A murder mystery with a second subject
In the Heat of the Night was directed by Norman Jewison and released in the United States in August 1967. It is based on a 1965 novel by John Ball. On the surface it is a detective story. A wealthy industrialist is found murdered in a small Mississippi town called Sparta, and a Black stranger waiting at the railway station is arrested because he has money in his wallet and the police assume he is guilty. He turns out to be Virgil Tibbs, an experienced homicide detective from Philadelphia. Over the course of the film, Tibbs and the local police chief, Bill Gillespie, are forced to work together.
The second subject, never far from the surface, is race. The town’s officers are suspicious of Tibbs not because of evidence but because of who he is, and the film’s tension comes as much from prejudice as from the mystery itself.
The principal performers
Sidney Poitier played Tibbs. He had won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1964 for Lilies of the Field, the first Black man to do so, and by 1967 he was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. His Tibbs is composed, educated and professionally expert, which was an important image for the period, though the role also demands restraint under provocation.
Rod Steiger played Gillespie, a gum-chewing chief who is limited, defensive and gradually changed by what he sees. Steiger’s performance is generally regarded as the more varied of the two, since the character is allowed to change in ways that Tibbs is not. Warren Oates, Lee Grant and Larry Gates appeared in supporting roles. The score was by Quincy Jones, and Ray Charles sang the title song.
Although the story is set in Mississippi, much of the filming was reportedly done in Sparta, Illinois, and in parts of Tennessee. The decision was reportedly influenced in part by concerns about safety for the cast and crew in the Deep South at that time.
The slap scene
The film is best remembered for one moment. Tibbs questions a plantation owner named Endicott, who slaps him across the face. Tibbs slaps him back. The scene is short, but it carried unusual weight in 1967 because Black characters in mainstream films seldom answered a white man’s violence in kind. The reaction in cinemas was strong. It has often been reported that Poitier insisted on the exchange as a condition of taking the role. The details of that story vary between accounts, but the scene’s importance is not in doubt.
Another line from the film became widely known. When Gillespie asks what they call him in Philadelphia, Tibbs answers that they call him “Mister Tibbs.” The line was later used as the title of a sequel, They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970), which was followed by The Organization (1971). A television series appeared in 1988.
April 1968: the Oscars
The Academy Awards ceremony for 1967 films was held in Santa Monica, California, on 10 April 1968. It had originally been set for 8 April but was pushed back two days because of the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., who had been shot on 4 April. The King assassination had occurred only days before, and the mood was subdued.
In the Heat of the Night received seven nominations and won five Oscars:
- Best Picture
- Best Actor (Rod Steiger)
- Best Adapted Screenplay (Stirling Silliphant)
- Best Film Editing (Hal Ashby)
- Best Sound
The other Best Picture nominees were Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Doctor Dolittle and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Many writers have noticed that the winner was the most conventional of the group in terms of form, a murder mystery with a clear moral arc, and that a more experimental choice such as Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate might have signalled a bigger break with the past. Poitier was not nominated for his performance as Tibbs. Hal Ashby, the editor, later became a notable director in the 1970s.
Reading the film today
The film is often discussed in relation to the civil rights movement and to the summer of 1967. It opened in early August, within days of the Newark riot and the Detroit uprising, and it was released in the same year as the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision. Its audience would have felt the connection. Later commentators have raised a caution, noting that the relationship between the two lead characters is resolved through a grudging personal respect rather than through any change in the town’s wider structure, and that Tibbs is again an exceptional figure in a mostly white world. The Kerner Commission, appointed after that summer’s unrest, would later give a harsher national assessment of racial inequality than any single film could.
Still, as a piece of 1967 filmmaking it was notable. It was a commercial and critical success, it gave a Black actor a commanding lead in a major mainstream picture, and it won the industry’s top honour in the month of King’s death. That combination is a large part of why it is still shown and debated.