August 2, 1967: "In the Heat of the Night" Premieres

Sidney Poitier (left) and Rod Steiger

August 2, 1967: The film In the Heat of the Night premieres, directed by Norman Jewison, and based on a 1965 novel by John Ball. Quincy Jones wrote the score and the theme song, which was sung by Ray Charles.

Three years earlier, Sidney Poitier had become the 1st black man to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor. Still, born in Miami and raised in The Bahamas -- and thus having both American and British citizenship -- he knew what racism existed in the American South, and did not want to film any of his scenes in the American South. Not wanting to lose him, Jewison shot all of Poitier's scenes in Sparta, Illinois -- in southern Illinois, not exactly a place that welcomed civil rights activists -- while filming scenes without him in Dyersburg and Union City, Tennessee.

Poitier played Virgil Tibbs, who is arrested by Officer Sam Wood (played by Warren Oates) at the train station in Sparta, Mississippi, for the murder of wealthy industrialist Phillip Colbert (an uncredited Jack Teter). The police chief, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), looks through his wallet, and discovers a badge: Tibbs is a homicide detective with the Philadelphia police, and was visiting his mother in Sparta.

A calendar in Gillespie's office reveals the date as September 12, 1966, which suggests the date of filming. There actually is an unincorporated community in northeastern Mississippi named Sparta. The choice of Philly as Tibbs' adopted hometown cannot be a coincidence: In 1964, 3 civil rights workers had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Gillespie hears the name "Virgil," and says to Tibbs: "That's a funny name for a (N-word) boy that comes from Philadelphia! What do they call you up there?" Tibbs angrily tells him. "They call me Mister Tibbs!"

Tibbs wants to leave town on the next train, but his Chief in Philadelphia suggests he stay in Sparta to help Gillespie with the murder investigation. Though Gillespie, like many of Sparta's white residents, is racist, he and Tibbs reluctantly agree to work together. This leads to Tibbs' detective skills overruling the town doctor as to when and where the murder occurred, and the Sparta police for overlooking the alibi of a suspect, Harvey Oberst (Scott Wilson).

Tibbs initially suspects the murderer is wealthy plantation owner Eric Endicott (Larry Gates), a genteel racist and Sparta's most powerful citizen, who publicly opposed Colbert's new factory. When Tibbs begins interrogating him, Endicott slaps him, to which Tibbs responds by slapping him back. Afterwards, Endicott sends a gang of local thugs after him. Gillespie rescues Tibbs and tells him to leave town to save himself, but Tibbs is determined to stay and solve the case.

The scene of Tibbs slapping Endicott is not present in the novel. According to Poitier, the scene was almost not in the movie, and it was he who had proposed the idea of Tibbs slapping Endicott back. In the textbook Civil Rights and Race Relations in the USA, Poitier stated: "I said, 'I'll tell you what, I'll make this movie for you if you give me your absolute guarantee when he slaps me I slap him right back, and you guarantee that it will play in every version of this movie.' I try not to do things that are against nature."

It turns out that Officer Wood has a 16-year-old girlfriend, Delores Purdy (Quentin Dean). Her brother Lloyd (James Patterson -- not the mystery novelist) wants to press statutory rape charges against Wood for getting her pregnant. Tibbs wants to be present for Delores' questioning. Lloyd is offended, and gathers a lynch mob to go after Tibbs.

Tibbs pressures illegal abortionist Mama Caleba (Beah Richards), who is black, to reveal that she is about to provide an abortion for Delores. (Roe v. Wade was still over 5 years away.) When Delores arrives and sees Tibbs, she runs away. Tibbs follows Delores and confronts her armed boyfriend, Ralph (Anthony James), a cook at a local roadside diner.

Lloyd's mob arrives and holds Tibbs at gunpoint. Tibbs tells Lloyd to check Delores' purse for the $100 that Ralph gave her for an abortion, which he got from killing and robbing Colbert. Lloyd realizes Tibbs is right when he opens the purse and finds the money. After Lloyd confronts Ralph for getting his sister pregnant, Ralph shoots Lloyd, killing him. Tibbs grabs Ralph's gun as Gillespie arrives on the scene.

Ralph is arrested, and confesses to the killing of Colbert. He explains that after hitchhking a ride with Colbert and asking him for a job, Ralph attacked him at the construction site of the new factory, intending only to knock Colbert unconscious and rob him, but accidentally killing him instead.

Tibbs arrives at the station to meet the next train that will return himto Philadelphia, as Gillespie, having carried his suitcase, shakes Tibbs' hand and bids him farewell. In the final interaction between Gillespie and Tibbs, as the detective ascends the stairs onto the train, for one last time Gillespie calls out to him and sincerely tells Tibbs: "You take care, you hear?" After a moment of hesitation, Tibbs turns around to face Gillespie and gives a warm smile in reply. Gillespie smiles back at Tibbs as he boards the train.

