In the Heat of the Night - Trailer [1967] [40th Oscar Best Picture]

Virgil Tibbs is a Philadelphia Homicide detective home to see his mother in the rural south. He is arrested on general principles when a rich white man is found dead, and Tibbs' being Black is enough reason. When his identity is established, his boss offers his services to the small town sheriff who has little experience with murder investigations. As the two policemen learn how to work together, they begin to make progress on the crime. Written by John Vogel {jlvogel@comcast.net}
[IMDB.COM]

Release: USA 2 August 1967 (New York City, New York) (premiere)
Awards: Won 5 Oscars. Another 17 wins & 12 nominations
Producer: Walter Mirisch
Director: Norman Jewison
Writer: John Ball (novel), Stirling Silliphant (writer)
Cast: Phil Adams, Buzz Barton, Matt Clark, Quentin Dean, Larry Gates, Lee Grant, Jester Hairston, Clegg Hoyt, Anthony James, Arthur Malet, Larry D. Mann, Pete Masterson, Kermit Murdock, Stuart Nisbet, Warren Oates, Alan Oppenheimer, James Patterson, Sidney Poitier, Beah Richards, William Schallert, Timothy Scott, Rod Steiger, Fred Stewart, Jack Teter, William [C.] Watson, Peter Whitney, Scott Wilson
Genre: Drama | Mystery | Crime
[IMDB.COM]

• Category

  Film & Animation

[Parkyurkarkas]

I had the pleasure of becoming friends with Stirling Silliphant when he lived in Bangkok. He would write while listening to Frank Sinatra records really loud. Great stories of taking kung fu lessons from Bruce Lee and hanging with William Holden who was best man at his wedding. The stories just kept getting better. For an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode Alfred Hitchcock telling him he needed not several lines but an inch and an half of dialogue. Magnum Force, Towering Inferno, 77 Sunset Strip

[hambone31000]

Mr. Tibbs is more Sherlock Holmes than Luther.

He is bright among dumb rednecks as Holmes was smart among dumb Scotland yard cops.

[cinemacec]

trying to finish AFI's top 100 :O

[Robert Creasey]

Got to be one of the best films ever...

[hambone31000]

all of this only shows what happens when people build up great hate inside themselves. The results are always ugly. Nazi Germany and many other instances prove it. And many of the killings today.

[hambone31000]

True. A few months ago on PBS there was "Freedom Riders" Courageous Whites and African Americans went through hell in the South All they wanted was rights for all Americans

[toddsmitts]

There were still MURDERS, just not so many lynchings. Most of the examples above were bombings or shootings. Birmingham gained such a notorious reputation for bombings in the 50's and 60's, it became known as "Bombingham" (the worst of these, of course was the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, in which 4 young girls were killed). During the Selma marches, James Reeb (a white minister from the north) was fatally beaten and Jimmie Lee Jackson (a local activist) was fatally shot.

[hambone31000]

Still, It was extremely horrible for blacks in the South during the 60's Martin Luther King and the great crowd with him didn't take that walk for the exercise. It's impossible for the media to cover all of the many lynchings. They can't be everywhere, so they covered the high profile ones in the 60's and George Wallace, and so on.

[toddsmitts]

To be fair,lynchings were more common in the first few decades of the 20thCentury, though there were some high-profile mid-20thCentury murders (usually by Klansmen): Emmett Till in 1955,The 16th St. Baptist Church and Medgar Evers in 1963,Neshoba murders in 1964,Viola Liuzzo in 1965.

While theSouth today certainly isn't what it was50 years ago, every once in a while racial incidents still pop up:Check out the docs "Right America: Feeling Wronged" and "Prom Night in Mississippi" (Both onYoutube)

[hambone31000]

I always thought it insane that when man went to the moon and in an age of early computers and TV, the South still had lynchings, segregation and so on just like in the 1800's.

[toddsmitts]

(2/2)In the Senate, southern lawmakers wielded power completely disproportionate to their numbers in 2 ways: Since theSouth was effectively a 1-party region, it was much easier to gain seniority and become chairmen of key committees like theJudicial and Rules committees, where they could hold up civil rights bills indefinitely.

Also they could perform a filibuster,talking for hours, days, weeks, even months, to stall a vote, unless theSenate invoked cloture, which it didn't mange to until 1964.

[toddsmitts]

The sad part is, for a time after the Civil War, things greatly improved for many African Americans, gaining wealth and polical clout.  Mississippi was even the first state to send an African American to the senate. Sadly that all changed when Reconstruction ended and new state constitutions were enacted to disenfranchise African Americans. Lynchings were common and the KKK ran rampant. The 1890's to the 1930's are now called the Nadir of Race Relations in the US. (1/2)