Movie Giant Norman Jewison Makes His Final Take this January, 20th 2024 at Age 97
A Few Brief Words from Doug Draper, Niagara At Large reporter/publisher amd a long-time fan of Norman Jewison
Posted January 23rd, 2024 on Niagara At Large
Norman Jewison, flimmaker extraordinaire
He was a movie maker after this movie lover’s heart. So I can’t let this moment go by without posting a few words of tribute a few words for him.
Norman Jewison, born in Toronto, Ontario, was a filmmaker who was not afraid to take on hot-button issues like racial hatred and injustice. as he did in ‘A Soldier’s Story’, a 1980s movie spotlighting racial segregation in the U.S. Army, 1999’s ‘Hurricane’, the true story about boxing champ Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter who wrongly spent almost 20 years of his life in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, and my perhaps favourite of all his films, ‘In the Heat of the Night’, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in a drama set in racially charged Mississippi in the 1960s.
He also produced and directed such great movies as ‘The Cincinnati Kid’ and ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, both starring Steve McQueen, ‘Moonstruck’ with Cher and Nicolas Cage, ‘And Justice for All’ with Al Pacino, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and many others.
Always a proud Canadian, Norman Jewison founded the Canadian Film Centre three decades ago to help young people in his home country pursue their dream of making and starring in films.
Jewison necessarily had to live in the Hollywood area to pursue his craft but he always had a residence in Canada and founded the Canadian Film Centre where he mentored many young, butting filmmakers in his home country.
This Canadian will look forward to the tribute he justly deserves at this year’s Academy Awards, where during his lifetime he was nominated for his work three times and yet, incredibly never won, and finally received an ‘honorary’ Oscar for his body of work in 1999 by an academy that knew it screwed up by not giving him one of those golden trophies earlier.
I leave you with the trailer for his 1967 film ‘In the Heat of the Night’ which you can watch by clicking on the screen below. If you love movies and have never seen this one, do yourself a favour –
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