Wright, Richard; Houston, Serin; Ellis, Mark; Holloway, Steven; Hudson, Margaret. Crossing racial lines: geographies of mixed-race partnering and multiraciality in the United States. Progress in Human Geography 27 (2003): 457-474 This article presents a very detailed look at interracial marriage in present day America. Similar to Heer, trends are looked at regionally in order to produce a bigger picture of the United States as a whole. Unlike the Heer article, this data studied in this article is split among more racial groups mostly due to the inclusion of a Latino and Asian race description to marriage documents. The rate of interracial marriages is still small, but growing nonetheless. What is most relevant is the authors discussion about children of mixed marriages. The studies describing these childrens search for an identity and studies dealing with the childrens ability to adjust deal with those still in childhood. The final section is about adult children of interracial marriages. It details the struggle they went through in order to represent themselves on the 2000 Census. There are studies investigating what type of people they marry: someone else whom is multiracial? someone whom is a member of the minority parents race? someone who is of the majority parents race? Or someone of a completely different race altogether? Questions such as these push the study of this occurrence forward. As mentioned above, the last section is the most relevant to Guess Whos Coming to Dinner. During a scene in which Spencer Tracys character Matt Drayton was having one of many discussions with his daughter Joey he asks her if she and John plan on having kids. They say yes, and that they understand there will be hardships. If one looks at the article discussed they would be able to see what that would have been. A child born in the late 1960s early 1970s would be in the middle of a major wave of research such as this article all the while fighting to be recognized by other areas of society.

Majete, Clayton. What you may not know about interracial marriages. World & I 12 (1997): 300-311 The author gives an overview of topics that he believes have become stereotypes and are perpetuated about interracial couples. His reasoning for this lack of understanding comes from his opinion that there is little scientific research about this subject. His conclusion is that people go on to make their own assumptions and stereotypes begin and grow from there. Interviews and statistics are used to disprove stereotypes and show that interracial couples really do marry for love not as a way to move up the social ladder or rebel against their parents. The second part of the article concentrated on the couples relationship with their families. The negative reactions were more likely to come from white families (black families were still very harsh). Overall most reactions were positive, but these reactions were more an expression of acceptance than complete happiness. The rest of the article details the struggles couples and their biracial children face. The plot of Guess Whos Coming to Dinner deals with many of these topics. The main storyline is all about the reaction of the reaction of John and Joeys families, Joeys family in particular. A major part of gaining the families trust involves John and Joey spending much of the movie convincing the family they are in love. They also need to convince the audience too in order for the movie to be convincing and avoid the stereotypes Majete is weary of. Even after much of this is accomplished the couple only has Mr. Draytons acceptance of the situation, he is not enthusiastic, much like the parents of real life interracial couples.

Lewis Jr., R. & Yancey, G. (1997) Racial and Non Racial Factors that Influence Spouse Choice in Black/White Marriages, Journal of Black Studies, 28(1), 60-79. This article is looking to find out why blacks and whites choose to marry outside of their race. An experiment was done in which a survey was sent out to many interracial couples (black-white only) asking them about their behind their marriage. Some of the questions dealt with race (Did you marry your spouse because you find men/women of a different race very attractive?) and some did not (Did you marry your spouse because you have similar tastes in entertainment?). The concluding results show that nonracial factors were the biggest factors in a couples decision to marry. Throughout Guess Whos Coming to Dinner Joey and John try to convince all of the other parties of this. Their statements should carry some weight seeing as they met and fell in love while getting to know each other through common activities. When describing her time in Hawaii Joey speaks of all the moments she and John shared and the activities they did together. That is how a relationship is formed. Not simply through looks and a wish to get a rise out of ones parents.

A PennTags project I chose to do Guess Who's Coming to Dinner because I have always been a fan of Sidney Poitier and this is one of my favorite movies that he's done. This movie takes place in 1967 in California. It is the story of a young girl, Joey Drayton and a doctor John Prentice, who fall in love after spending time together while on vacation in Hawaii. The two return to visit Joey's parents and ask for their permission in order to get married. There is one catch, permission needs to be granted the same day because Joey and John will be flying out to Switzerland the next morning in order for John to begin working there. Unfortunetly Joey's father finds he is having a hard time granting permission because John is black. Mr. Drayton always saw himself as a free thinking liberal until he was presented with this decision. Throughout the movie he is troubled by the fact that he isn't as liberal as he once thought he was. John's parents then enter the picture and John's father has his qualms as well. In the end permission is granted and all parties are happy. I was interested in researching this film because the arguments that occur are still relevant today and I thought it would be interesting to do research and see how articles dealing with these same subjects were addressed back then, and how they are addresed now.

