A consummate craftsman known for eliciting fine performances from his casts, director Norman Jewison addressed important social and political issues throughout career, often making controversial or complicated subjects accessible to mainstream audiences. Jewison transitioned from directing variety shows on television to feature films in the early 1960s, helming several forgettable studio-driven comedies. He emerged later in the decade with the gritty gambler drama The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and the Cold War farce The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966). But it was his simple but superbly acted small-town crime drama In the Heat of the Night (1967) that etched Jewison's name in stone, thanks to an Oscar-winning performance from Rod Steiger and the unforgettable line, “They call me Mister Tibbs,” uttered by co-star Sidney Poitier. Jewison went on to direct the adaptation of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971) before enjoying counterculture success with his take on the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Following the futuristic satire Rollerball (1975), Jewison had a series of critical and financial setbacks until the moving drama A Soldier's Story (1984), which he soon followed with the box-office smash, Moonstruck (1987). He emerged on top once again with the biopic The Hurricane (1999). Over the course of his long and venerable career, Jewison managed to keep himself relevant by continuing to tell stories that had universal appeal.
Born on July 21, 1926, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Jewison was raised by his father, Percy, who ran a dry goods store, and his mother, Dorothy. After developing a love for film at an early age, Jewison spent his high school years at Malvern Collegiate Institute, graduating in 1944. After briefly serving in the Canadian Navy at the close of World War II, he attended Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he earned his bachelor's degree and received an honor award for writing and directing several college productions. Returning to Toronto and finding the job market in television lacking, Jewison drove a taxicab before moving to London, England, where he landed occasional work as a script writer for a children's show and bit actor for the BBC while working odd jobs in-between. His long struggle to find consistent television work ended when he received an invitation to join a training program at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Jewison started work as an assistant director and quickly rose up the ranks to director and producer, helming such major variety and comedy programs as “The Big Review” and “The Barris Beat” in 1956.
In 1958, American television network CBS took note of Jewison's talents and hired him to revitalize the weekly live music show “Your Hit Parade” (NBC/CBS) during its last season on-air. His good work on the show led to several made-for-television specials starring artists such as Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte. But his biggest contribution to the small screen at the time was directing “The Judy Garland Show” in 1962 (CBS), which served as a successful comeback vehicle for the embattled actress and singer. Jewison returned to direct episodes of “The Judy Garland Show” from1963-64, which evolved into hour-long variety series based on the previous year's hit special. Disillusioned by the effects of the ratings wars on the quality of television programming, Jewison relocated from New York to Hollywood to direct his first film, 40 Pounds of Trouble (1963), a remake of Little Miss Marker (1934), about a selfish casino manager (Tony Curtis) who adopts a spunky orphan (Claire Wilcox). The film did well enough for Universal Studios to offer him a seven-picture contract, resulting in his second film, The Thrill of It All (1963), a star vehicle for Doris Day and James Garner and scripted by Carl Reiner that became one of the studio's biggest hits that year.
Still under contract with Universal, Jewison continued directing light-hearted comedies, showing no early signs of the socially and racially conscious director yet to come. Send Me No Flowers (1964) paired Day with Rock Hudson, and Jewison worked again with Reiner and Garner for The Art of Love (1965), a comedy of errors about a struggling artist (Dick Van Dyke) in Paris trying to fake his own death to make enough money to return home. Growing tired of the lightweight scripts offered by the studio, Jewison eagerly delved into more serious fare after finding a loophole in his contract that allowed him to switch professional loyalties to MGM. Jewison replaced Sam Peckinpah on The Cincinnati Kid (1965), a tense and gritty tale about a New Orleans poker player (Steve McQueen) who challenges reigning champ The Man (Edward G. Robison) to a private game. Jewison reached new creative heights—not to mention achieved full artistic control—with The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, a farcical take on the Cold War that featured an all-star cast, including Reiner, Alan Arkin and Eva Marie Saint. After winning a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, the film earned the director-producer an Oscar nod for Best Picture.
Ever since his critical and box-office success with Russians, Jewison went on to maintain the coveted final cut on his films. He followed with perhaps his most significant work, the pioneering race drama In the Heat of the Night, which tells the tale of a Black Yankee detective (Sidney Poitier) who partners with a racist Southern police chief (Rod Steiger) to solve a murder in a small Georgian town. The dynamic pairing of Poitier and Steiger—the latter of whom won an Oscar for his performance—became one of the most memorable in cinema history. Meanwhile, the film itself earned top honors at the Academy Awards, winning a total of five awards, including Best Picture. Following up, Jewison reunited with Steve McQueen to make The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), an action-packed heist flick that was a triumph of style over substance which Jewison called “the only amoral-immoral film I've ever done.”
Jewison returned to comedy, albeit with a harder edge, for Gaily, Gaily (1969), adapted from Ben Hecht's autobiographical novel of his apprenticeship on a Chicago paper. Jewison made up for that film's lack of commercial success with his next two movies; both of which were adaptations of very successful stage musicals. For Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jewison faced one of the most agonizing casting decisions of his career, turning down both Zero Mostel, who had originated the role of Tevye on Broadway, and his good friend Danny Kaye in favor of the little-known Israeli actor, Topol. Jewison let the press know that he wanted an Israeli Jew who didn't speak English well in order to make the character more believable. His gamble paid off, as Topol made a distinct and lasting impression as the poverty-laden milkman who finds himself facing challenges to long-held traditions. Filmed on location in Yugoslavia, Fiddler received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three for Best Sound, Best Cinematography (Oswald Morris) and Best Musical Scoring (John Williams). The film also raked in the profits while becoming one of the most beloved musicals of all time.
