Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1397791
49 F A L L Q 3 I S S U E then on American television, where he directed specials for Harry Belafonte and Judy Garland — Jewison found himself at the helm of a feature film, the Tony Curtis comedy "40 Pounds of Trouble" (1962), but it was hardly the sort of weighty ma- terial for which he later became known. Further frivolous comedies followed, including a pair of vehicles for Doris Day: "The Thrill of It All" (1963) and "Send Me No Flowers" (1964). Yet, as Jewison was biding his time on such shiny but skin-deep productions, Hollywood was growing up around him: edgier, more serious-minded films were on the rise in the 1960s. Recognizing a need to catch up to a changing industry, Jewison's own work matured: "The Cincinnati Kid" (1965) and "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968) were hip, stylish vehicles for Steve McQueen, and "In the Heat of the Night" was something more: a piercing, relentless drama starring Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective from Philadelphia tasked with making sense of a murder while also confronting racial prejudice in the Deep South. Not coinci- dentally, all three films were edited by Hal Ashby, the future director whose career was kickstarted through his association with Jewison and who won an Oscar for editing "In the Heat of the Night." But, as quickly as Jewison got in tune with the zeitgeist, the zeitgeist moved on from him. His work started to seem a bit quaint in its earnest solidness: Films such as ". . . And Justice for All" (1979), "A Soldier's Story" (1984), and "Agnes of God" (1985) were well-made, well-acted, and highlighted consequential themes, B O O K R E V I E W but they were far from prevailing indus- try tastes in the age of the popcorn movie. Where Jewison's films were once too trivial, in the end, they became perhaps too solemn. Jewison, who turned 95 in late July, is the subject of a fascinating new bi- ography that is alert to the paradoxes and contradictions of a long career. "He weathered epochal paradigm shifts in the film industry that swallowed the careers of all but a few contemporaries," Ira Wells writes in "Norman Jewison: A Director's Life," an engagingly written, scrupulously researched biography that admires but does not lionize its subject. As quickly as he got in tune with the zeitgeist, the zeitgeist moved on.