesting, IMO.

Also, I kept wondering how much of the concern was about time rather than race. They met 10 DAYS ago, not 10 months or even 10 weeks. Anyone who brings someone home and says we're getting married after meeting 10 days ago is bound to have skeptical and worried parents, IMO.

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I'm a middle-aged black male and I first saw this film with my parents probably near the end of '67. On the way home in the car, I remember my mother saying something like, "Outside of money, what did that white gal have to offer? And the money wasn't even hers!" My old man couldn't get over the fact that while everyone was concerned about race, they overlooked the fact that Joey & John had only known each other 10-11 days. "Hell, she doesn't even know his favorite color, favorite food or favorite TV show. And he's just as ignorant about her!"

May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?

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Stanley Kramer said that it wouldn't even work if Prentiss was an uneducated blue collar worker (let alone a thug). THe parents would have a reasonable argument, black or white.

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gsfu is right. The script removes every objection to him except race.

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gsfu is right. The script removes every objection to him except race.

Which is the defintion of a manipulative piece of work. There isn't a single character flaw with the doctor. They boiled him down to a perfect [black] man. Realistically its puts the parents in a no-argument type of situation with an ending [decision] that was predictable from the first 10 minutes.

The setup created 'softball' scenarios for these actors to break out into monologue after monologue about various life issues... Soon enough not one conversation feels authentic or real. Instead it feels like someone is just trying to sound intelligent or open-minded; too preachy. Hearing a group of people argue about an interracial relationship isn't very intriguing to me. It became pretty tedious, repetitive and dull. It's just too much. Maybe 10-20 minutes of a movie dedicated to a reaction to interracial relationships, but not nearly 2 hours.





Poetry don't work on whores.

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that's one of the things I find unappealing about this film. The black man has to be a doctor,a. Genius, and almost a saint in order to be worthy to marry the bubblehead white girl. Why couldn't he just be an ordinary student she had met at college or somewhere? Why does this wise noble doctor want to marry this airhead girl?

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Why would Joey want to marry a ghetto thug? The entire point is that race shouldn't be a stumbling block. If he were a ghetto thug, it wouldn't matter if he were black, white, green or purple, he'd be thoroughly objectionable.

And strangely enough, there were and are an awful lot of very classy black people around.

Earth without art is just "eh."

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