Norman Jewison: A Director's Life, by the Canadian writer and academic Ira Wells, was published by Sutherland House in May 2021. It was the first full biography of the Toronto-born director, who died in January 2024 at the age of 97.
Who Jewison was
Jewison began in Canadian and American television in the 1950s before moving into feature films. His best-known work includes:
- In the Heat of the Night (1967), with Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia investigating a murder in Mississippi; it won the Academy Award for Best Picture;
- The Thomas Crown Affair (1968);
- Fiddler on the Roof (1971);
- A Soldier's Story (1984), about the murder of a Black sergeant on an army base in the segregated South;
- Moonstruck (1987);
- The Hurricane (1999), starring Denzel Washington as the boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, whose murder convictions were overturned after he had spent nearly twenty years in prison.
He also founded the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto in 1988.
What the biography argues
Wells makes the case that Jewison has been underrated by critics because his films were popular and varied in genre, and that a consistent concern runs through his work: injustice, especially racial injustice, and individuals standing up to it. Reviewers generally found the book well researched and sympathetic, with some noting that it is more admiring than critical.
The justice films
Several of Jewison's films are about the legal system failing people. The Hurricane in particular dramatises a real wrongful conviction, and was itself criticised for taking liberties with facts, a common tension in films based on real cases. The biography discusses how Jewison approached those choices.
Why it is on this site
Films and books shape how the public understands miscarriages of justice, often more than official reports do. Jewison's career is a good case study in how popular culture takes up questions of justice, and the responsibilities that come with telling true stories.