Norman Jewison, acclaimed director of Fiddler on the Roof, is a WASP. He is a Protestant of English descent. He’s Canadian. He’s the kind of person who took ski trips to Colorado in the ‘60s. Where, incidentally, he met with Robert Kennedy. Both had children injured on the slopes. He talked to Kennedy about his upcoming picture, In the Heat of the Night, and Kennedy told him that it could be very important and that timing was everything, something he repeated to Jewison on stage at the Oscars when it won Best Picture. Also, Academy, the timing is probably right to give the man a lifetime achievement award; he’s certainly waited long enough, without even a competitive win to show for it.

It’s hard to remember that Jewison got his start making light, frothy comedies. 40 Pounds of Trouble, where Tony Curtis takes a kid to Disneyland. (Weirdly, given its organized crime theme and the existence of Disneyland, not a Disney picture.) A couple of Doris Day pictures, including The Thrill of It All, one of the films I hate the most. The Cincinnati Kid is darker, but then we hit The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! From there, In the Heat of the Night, and from there, Jewison’s career was made.

So okay, he hasn’t made a movie since 2003, but he’s 97 and has directed some stone-cold classics and the man’s allowed to be retired. He outlived his first wife, to whom he was married for over fifty years, and his second marriage has lasted long enough to be considered long-term by Hollywood standards. If he doesn’t want to go chasing around a movie set, ordering a bunch of people around, who can blame him? No one would expect an ordinary person to still be working at that age.

And, again, there are the classics. So okay, not everyone’s into Jesus Christ Superstar the way I am, and I’m not into Moonstruck the way a lot of other people are. And they aren’t all classics; remember that F.I.S.T. is a movie that exists. But, yes, Fiddler on the Roof and In the Heat of the Night, and The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! And he created the Canadian Centre (because Canadian) for Advanced Film Studies, now the Canadian Film Centre (because Canadian), so it’s his fault there are all those aspiring Canadian film students as referenced in Due South.

So yeah, the man’s a WASP. But he’s a WASP with a strong social conscience. When he was young, he traveled through the Deep South and was appalled, and he’s been fighting that system ever since. Various of his movies are about racism, and even The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Is about the importance of getting along with others, which labeled him as a “Canadian pinko” in certain circles. It’s also true that, with the name “Jewison,” he was assumed to be Jewish and treated as such by a lot of people no matter what his actual ancestry and religion.

I got to him before he died; reward me by contributing to my Patreon or Ko-fi!