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.

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