Norman Jewison, Oscar Nominee and Versatile Director, Dies at 97

The Oscar-nominated Canadian director Norman Jewison, who died January 20 at the age of 97, considered himself—above all—a storyteller.

Jewison was a versatile craftsman in the tradition of the Hollywood studio system, where directors worked in a variety of genres; however, unlike those journeymen, Jewison ultimately earned complete creative control. Whether it was a Cold War farce (The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!), a stylish heist (The Thomas Crown Affair), a racial drama (In the Heat of the Night), a musical (Fiddler on the Roof), a sci-fi dystopia (Rollerball), or a romantic comedy (Moonstruck), Jewison had a knack for making entertaining films that people wanted to see but that also conveyed his worldview. Russians, A Soldier’s Story, Heat, Fiddler, and Moonstruck were all nominated for the best-picture award (Heat would go on to win the award for best picture in 1968). The latter three each earned Jewison Oscar nominations for best director.

Jewison was born in Toronto on July 21, 1926. During World War II, he served in the Royal Canadian Navy. When the war ended, he embarked on a hitchhiking trip around America. In his 2004 memoir, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, he recalled an incident in a bus outside Memphis, where he inadvertently took a seat in the rear with the Black passengers. The bus driver stopped the vehicle, refusing to proceed until Jewison changed seats. Jewison got off the bus instead. “I think it was then, along the highways of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, that the desire to make films like In the Heat of the Night and A Soldier’s Story took root,” he wrote. “Racism and injustice are two themes I have come back to, again and again, in my films.”

Jewison began his career in London television and then moved to Canada, where he joined the fledgling CBC television network in the early 1950s. A few years later, he went to work for CBS in New York and established himself in variety television, eventually working on The Judy Garland Show in 1962. He impressed Tony Curtis, who visited the set and complimented him: “You do nice work, kid. When are you going to make a movie?” Later that year, Jewison directed 40 Pounds of Trouble, the remake of Little Miss Marker that Curtis starred in. Other light comedies followed, including Doris Day vehicles The Thrill of It All and Send Me No Flowers.

Jewison chaffed at being directorially typecast. After his first box office flop, The Art of Love, he directed The Cincinnati Kid—a gritty drama starring Steve McQueen that meant to do for poker what The Hustler did for pool. “It is the one that made me feel like I had finally become a filmmaker,” he wrote in his memoir.

Jewison’s canon features some of the screen’s most indelible moments and images: Conflicted lawyer Al Pacino railing, “You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order!” in the climax of …And Justice for All; the erotically charged chess game between McQueen and Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair; and Cher slapping a head-over-heels Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck, demanding him to “Snap out of it!”