Academy Award for Best Picture

1967

In the Heat of the Night

Release date

August 2, 1967

Starring

Sidney Poitier

Rod Steiger

Warren Oates

Lee Grant

In the Heat of the Night is a 1967 DeLuxe Color dramatic mystery film directed by Norman Jewison, based on the 1965 John Ball novel of the same name which tells the story of Virgil Tibbs, a black police detective from Philadelphia, who becomes involved in a murder investigation in a racist small town in Mississippi. It stars Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, and Warren Oates, and was produced by Walter Mirisch. The screenplay was by Stirling Silliphant.

The film won five Academy Awards, including the 1967 award for Best Picture.

The film was followed by two sequels, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! in 1970, and The Organization in 1971. In 1988, it also became the basis of a television series adaptation of the same name.

Although the film was set in the fictional Mississippi town of Sparta (with supposedly no connection to the real Sparta, Mississippi, an unincorporated community), part of the movie was filmed in Sparta, Illinois, where many of the film's landmarks can still be seen. The quote "They call me Mister Tibbs!" was listed as number 16 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes, a list of top film quotes.