The time of this film's release may have been a "Summer of Love" in San Francisco, but, in so many other places, it was "The Long Hot Summer" and "The Year of Living Dangerously." And it was all because of the lingering effects of what America's white aristocracy had done to black people. And to poor white people, too: A few weeks later, the Number 1 song in America would be "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry, set in rural Mississippi.

Still, the film aimed to both expose and heal. It certainly did the former, and maybe it helped to do the latter, too. After all, the symbolism is undeniable. When the film begins, it's the middle of the night, and everything is dark and foreboding, and nobody feels like smiling, even before they find out there's been a murder. When it ends, it's midday, and the film's formerly antagonistic protagonists, their mission accomplished, are smiling.

The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, and Best Actor for Steiger. Poitier made 2 sequels, with the character having moved to San Francisco and being married to a woman named Valerie, played by actress and jazz singer Barbara McNair: They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! in 1970 and The Organization in 1971. Both films did well at the box office, but not as well as the original.

Neither of these films was based on Ball's subsequent novels about Tibbs, all of which, like the original, set the action outside Los Angeles in Pasadena, California: The Cool Cottontail (1966), Johnny Get Your Gun (1969), Five Pieces of Jade (1972), The Eyes of Buddha (1976), Then Came Violence (1980) and Singapore (1986).

Jewison seemed to specialize in making films of Broadway plays, including the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971), the musical Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), A Soldier's Story (1984) and Agnes of God (1985). He also directed The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the original version of Rollerball (1975), ...And Justice for All (1979) and The Hurricane (1999).

James Patterson died in 1972, Warren Oates in 1982, John Ball in 1988, Larry Gates in 1996, Beah Richards in 2000, Rod Steiger in 2002, Quentin Dean in 2003, Barbara McNair in 2007, Scott Wilson in 2018, Anthony James in 2020, and Sidney Poitier in 2022. As of August 2, 2022, Norman Jewison is still alive. So is Lee Grant, who played Mrs. Colbert, widow of the murder victim. (UPDATE: Jewison died in 2024.)

In 1988, NBC began a TV version of In the Heat of the Night, but played with the timeline: The show took place in the present day, but the events of the previous meeting between Tibbs and Gillespie are said to have taken place only "a few years ago." Tibbs returns to Sparta for his mother's funeral, and is persuaded by the Mayor to stay and integrate the town's all-white police force as Chief of Detectives.

Tibbs was played by Howard Rollins, and Gillespie by Carroll O'Connor, who had played Archie Bunker on All in the Family. Both Archie and Gillespie had to learn to suppress their bigotry, but, by the time the TV show began, Gillespie had proven better at it than Archie.

The show ran 4 years on NBC, then switched to CBS for 3 years, but Rollins' legal and health issues made it impossible to continue: He died in 1996, only a year and a half after the show aired its last episode. O'Connor's son, Hugh O'Connor, played Officer Lonnie Jamison. Like Rollins, Hugh had drug problems, causing him legal problems, and couldn't take it anymore, and killed himself in 1995, during the show's last days.

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August 2, 1967 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the California Angels, 5-4 at Yankee Stadium. Bill Monbouquette blew a 4-3 lead in the 9th inning. Mickey Mantle went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The New York Mets lost to the Houston Astros, 5-2 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Detroit Tigers won the opener, 4-2. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs in the 1st game, then sat out the nightcap. The Baltimore Orioles won that, 2-1. Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 4-for-8 with a home run and 2 RBIs, and Frank Robinson went 1-for-5 with 3 walks and an RBI on a bases-loaded walk.

* The Washington Senators beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-4 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.) Hank Allen singled Ed Stroud home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Pete Rose went 3-for-4 with 2 home runs, a walk and 2 RBIs. Hank Aaron went 4-for-5 with an RBI.

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 4-2 and 7-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Over the 2 games, Lou Brock went 6-for-10 with a stolen base and 2 RBIs. Ernie Banks went 1-for-7 with a home run, a walk and an RBI. Steve Carlton won the 2nd game for the Cardinals, but Bob Gibson did not pitch in either game: This was during his time on the Disabled List with a broken leg.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Dick Allen singled Billy Cowan home with the winning run in the top of the 10th inning.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente both hit home runs.

July 28, 1954: "On the Waterfront" Premieres

Eva Marie Saint (left) and Marlon Brando

July 28, 1954: On the Waterfront premieres, directed by Elia Kazan. It is regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made.

The film is widely considered to be Kazan's answer to those who criticized him for identifying 8 Communists in the film industry before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952. Budd Schulberg, who had previously written about boxers (and would again), wrote the script, after Kazan's friend, playwright Arthur Miller, backed out. Leonard Bernstein composed the musical score.

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) was a former boxer, who never made it, because his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), desperate for cash, made a deal with a corrupt union leader, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), who strong-armed Terry into throwing a fight. In a famous scene in the back of a taxicab, Terry tells Charley, "You don't understand! I coulda had class! I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody! Instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it."

