Recounting the kindness of the legendary Norman Jewison

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Salah Bachir’s First to Leave the Party: My Life with Ordinary People … Who Happen to be Famous was published in October, 2023. Norman Jewison died on Jan. 20 of this year.

We end our regular checkup calls with Norman and Lynne by saying, “We love you guys.” And then it always hits me a few minutes later – holy s--t, I’ve been talking to the legendary Norman Jewison as if he were my best friend, or even one of the family. Norman and Lynne are definitely chosen family.

There’s a lot of “legendary” about Norman. Producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Canadian Film Centre. Nominated for three best director Oscars. Winner of several lifetime achievement awards and more. Not to mention receiving the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” That ranks him in the company of Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ingmar Bergman, to name only a few film giants who have been so honoured.

All that recognition is well-deserved, as Norman has directed some of the most important films of our times – including the Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night (1967), and four more movies that garnered best picture nominations: The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), A Soldier’s Story (1984), and Moonstruck (1987).

More than just an award-winning Hollywood director, Norman has fought over the years for social justice and an end to racism. As Canadian filmmaker Clement Virgo points out, Norman’s life intersected with the civil unrest of the 1960s and it affected him deeply. He marched behind Martin Luther King Jr.’s coffin in Atlanta in 1968 and, later that year, was on his way to meet his friend Robert Kennedy the night Bobby was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Clement postulates that an incident when Norman was in the navy at 17 is what made this “white Protestant kid from the Beaches in Toronto’s east end able to tap into the soul of social justice in his movies.” While on leave, Norman was making his way through the American South, and on a bus in Tennessee, he went to sit in the back where the windows were open and it was cooler. As Clement tells it: “Five minutes into the ride, the bus driver stopped the bus, glared at him and barked, ‘You tryin’ to be funny, sailor? Can’t you read the sign?’ That’s when Norman saw the sign in the middle of the bus that said: Coloured people to the rear. He looked around and realized he was surrounded by Black people. The white people in the front of the bus all turned to stare at him. Norman got off the bus as a sign of protest.”

I first met Norman in 1985 when I was invited to a boozy all-after noon lunch with then Globe and Mail film critic Jay Scott. Norman’s friends were critical of a biography of Jewison that Jay was planning to write. Norman had just finished filming Agnes of God with Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, and Meg Tilly – the latter of whom, Jewison reported, held her own with the two acting legends. It was one of those eighties lunches that began with a double martini and ended with a double martini. Anyway, the biography proved more difficult to write after Jay discovered through numerous interviews that the dashing young Jewison had conducted several affairs; he wasn’t sure how and whether to work them in. Jay died of AIDS in 1993, and his version of the book never saw the light of day.

I often saw Norman around town at events and with friends, and a couple of years later, I felt comfortable enough to ask if he would accept a lifetime achievement award from the home video industry, with proceeds going to charity. He laughed at the idea of capping a career that was in full swing, and said, “I still have a lot of films I want to do, but yes.” The price for his acceptance was that some of the charity funds had to go toward the Canadian Film Centre, which Norman notably founded in 1988 to help foster and finance new generations of homegrown filmmakers.

“You should come on the board of the CFC and I will help you any way I can if you need me to,” he told me after the gala. It was one of the best deals I’ve ever made.

Norman has worked with just about everyone in his seventy-plus years in the business. The man directed The Judy Garland Show, which alone gives him honourary status, and has the singular distinction of directing Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin performing a song with Judy. He lived up to his promise to me and made himself available as my calling card to people such as Doris Day and Gregory Peck. He sent checks to causes when I hadn’t even asked him for a contribution, merely mentioned it at a board meeting. Checks from him simply appeared.

He gave of his time and personal energy as well. When a star didn’t show for some event, he’d offer to step in at the last minute. On a few occasions, I would begin with, “I hate to ask, but so-and-so just cancelled … ‚” and he would agree before I could even describe the event. He agreed to do things that, in retrospect, I’d think, Oh my god, I shouldn’t have asked him to do that. I explained the significance of this to people who don’t realize how important Norman is by saying it would be like running into Scorsese and him saying, “I’ll do anything you want; where do you need me to be?”

Atom Egoyan likes to tell of how Norman changed his life, starting with the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. “Other people will say that Norman has made much more important and socially significant films [and he certainly has], but seeing this glorious piece of cinema in 1973 when I was thirteen was mind-blowing,” says Atom. “He brilliantly thought of staging it as a play within a play, so all the singers show up in the middle of the desert in a bus and then perform the musical. It was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen. It rocked me in a way that no other rock film ever had, not even the incredible movie of The Beatles’ Help! by Richard Lester. So, I can honestly say that the movie that made me want to make my own films was by a fellow Canadian.”

