From Canada with Love: Remembering Director and Producer Norman Jewison, 1926-2024

Here's the pre-obit I wrote for Amazon's blog, Armchair Commentary, in 2009. I'm happy to say that Jewison outlived this piece by 15 years. 

Along with genre-hoppers like Howard Hawks and Steven Soderbergh, director and producer Norman Jewison epitomized cinematic versatility. Like many of his peers, he apprenticed in live television in the 1950s and '60s before turning to film; first in London, then in his native Toronto, and later in New York, where he oversaw The Judy Garland Show.

In a 2009 interview with The Los Angeles Times, he credited the success of 1965's The Cincinatti Kid with Steve McQueen for allowing him to move away from light comedies, like Send Me No Flowers with Doris Day, to the big-screen dramas that were his true calling (Jewison inherited the former after producer Martin Ransohoff gave Sam Peckinpah the sack).

 

Jewison went on to direct best picture winner In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, The Thomas Crown Affair with McQueen and Faye Dunaway, Rollerball with James Caan (which inspired an inferior 2002 remake), Jesus Christ Superstar, A Soldier's Story (with Denzel Washington, who would return for The Hurricane), and Moonstruck, which won Oscars for Cher, Olympia Dukakis, and writer John Patrick Shanley.

Unapologetically liberal, Jewison once said, "The movies that address civil rights and social justice are the ones that are dearest to me." Consequently, he had his detractors, like Andrew Sarris, who criticized his "strained seriousness," and David Thomson, who dismissed his work's "hollow prettiness," though Ephraim Katz praised his "superior craftsmanship," notwithstanding a career "that zigzagged between mediocrity and excellence" (and even Thomson found Moonstruck "charming"). The Hurricane (1999), a stirring account of wrongly-imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter, also took hits for some minor alterations to the historical record.

Despite his time in Southern California, Jewison never lost touch with his Northern roots, and founded the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies in 1986. In 1999, he accepted the Irving G. Thalberg Award (nominated three times for best director, his movies won 12 Academy Awards). He also wrote a well received memoir, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me.

In addition to his many directorial and production efforts, Jewison deserves credit for mentoring Hal Ashby, who edited The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, In the Heat of the Night, and The Thomas Crown Affair, winning an Oscar for the latter before making 1970's The Landlord, a film Jewison had intended to direct until Fiddler on the Roof came calling.

Norman Jewison was married to Margaret Ann Dixon for 51 years until her death in 2004 and to Lynne St. David for 14 years until his death on January 20. He leaves behind three children; Michael, an associate producer and location manager, Kevin, a camera operator, and Jennifer, an actress.

 

All images from Britannica. Top left: Norman Jewison (right, with camera) and Sidney Poitier (left) during filming of In the Heat of the Night (1967). © 1967 United Artists Corporation with the Mirisch Company. Center: Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).