(When people do impressions of Brando, they have multiple choices. It's often this scene. But they also do Stanley Kowalski yelling, "Stella!" from A Streetcar Named Desire; Colonel Kurtz's last words, "The horror... " from Apocalypse Now; and and various quotes from Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather.)

In saying this, Terry, now a poor longshoreman on the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, tells Charley that he's going to testify against Friendly before the Waterfront Crime Commission. This is in revenge for Friendly having coerced him into luring Joey Doyle, a fellow dockworker, onto a rooftop, where Friendly's thugs pushed him to his death for testifying.

Terry had been dating Joey's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint, in her 1st film role). She talks a local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden), into rallying the dockworkers against Friendly. But they are more afraid of Friendly than than they are of God, and refuse. That fear grows the next day, when another boxer-turned-dockworker "owned" by Friendly, Timothy "Kayo" Dugan, testifies behind closed doors, in an attempt to keep his identity hidden, but it gets out, and he is killed.

Terry is subpoenaed, and Friendly sends Charley to tell him not to testify, leading to the conversation in the cab. Having failed in his mission, Charley is killed by Friendly, and left on a hook for Terry to see, as one final warning not to testify, meaning, if he does, he will be the next to go.

My mother told me her parents took her to see this movie, because they wanted to see it and they couldn't get a babysitter. She was 7 years old, and she said the sight of Charley on the hook traumatized her. I was 17 when I first saw it, and I can understand why.

The murder has the opposite effect on Terry: He is more determined than ever, and he does testify. The next day, He appears at the dock for the daily ritual where workers are chosen from the assembled longshoremen. Everyone is called to work except Terry, who taunts Friendly outside the nearby shack, shouting that he is proud of testifying. They get into a shouting match, and start fighting. Terry is winning until Friendly's thugs beat the hell out of him, leaving him all but dead.

Finally, the other dockworkers get it: They tell Friendly that they're on strike until Terry goes back to work. In his condition, he can't. Father Barry tells him that he lost the battle, but has a chance to win the war if he can walk into the warehouse. Father Barry and Edie get him on his feet, and he stumbles up the gangway to stand before the warehouse, where the boss nods to Terry, letting him in, and tells them to get to work. The men follow Terry inside, ignoring Friendly. Friendly threatens them all, but it's over: Even his thugs are no longer afraid of him, so his power is gone, and he is completely ignored.

Tony Galento, Tami Mauriello and Abe Simon, all of whom had fought Joe Louis for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, played dockworkers in this film. Fred Gwynne, later to star on The Munsters, played dockworker Mladen "Slim" Sekulovich. Mladen Sekulovich was Karl Malden's real name.

(Malden would also play the warden in The Birdman of Alcatraz, and "Sekulovich" was one of the names he rattled off in solitary confinement along with Burt Lancaster's Robert Stroud, the titular birdkeeper.)

The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards. It won 8, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, and Best Director for Kazan. Saint did not attend the award ceremony: She was pregnant, and her son Darrell Hayden was born 2 days later. Eva and director Jeffrey Hayden had one of the longest marriages in Hollywood history, marrying in 1951, and were still married when he died in 2016. In addition to Darrell, they later had a daughter, Laurette.

In 1999, Malden played a priest on an episode of The West Wing. Onto their Oval Office set, he brought the same Bible he'd used in On the Waterfront.

Cobb died in 1976, Bernstein in 1990, Steiger in 2002, Kazan in 2003, Brando in 2004, Malden and Schulberg in 2009. As of July 28, 2022, Saint is still alive, the last surviving actor from the film.

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July 28, 1954 was a Wednesday. Hugo Chávez, dictatorial President of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, was born on this day.

And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 7-5 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Mickey Mantle went 3-for-5 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Yogi Berra went 4-for-5 with an RBI. Still, Eddie Lopat only lasted 1 inning, and the Yankees trailed 5-1 after 7 innings, before coming from behind, scoring 3 runs in the 8th and 3 more in the 9th. Bob Grim was the winning pitcher in relief.

* The New York Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-0 at the Polo Grounds. Johnny Antonelli allowed 10 hits, but only 1 walk, and kept the shutout. Dusty Rhodes hit 3 home runs. Willie Mays added 1.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-1 at Ebbets Field. Roy Campanella hit a home run. Jackie Robinson went 0-for-3, but drove in a run with a bases-loaded walk. The only Cub run came on a home run by Ralph Kiner. Rookie Ernie Banks went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Redlegs, 3-2 at Connie Mack Stadium. (That ballpark had been Shibe Park until the year before. The Reds called themselves the Redlegs from 1953 to 1958, because of the Red Scare.)

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 2-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Rookie Hank Aaron went 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs, although he did not hit a home run.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 2-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Early Wynn was the winning pithcer. Ted Williams went 2-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 10-2 at Briggs Stadium (renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961) in Detroit. Bud Souchock hit 2 home runs, and Al Kaline went 1-for-4.