Did anyone else dislike Joanna??

As with most people commenting here I do in fact love this movie...Everyone gave fantastic efforts and the script was wonderful...As for Joey, well at 23 the age she was supposed to be she would be headstrong, and lacking of all the concerns of someone John's age 37 or even more so the parents...The part I believe was written just like she played it, slightly above it all and without reservation simply because she was too young to consider those details...Maybe Joey was a bit harsh in her pushing each set of parents and John for that matter, but for lack of a better term/phrase, the heart wants what it wants and will take no other...Joey was perfect for the age.....Perfect....

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From a recent interview with Katharine Houghton:

Houghton played Hepburn's daughter in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," but wasn't thrilled with the role because it was so vapid and different from whom she really was. She begged director Stanley Kramer to retain a scene in which her seemingly bubble-headed character shows some smarts and confronts her father with his racism, but "Stanley Kramer said, 'You don't understand America. A lot of people will be upset by this film and if you appear to be an intelligent, articulate young woman who knows what she's getting in for, you're not going to be sympathetic.'

"I said, 'I couldn't disagree with you more. People are going to hate me because I'm a cipher and they're going to say why would a man like Sidney Poitier fall in love with a girl like that? It's more racist that you make me a cipher because you're saying that my being white and pretty is enough and it isn't.'"

The scene was cut . . .

What was infuriating about Joey wasn't that she was vapid, but that she was deliberately vapid, in a late-'60s P.C. way (before that term had been coined).

In fact, that's one of the reasons I think the marriage was doomed: a lot of her "naivete" was put on, a look-how-well-adjusted-I-am posture; therefore, there was a subtle feeling of shock-effect in her intentions which, ultimately, would have de-railed the union.

But for all of Houghton's revisionist assertions, it's her casting that's the problem: she's more manipulative and cloying than the lines she's given. The reason her innocence seems bogus is because of the actress and her disingenuous demeanor.

And while I hate to defend Kramer's defense of the Joey's density, for 1967 mainstream movie audience, he was likely right. The subject matter itself was beyond shocking at the time, and any additional "edge" from the film would have made the filmgoers of the era even more defensive than they already were. So it was delicate balance.

--
LBJ's mistress tells all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdviZbk-XI&;

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