20/11/2024
During filming of "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), Rod Steiger was asked by director Norman Jewison to chew gum when playing the part. He resisted at first, but then grew to love the idea, and eventually went through 263 packs of gum during shooting.
When Jewison and editor Hal Ashby attended a sneak preview for the film, they found that the young audience was laughing uproariously at the dialogue. Although Jewison was upset that his dramatic film was not being taken seriously, Ashby assured him that the audience was laughing in approval of the southern Sheriff being put in his place by the confident and urbane Detective Virgil Tibbs. Jewison did not agree until the film got to the famous slapping scene; when the white audience was stunned at seeing an African-American man physically fight back against a white man for the first time in a modern mainstream American film, Jewison was convinced the film was effective as drama.
The slapping scene between Detective Tibbs and Endicott was shot in just two takes, and the slaps the characters made to each other's faces were real, according to a detailed account Jewison provided in 2011. Jewison let Larry Gates (who played Endicott) rehearse by slapping him, because Jewison wanted to be sure that Gates could slap hard enough. According to Poitier, Tibbs' retaliation slap to Endicott (Larry Gates ) was neither in the original script, nor in the novel on which the film is based. Poitier insisted that Tibbs slap Endicott back and wanted a guarantee that the scene would appear in all prints of the film. According to Stirling Silliphant, the slap was in the original script, though not in the novel.
