Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a 1967 American romantic comedy drama film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, and written by William Rose.

[7] In 1967, Joanna Drayton, a 23-year-old white woman, returns from her Hawaiian vacation to her parents' home in San Francisco with Dr. John Prentice, a 37-year-old black widower.

Christina gradually accepts the situation, but Matt objects because of the likely unhappiness and seemingly insurmountable problems the couple will face.

John's mother tells Matt that he and her husband have forgotten what it was like to fall in love, and their failure to remember true romance has clouded their thinking.

It has been suggested that a pair of contemporary cases of interracial marriage influenced Rose when he was writing the film's script.

Peggy Cripps, an aristocratic debutante whose father had been a British cabinet minister and whose grandfather had been leader of the House of Lords, married the African anti-colonialist Nana Joe Appiah.

At around the same time, Lloyd's underwriter Ruth Williams and her husband, African aristocrat Kgosi Seretse Khama, were engaged in a struggle of their own.

Their union, which also occurred in the immediate aftermath of World War II, led to a storm of comment that snowballed into an international incident which saw them stripped of their chiefly titles in his homeland and exiled to Britain.

The young doctor, a typical role for the young Sidney Poitier, was created idealistically perfect, so that the only possible objections to his marrying Joanna would be his race, or the fact she had only known him for 10 days; the character has thus graduated from a top school, begun innovative medical initiatives in Africa, refused to have premarital sex with his fiancée despite her willingness, and leaves money in an open container on his future father-in-law's desk in payment for a long-distance phone call he has made.

[10] Kramer stated later that the principal actors believed so strongly in the premise that they agreed to act in the project even before seeing the script.

"[18] Poitier frequently found himself starstruck, and as a result, a bit tongue-tied in the presence of Hepburn and Tracy, whom he considered to be "giants" as far as acting is concerned.

I played the scene in close-up against two empty chairs as the dialogue coach read Mr. Tracy's and Miss Hepburn's lines from off camera.

[21] The original version of the film that played in theaters in 1968 contained a moment in which Tillie responds to the question "Guess who's coming to dinner now?"

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner opened in New York City on December 11, 1967,[22] followed by a wide release in the United States the following day.

"[29] In the New York Daily News, critic Wanda Hale gave the film a full four-star rating, and said it "must be counted as an important contribution to motion pictures.

With fearless directness Stanley Kramer takes a fresh and risky topic, inter-racial marriage, deals with it boldly and lets the criticisms fall where they may.

At the Victoria and Beekman Theaters, the Columbia picture evidences Kramer's uncanny ability in selecting the right cast to portray the characters created by William Rose, to speak the author's penetrating lines as they should, naturally, humorously, bitterly and in the case of Spencer Tracy, simply and eloquently.

But withal, 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' is the late great actor's picture and he dominates it with his vitality and the clarity and logic of his presentation.

The subject of interracial marriage was probed four years ago in 'One Potato, Two Potato,' but Producer-Director Stanley Kramer has reached back long before that for his modus operandi, coming up with the antiseptic slickness and unabashed sentiment [not necessarily a bad thing] in the generic tradition of the Frank Capra social comedy-drama.

The Glory of Love (performed by nightclub singer Jacqueline Fontaine) richly echoes the naive sentimentalism of the pop culture of the 1940s and 1950s and though it’s a thoroughly modern picture in some respects, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is at heart a nostalgic throwback to that era.

"[34] Joan Irwin of the Montreal Star called it "a strong honest and remarkably sensitive film dealing with the problem of interracial marriage.

Every prejudice and argument for and against such a marriage is examined with candor and often with humor, not in a general, preachy context, but as it relates to the two particular people in question.

It is a fine film, full of strength and tenderness, played with great subtlety and wit by an entirely superb cast.

Another main point of contention was the fact that Poitier's character, the golden future son-in-law, had no flaws and a résumé of good deeds.

[38] It was also criticized by some for these reasons at the time, with African-American actor Stepin Fetchit saying that the film "did more to stop intermarriage than to help it.

"[24] In his 1967 review of the film, Champlin wrote "questions do arise" about the treatment of intermarriage, which he observed was "made palatable to the greatest number" by creating a "comfortably old-fashioned picture."

Champlin pointed to the extraordinary stature of the Poitier character, and said that he was left with a "nagging uneasiness that the problem has not really been confronted or solved, but only patronized.

The website's critics consensus reads, "More well-intentioned than insightful in its approach to interracial marriage, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner succeeds thanks to the fizzy chemistry of its star-studded ensemble.

[42] American Film Institute lists On May 28, 1975, ABC aired a 30-minute pilot for a proposed comedy television series based on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, produced and directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Leslie Charleson and Bill Overton.

The 2005 film Guess Who starring Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac is a loose remake, styled as a comedy rather than a drama, with the racial roles reversed: Black parents are caught off-guard when their daughter brings home the young white man she has chosen to marry.