A similar commercial fate awaited Jewison's take on Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera hit, Jesus Christ Superstar, which he filmed in Israel while managing to simultaneously produce Ted Kotcheff's offbeat Western, Billy Two-Hats (1973). Employing a contemporary feel to an ancient story, including Roman soldiers carrying machine guns instead of swords, Superstar stars Ted Neeley as the rock 'n' roll Messiah who is put to death for claiming he is King of the Jews. Not as cohesive or critically lauded as Fiddler, Jewison's quirky musical was significant for being a sharp look at the late-1960s counterculture from which it derived. Proving his flexibility as well as his versatility, Jewison jumped to the future for the sci-fi satire, Rollerball (1975), which was a pointed critique on modern corporations hijacking both democracy and humanity. His next film, a labor moving political drama, F.I.S.T (1978), was a giant flop in spite of the director's careful attention to detail and casting of Sylvester Stallone as the leader of a fledgling union. Jewison continued on, directing a powerful Al Pacino in the legal drama, ...And Justice for All (1979) and the Goldie Hawn-Burt Reynolds vehicle, Best Friends (1982), which bombed at the box office despite both stars being at the top of their game.
Jewison finally turned things around with the socially conscious military drama, A Soldier's Story (1984), adapted from the 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Charles Fuller. A solid whodunit atop a probing look at racism within blank ranks during World War II, the film featured most of its original Negro Ensemble Company cast, including Adolph Caesar in his Oscar-nominated role as the bigoted sergeant found shot to death on a country road near a Louisiana army base. It also marked Jewison's first collaboration with Denzel Washington, as well as his return to the ranks of Oscar nominees when A Soldier's Story earned a nod for Best Picture. His next stage-to-film transfer was Agnes of God (1985), a fleshed-out adaptation of John Pielmeier's minimalist Broadway play that incorporates a murder mystery. Jewison struck gold directing playwright John Patrick Shanley's original screenplay Moonstruck (1987), deftly handling the romantic comedy about a widowed bookkeeper (Cher) engaged to a man she’s not in love with (Danny Aiello), only to be romanced by his younger brother (Nicolas Cage). Moonstruck was a huge success all around, wining Oscars for Best Actress (Cher), Best Supporting Actress (Olympia Dukakis) and Best Screenplay (Shanley).
He followed up with a series of disappointments at the box office and among critics: In Country (1989), a treatment of Bobbie Ann Mason's acclaimed novel starring Bruce Willis as a cynical, shell-shocked recluse, and Other People's Money (1991), starring Danny DeVito as the nefarious Larry the Liquidator who falls in love with the daughter-in-law (Penelope Ann Miller) of the company's president (Gregory Peck). Following a three-year hiatus, Jewison reemerged to direct the tepid romantic comedy Only You (1994), starring Marisa Tomei as a bride-to-be who leaves her groom at the altar to search for her true soul mate (Robert Downey, Jr.). He followed with the sappy comedy-drama Bogus (1996), featuring Whoopi Goldberg and Gerard Depardieu in a story of a young boy's reliance on an imaginary friend to cope with the death of a parent. Marking a return to the small screen after several decades removed, Jewison served as executive producer of the historical biopic, Geronimo (1993) for TNT, which chronicled the rise and fall of the famous Apache chief.
Continuing to find new life in television, Jewison executive produced and directed the “Soir Bleu” segment of the Showtime anthology series, “Picture Windows” in 1994. Back in Canada, he executive produced Bruce McDonald's feature Dance Me Outside (1994) and then shared executive producing responsibilities with McDonald on the Canadian series, “The Rez” in 1996. On the heels of accepting the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1999, Jewison directed the feature-length Showtime documentary Norman Jewison on Comedy in the 20th Century: Funny Is Money (1999). But all that he did during the entire decade was just prelude for The Hurricane (1999), his masterful, albeit controversial, biopic about Reuben 'Hurricane' Carter (Denzel Washington), a former middleweight boxing champion unjustly imprisoned 18 years for murders he did not commit. Aided by three Canadian activists (John Hannah, Liev Schreiber and Deborah Unger), who helped him earn an appeal that overturned his conviction, Carter was released from prison in 1985. Despite it’s critical praise as being a grand tribute to the power of the human spirit and one of Jewison's best films, The Hurricane was largely shut out of consideration at the Academy Awards, save for the Best Actor nod for Washington.
After directing The Hurricane, Jewison slowed down his output, directing only one major motion picture in the next decade. He did return to the small screen for the HBO film Dinner with Friends (2001), an adaptation of Donald Marguiles's play about a seemingly perfect and happy couple (Andie McDowell and Dennis Quaid) who are shocked to hear that their best friends (Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear) are divorcing, forcing them to reexamine both their friendship with the couple and their own marriage. Jewison’s final film, The Statement (2003), is a compelling thriller about an elderly man (Michael Caine) whose past as an executioner for the Vichy regime during World War II is revealed in 1992, leading to an investigation spearheaded by an aggressive French prosecutor (Tilda Swinton) and a military colonel (Jeremy Northam). While he remained in the public eye by appearing onscreen in several interviews, Jewison remained unofficially retired from the film business, though he emerged in 2005 to release his autobiography, “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me.”
In 2010, the Directors Guild of America bestowed upon him their highest tribute when they announced that he would be receiving the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to motion pictures. Jewison died at 97 years old on January 20, 2024.
(Edited: August 2026 by Quatoyiah Murray)