In this article, Mast chronicles the making of Bringing Up Baby from production to its opening at the Radio City Music Hall in March of 1938. The film actually began as a short story written by an unknown Hagar Wilde in Collier’s in April of 1937. Titled “Bringing Up Baby,” the story was about a tame panther named Baby that is let loose to roam freely in the Connecticut countryside. Coincidentally around the same time, Howard Hawks signed a contract for a six picture deal with RKO pictures and was told to select a project from a pile of scripts, treatments, and stories, of which “Bringing Up Baby” was one of the choices. Hawks, naturally, picked “Bringing Up Baby” and together with the studio, began to convert the story into a film. Although many of the film’s funniest lines are directly from the short story, writer Dudley Nichols was hired for the script to create a ninety minute narrative out of what was essentially a simple magazine article. In the resulting script, a museum was added, as was the search for an intercostal clavicle. Several jail scenes were added as well, in addition to the mishaps on the road to Connecticut, a drunken gardener, a golf course, and a variety of other gags. The basic storyline was also altered—instead of Baby the panther acting as a threat, tearing apart an engaged couple, Baby the leopard became the driving force uniting two complete strangers.

RKO bought the rights from Wilde for $1000 on June 11, 1937 and the film was scheduled to begin a fifty-one day shoot in September with Katharine Hepburn starring and virtually no leading man. It was not until a week before shooting was to begin that Cary Grant signed on to play the part of Dr. David Huxley. Throughout filming, Bringing Up Baby was met with even more delays as Hawks preferred improvisation, but also extremely complex set-ups for shots in order to achieve the right effect. Shooting eventually ended in January of 1938, forty days over the scheduled fifty-one days of filming, and the first cut of the film which ran 10,150 feet was sent to the PCA board for review. Interestingly, the board did not seem to have an issue with the scene in which Huxley proclaims that he is turning gay or other various scenes with similar subtleties. It did have an issue with Hepburn’s torn dress, however, but despite this, the film was granted a seal in February.

The film was eventually cut down to 9,204 feet and released later that year, achieving modest box office success. It was later re-released in 1940 to a better box office turnout, both domestically and internationally. Total revenues amounted to $1,259,000, which translated to a final profit of $163,000—a modest success for RKO. For the two stars, Bringing Up Baby reflected a lighter and brighter side to their acting abilities and for Hawks, the film confirmed once again, his versatility in filmmaking.

The second chapter (pp. 29-66) of Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy presents an analysis of the genre of screwball comedy. Gehring argues that the main characters in this particular genre tend to exhibit five key characteristics: “abundant leisure time, childlike nature, basic male frustration (especially in relationship to women), a general propensity for physical comedy, and a proclivity for parody and satire” (29). Gehring cites various films from different time periods ranging from George Cukor’s Holiday (1938) to the comedies of today, noting that each film’s “comic antihero” shares these common characteristics.

Gehring also uses Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938) as a classic example of this particular genre. In Hawks’s film, Dr. David Huxley, played by Cary Grant, is the epitome of the comic antihero. As an absentminded professor (often a recurring character in such genre films), Huxley is essentially a member of “high-society.” He is a relatively wealthy man, despite his need for a million-dollar research grant, and has time to socialize with other members of high society, whether on a golf course, at a dinner party, etc. Yet his high education, paired with his seemingly paradoxical absentmindedness and bumbling personality, also serves as comic relief throughout the film. Referred to as “comic rigidity,” a term used in Henri Bergson’s theory of comic superiority, which Gehring cites, these comedic elements stem from this “inversion” of what is generally the norm for a professional such as Huxley.

Huxley also has a childlike nature, according to Gehring, which is reflected through the dominance of the female character, Susan. Throughout the film it is clear that Susan, played by Katharine Hepburn, is in command—she has the power to alter Huxley’s plans and eventually, his entire future. It is through this dominance that the element of basic male frustration is exhibited as well. Huxley is basically powerless as Susan drags him to Connecticut in hopes of delivering a tamed leopard named Baby. As a source of frustration for Huxley, Susan also draws out Huxley’s displays of physical comedy in various scenes. For example, Huxley often retaliates to Susan’s dominance with physical actions, not words. In a scene where Huxley is simply annoyed with Susan, he pretends to strangle her instead of saying something. Gehring also argues that the presence of physical comedy in screwball comedies is due to the fact that the genre was born out of slapstick comedy from the silent film era. In fact, Gehring mentions that Grant’s character was based on silent film star Harold Lloyd as well as Buster Keaton.

The last part of Gehring’s discussion focuses on the satiric elements of screwball comedies, which the author states was Howard Hawks’s specialty. This proclivity for parody and satire is evidenced in many instances, and is a running theme throughout the film. Like other screwball comedies, Bringing Up Baby, has a tendency to make fun of romance and the characters themselves. For example, Huxley’s engagement of convenience to Miss Swallow in the beginning of the film is a direct comment on marriage and the film’s jail scenes as well as the lavish party scenes poke fun at rich society.

Gehring concludes his argument by noting that these five characteristics, though not limited only to screwball comedy, serve to help define the complex genre.

Classic screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn

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