The 1967 Oscar ceremony had to be postponed a week due to the assassination of Martin Luther King. Appropriately the winning film was In the Heat of the Night about a black detective from Philadelphia who joins forces with a redneck sheriff to solve a murder in the deep South.

The Sidney Poitier-Rod Steiger starrer, directed by Norman Jewison, had already won numerous awards but faced uncertain victory at the Oscars. It had the least nominations of all the Best Picture contenders – five. The nominations were led by Bonnie and Clyde and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with ten each, followed by Doctor Dolittle with nine and The Graduate with seven.

The bloody Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn, resurrected the gangster film as a major film genre and star Faye Dunaway’s costumes created a fashion crazy. The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols on the heels of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was the year’s hippest comedy. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, directed by Stanley Kramer, was a sentimental swan song for star Spencer Tracy, pairing him for the ninth and final time with Katharine Hepburn. The film gingerly skirted the issues of inter-racial marriage involving their daughter’s engagement to the ubiquitous Sidney Poitier, whose third hit film of the year it was. In addition to this and In the Heat of the Night he had the inspiring classroom comedy-drama, To Sir, With Love, which had been a huge hit earlier in the year.

Doctor Dolittle, directed by Richard Fleischer, was a critically lambasted musical based on the classic children’s novels by Hugh Lofting, but had the backing of Twentieth Century-Fox whose financial stability hung in the balance. Fox employees who were Academy members allegedly voted for it out of fear for their jobs just as they had done with Cleopatra four years earlier.

Oscar’s Best Director nominees included Jewison, Nichols, Penn and Kramer with Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood) taking the fifth slot over Fleischer. They were also the five finalists of the Directors Guild, back to their former rules for the remainder of the decade. Joining them on the DGA’s initial list of ten were Robert Aldrich for The Dirty Dozen; James Clavell for To Sir, With Love; Stanley Donen for Two for the Road; Stuart Rosenberg for Cool Hand Luke and Joseph Strick for Ulysses.

An expanded list of ten nominees for Best Picture would certainly have included the critically acclaimed In Cold Blood, which had been nominated for four other Oscars and was the most conspicuous by its absence in the Best Picture race. Two other obvious Best Picture nominees with four other nominations each would have been Cool Hand Luke and The Dirty Dozen.

Beyond that, it gets difficult. Would the Academy go with the popular To Sir, With Love, the critically acclaimed Ulysses or would they go for something else? Perhaps an outstanding comedy such as Two for the Road or The Family Way or a character study such as The Whisperers?

My guess is none of the above. If they could nominate Doctor Dolittle, they could and probably would throw in another musical or two. Not The Happiest Millionaire, Disney’s last film, which ended up with just one nomination for its costumes, but Thoroughly Modern Millie, which was nominated for seven Oscars, two more than the winning In the Heat of the Night, and winner of one; and Camelot, nominated for four, and winner of three.