There have been examples of Catholics in American culture who have been racist.  The history of this sentiment can largely be boiled down to one person, Father Charles E. Coughlin.  He was a twentieth century priest who gained national recognition in the 1930s through his radio program called the Golden Hour.  There was nothing golden about it.  Instead, it repeated the nonsense of rising of fascism in the 1930s.  His main focus was antisemitism, for which he was funded by Nazi Germany.  On the eve of World War II, however, there was a backlash against him, much of which came from the Church, and he thankfully faded from the public view.  I bring him up because I am discussing today Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), a film that deals with racism in an upfront manner.  One of the major characters in it is Monsignor Mike Ryan (Cecil Kellaway), a priest and longtime friend of the Drayton family.  I will get to them in a moment.  For now, I hold him up because he accurately demonstrates what Catholicism believes on the matter, and made for a satisfying viewing experience.  For now, please know that while there are people like Father Coughlin still out there, they do not represent Christ or His Church.

Far from the cares of Father Coughlin or Catholicism, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner begins with a happy young couple, Dr. John Wade Prentice (Sidney Poitier) and Joanna “Joey” Drayton (Katharine Houghton), arriving in San Francisco.  By the way, because Dr. Prentice calls her Joanna, so will I.  Such distinctions are important, as is the fact that he is African American and she is caucasian . . . and it is 1967.  These factors weigh more on him than her, but it is his idea that he meets her parents before they get married, the culmination of a whirlwind, ten-day Hawaiian romance.  She is relying on her parents, art dealer Christina Drayton (Katharine Hepburn) and newspaper owner Matt Drayton (Spencer Tracy), to approve of her decision over his misgivings.  Despite the fact that he is a world-renowned physician, their first stop at Christina’s studio is not a smooth one.  The manager, Hilary St. George (Virginia Christine), is polite but looks askance as the two lovebirds.  That love is key to this story because Joanna and Dr. Prentice do care deeply for one another.  They need it as they finally get to the Drayton residence and the person who greets them is Matilda “Tillie” Binx (Isabel Sanford), the Drayton’s African American maid of over two decades.  She has nothing good to say for the two of them.  Neither does Christina when she enters the house, though she leaves her initial shock mostly unvoiced.  It is to her that the engaged tell their story and plans.  The first part you already largely know, but it is their intention to wed in Europe where Dr. Prentice will be completing a two-year assignment that is elaborated here.  His plane to go there leaves this night, and they are seeking Christina and Matt’s blessing before he departs.  She will join him in a few weeks, but Matt soon joins them and is even more flabbergasted by this development.  He had been about to golf with Monsignor Ryan, but he cancels this excursion to deal with this situation.  Once Matt is able to finally confer with Christina alone, all she can do is look through the window at Joanna and Dr. Prentice and see the love they share.  Thus, Christina is resolved that the romance can work, but Matt remains against it.  He is not opposed to Dr. Prentice’s race, but he believes the pair will face more struggles than they should and does not want to see them endure it.  Meanwhile, Dr. Prentice is on the phone with his parents, John Sr. (Roy E. Glenn Sr.) and Mary Prentice (Beah Richards), to give them the news.  Pointedly, Dr. Prentice leaves out the part about the color of her skin.  In a subsequent telephone conversation, Joanna insists that the Prentices fly up from Los Angeles for the evening for dinner.  Not long thereafter, he takes the Drayton elders aside to say another thing he is not sharing with everyone: he will not wed Joanna without her mom and dad’s approval.  Though Matt says nothing for the moment, the pressure of what he feels he must say bothers him for the next few hours.  Meanwhile, Joanna and Dr. Prentice go out with some friends to tell them about what is happening.  Because they are younger, they are thrilled for the couple, but they wonder why Joanna is not flying with Dr. Prentice to Europe.  With that, Joanna decides she will leave that night and Dr. Prentice is too happy to voice an opinion to the contrary.  With that, they go to the airport and greet Mr. and Mrs. Prentice at the gate.  Joanna must endure all over again the shock of finding out about the interracial couple, and it is John who is the most aghast.  Before they get to the house, Monsignor Ryan gets there and attempts to talk some sense into Matt, shaming the newspaper man for not living up to the liberal ideas he espouses.  Matt is unmoved.  Downstairs, Christina is bracing for trouble when she is present to take the Prentices’ coats.  The conversation soon divides into camps, with Christina and Mary talking about their approval, Matt and John their disapproval, and everyone else stuck in the middle.  The key battles take place between Mary and Matt, and Dr. Prentice and his father.  With Mary and Matt, she talks of how much she has come to admire Joanna in this short time, and how the two are ready for whatever faces them.  This is much the tenor of Dr. Prentice’s words to John.  Once these conversations conclude, Matt lingers outside by himself for a while before he realizes the error of his ways.  Gathering everyone in the living room, he speaks to the importance of the love shared by Joanna and Dr. Prentice, and gives his blessing.

If you are wondering about the last word in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, they finally have it before the end credits roll.  Having never seen this movie before writing this review, I made the silly assumption that the meal came much sooner.  I had known of it by reputation, of course, but as I mentioned in the introduction, I was pleased to see my Church being well represented in the form of Monsignor Ryan.  Indeed, he is the only one, aside from Joanna, who does not have some kind of visceral reaction when he learns of the interracial couple.  Instead, his feelings are those of joy, as they should be for any couple who express their love for one another.  The only disappointing revelation while he was around was the fact that the Draytons are not Catholic.  That is disappointing, but not surprising.  There was a time, and Father Coughlin was a twisted example of this, when certain priests were pillars of their communities outside the boundaries of their parishes.  This is one of the reasons why Catholics were viewed with suspicion for so many centuries.  Inheriting old world suspicions of the Church, the protestant majority saw Catholics as a menace and a threat to the budding American life, whatever that meant in the nineteenth century.  To fight this bigotry, Catholics tried to fit their ways into American culture.  This partially explains why you would see a priest golfing with a newspaper man.  It was less about religion and more about making connections amongst different people in society.  Such relationships are important not only for society at large, but for the Church.  It is not about changing Church teachings for any reason.  Indeed, Monsignor Ryan represents Church views on race when he speaks his wisdom about the couple.  Instead, it is more about the fact the Church cannot exist in a vacuum.  That is why it warms my heart to see a priest in a movie like this playing the part of a peacemaker.

Which is one of the reasons why Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is such a satisfying experience, that it has such a peaceful ending.  There is nothing wrong then, or now, with such a couple for we are all God’s children.  A movie like this one is a great reminder of this fact.