The entry begins:Producer-director Stanley Kramer was one of Hollywood’s earliest and most successful independent post-World War II producers. From the 1940s to the 1970s, he made thirty-five films. Six received nominations for the Best Picture Academy Award. High Noon (1952) and The Caine Mutiny (1954) he produced, and The Defiant Ones (1958), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Ship of Fools (1966), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) he also directed. In 1962, he received the Academy’s prestigious Thalberg Award, bestowed on “creative producers” for “consistent high quality of production.”Learn more about Producer of Controversy at the publisher's website.
But what made Kramer most stand out was his forthright commitment to political liberalism. At the height of the Cold War, Kramer wore his liberal politics on his sleeve. Politics showed in the subjects of his films: American race relations, the threat of nuclear war, violations of free thought and expression, and the Holocaust. He also took public stances for civil rights and civil liberties and against the anticommunist Red Scare and the Hollywood blacklist. In the process, he and his movies provoked discussion and debate. So much so, by 1961, he came to be called “Hollywood’s producer of controversy.”
Framing my movie about Kramer’s high-stress, high-stakes career and politics would be the tales of two significant productions. High Noon (1952) was a western made in the midst of anticommunist investigations of Hollywood. These events drove the screenplay, written by Kramer’s early collaborator and business partner Carl Foreman, and led to their personal and professional fallout. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), an interracial “dramedy” starring Sidney Poitier, reflected and affected the social, cultural, and political changes of the 1960s.
Kramer: For the lead role, I’d cast Gary...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: Producer of Controversy.
--Marshal Zeringue
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