Atom, barely a teenager, wrote Norman a note about it. “Miraculously, he responded, and I still have his card from decades ago that says: ‘Dear Atom, Thanks for the kind words,’ before he went into some detail describing how he had made the film. Wow. For a young aspiring filmmaker, this was an amazing gift.”

I can remember us sitting around on a beautiful summer night at Norman’s beloved film centre – a gracious estate in north Toronto – telling stories my friends still talk about today. He would always start off with, “I’m just a storyteller … ‚” and suddenly you’re hanging on every word and we’d have to drag him away when a supposedly two hour dinner began running toward midnight.

“Sidney Poitier was adamant that he would not film In the Heat of the Night in Sparta, Miss. He said he wouldn’t feel comfortable in the South. We wound up filming instead in Sparta, Ill. – so we both got our way,” Norman told us. Then it was on to Moonstruck and a story about Nicolas Cage throwing a chair across the room, followed by a story about how hard Denzel Washington worked in The Hurricane. “Denzel really wanted to capture Rubin Carter as a fighter. It’s a story we both wanted to tell. He worked so hard and really learned how to fight.”

Next, Norman was telling us about how he met Robert Kennedy while they were skiing with their families at Christmas in Sun Valley.

“There was a skiing race for kids and my second son, Mike, fell and broke his leg,” said Norman. “Kennedy’s son was also in the race and he also fell and broke his leg, so we ended up sitting in this tiny little hospital room together, waiting for our kids to get their casts. I looked over and smiled at him and he said, ‘What do you do?’ I said, ‘I’m a filmmaker, Mr. Kennedy.’ He asked what kind of films I made and I said, ‘I’m making a film that’s going to be very interesting, about a Black detective from Philadelphia.’ In two seconds, I told him the story of the film: a Black detective, Sidney Poitier, goes to the South and falls under suspicion of murder. He stays on to solve the case.”

Bobby was the first person to tell Norman that In the Heat of the Night could turn out to be a very important movie. “He told me timing is everything – in politics, in art, and in life itself,” said Norman. “I’ll never forget that.”

The movie went on to receive seven Oscar nominations, winning best picture, and best actor for Rod Steiger. It cleaned up at other awards ceremonies, too, and marked the beginning of an important trio of socially aware Norman Jewison films, including A Soldier’s Story, which starred a young Denzel Washington, and The Hurricane (1999), with Denzel again. Norman keeps claiming he’s not a message filmmaker, but those films certainly sent a message. He was even up to direct Malcolm X (1992), bowing out for sensitivity over whether a white guy from Canada should direct it. Spike Lee ended up at the helm.

“Sidney Poitier was one of my screen heroes, as he was to many Black people,” says Clement Virgo. “So, when the southern sheriff [Steiger] berated him by shouting, ‘Virgil? That’s a funny name for a n---er boy that comes from Philadelphia. What do they call you up there?’ and Poitier responded with a defiant, ‘They call me MISTER TIBBS!’ it was a watershed moment for so many.”

I, too, was a fan of Poitier’s. At a dinner with Norman and Lynne, I gushed about him. Flash forward a couple of years and Norman asked me to a CFC reception. He insisted I show up early – and that’s when he introduced me to the man himself. Norman and Sidney were born six months apart, and Sidney referred to Norman as his older brother. Norman was so generous in his compliments, saying of me: “The biggest Lebanese heart of anyone I know.” So generous that I didn’t even recognize myself.

At those CFC fundraisers, I’d always spring for a dinner with Norman and Lynne, and invite my clients to hear his stories in a tent outside the film centre with huge floral displays – and Norman holding court with his campfire tales, leaving my ad buyers spellbound. His stories also taught me how everyone in the film business is there to do a job; they work hard and make the best of the opportunities they get. It doesn’t matter to Norman whether a movie is a box-office flop; he accentuates the importance of what the filmmakers, actors, and crew were doing and, ultimately, trying to achieve. Ever enthusiastic, with an infectious laugh and his trademark baseball hat (except on formal occasions), he would point away from perceived failure to the triumphs, big and small, of moviemaking.

I don’t think there is anyone who has been a bigger ambassador for Canada and Canadian film than Norman. He even holds sugaring-off festivals at his farm north of Toronto, where he produces and cans his own maple syrup before packaging it and sending gift boxes of it along with pancake mix to everyone on his holiday list. Could there be anyone more suited to promoting all things Canadian?