50 Years After 'Loving,' Hollywood Still Struggles With Interracial Romance

Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial marriage. Just two weeks earlier, shooting had been completed on a movie about that very subject — Stanley Kramer's soon-to-be-classic, Oscar-winning, box-office smash Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier.

Profits are a powerful motivator for Hollywood studios. So it might seem obvious that a blockbusting indicator of audience acceptance for interracial romance on-screen would lead to studios greenlighting more of them. But prejudices in Hollywood were as long-standing as they were elsewhere in society. Those prejudices did not disappear overnight, and the film industry did not embrace mixed-race couples on-screen.

There had been interracial screen romances, even in the silent era, but they were almost always pictured as either comically foolish or flat-out doomed. D.W. Griffith ended his silent tragedy with the deaths of both his title characters — a Chinese immigrant and a London prizefighter's daughter.