“So do you wear those big hats and keep your hair long on the sides?”

“No no no, I’m just Norman Jewison”

This is the best summary I could come up with:

NEW YORK (AP) — Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and “Moonstruck” to such social dramas as the Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” has died at age 97.

As Jewison was ending his military service in the Canadian navy during World War II, he hitchhiked through the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation.

He drew upon his experiences for 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” starring Rod Steiger as a white racist small-town sheriff and Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia trying to help solve a murder and eventually forming a working relationship with the hostile local lawman.

James Baldwin condemned the film’s “appalling distance from reality,” and thought the director trapped in a fantasy of racial harmony that would only heighten “Black rage and despair.” But The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther was among the critics who found the movie powerful and inspiring and in a year featuring such landmarks as “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” Jewison’s production won the Academy Award for best picture while Steiger took home the best actor Oscar.

His work there brought offers from Hollywood and he quickly earned a reputation as a director of TV musicals, with stars including Judy Garland, Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte.

His other films included “F.I.S.T.”, a flop with Sylvester Stallone as a Jimmy Hoffa-style labor leader; “…And Justice for All” (1979), with Al Pacino fighting a crooked judicial system; and “In Country,” featuring Bruce Willis as a Vietnam War veteran.

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