The Representation of African Americans in Film Noir

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FROM PERIPHERY TO FOREGROUND: THE REPRESENTATION OF

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN FILM NOIR

Phillip M. Calderwood

Submitted to the

Faculty of College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

History

Chair: Robert

Peter J. Kuznick

Dearn&f the College K e39oy Date °

2007

American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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Calderwood, Phillip M.

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PHILLIP M. CALDERWOOD

2007

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FROM PERIPHERY TO FOREGROUND: THE REPRESENTATION OF

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN FILM NOIR

PHILLIP M. CALDERWOOD

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the representation of African Americans in classic

American film noir, both in front of and behind the camera. Employing

numerous film reviews and first-hand accounts, as well as a sample of 272

noirs, I discuss the production, content, and receptionDouble of Indemnity

(1944), Crossfire (1947), Body and Soul (1947), No Way Out (1950), The

Breaking Point (1950), The Phenix City Story (1955), Kiss Me Deadly (1955),

Odds against Tomorrow (1959), and many other noteworthy noirs in the context

of industry-wide political, economic, technological, and stylistic trends. While

acknowledging that African Americans actors were absent from or relegated to

marginal roles in the majority of noirs, I argue that the people behind many of

these films contributed to and sometimes hastened gradual improvement in the

representation of African Americans in Hollywood, not only as actors but as

writers, composers, and producers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE

A WORKING DEFINITION OF FILM NOIR

Originally, film noir was a term completely foreign to Americans. Right

after World War II, when French audiences got their first glimpse of Hollywood’s

wartime productions, many felt they were witnessing a dramatic change in

American cinema. Movies like The Maltese Falcon (1941), This Gun for Hire

(1942), Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), and Murder, My Sweet (1945)

had a pessimistic tone and a fixation with social and psychological disorder that

set them apart from the typical, glamorized fare Hollywood produced throughout

the 1930s. The disheartening and vaguely nightmarish quality of these pictures

resonated particularly well in France, a country that had not only suffered under

German occupation but also engendered the traditions of surrealism and

existentialism. From the summer of 1946 on, critics writing in French journals

and magazines labeled these pictures “film noir”—literally, dark (or black) film.

The label stuck, and by 1955 Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton gave the

subject its first book-length treatment, A Panorama of American Film A/o/r.1

1 For further information on the French origination and application of the term “film noir,” see Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941-1953, trans. Paul Hammond (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002), 1; Barton R. Palmer, “Introduction,” in Perspectives on Film Noir, ed. Barton R. Palmer (New York: G.K. Hall/Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1996), 3-5; James Naremore, More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) 13, 15-19; Andrew Spicer,Film Noir (New York: Longman/Pearson Education, 2002), 2. iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Meanwhile, in the United States, the moviegoing public and even the

Hollywood community were largely unaware of the term. Few Americans had

ever heard of film noir until the late 1960s and 1970s, when film studies became

a legitimate academic program, and critics such as Charles Higham and Joel

Greenberg, Raymond Durgnat, Paul Schrader, and Janey Place and Lowell

Peterson produced the first scholarly works on film noir in the English

language.2 By the end of the 1970s, however, American filmmakers and critics

were applying the term to The Long Goodbye (1973), Chinatown (1974), The

Conversation (1974), and other contemporary movies that harked back to the

noirs of the 1940s and 1950s.3 Overtime, artists, intellectuals, advertisers, and

consumers have applied “noir” even more loosely, making it much more than

simply a cinematic descriptor. Nowadays, as James Naremore has rightly

argued, noir evokes such a flexible and forceful set of ideas that it can refer to

almost any artifact of our globalized, postmodern mediascape, including an

advertisement, a comic book, a musical arrangement, or a television show.4

Noir is a problematic term, even when one uses it specifically to discuss

the very movies that inspired French critics to write about film noir. Of course,

2 For ample demonstration that the producers, technicians, and artists associated with film noir were not aware of the term, see the numerous interviews in Robert Porfirio, Alain Silver, and James Ursini, eds.,Film Noir Reader 3 (New York: Limelight Editions, 2002). One possible exception is director Robert Aldrich, who apparently owned a copy of A Panorama of American Film Noir as early as 1956. See Naremore, 4. Works by Higham and Greenberg, Durgnat, Schrader, and Place and Peterson, are anthologized in Alain Silver and James Ursini, eds., Film Noir Reader, (New York: Limelight Editions, 1996).

3 Because film noir is a French term, the proper plural is films noirs. However, since double plural nouns generally look awkward to readers of English, I will refer to these films simply as “noirs" or “dark movies.”

4 Naremore, 38-39, 255-56, 259, 276-77. iv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. those who are familiar with these movies usually have a general sense of what

makes them noirs. Many of these movies were adaptations of novel, stories,

and scripts by W.R Burnett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis,

Dashiell Hammett, Horace McCoy, Jim Thompson, and other hard-boiled

writers.5 For this reason, noirs usually had certain characters types (e.g.,

crooked cops, case-hardened detectives, and femmes fatales), settings (e.g.

exotic nightclubs, cramped apartments, and dead-end alleys), and plot elements

(e.g., crime, deception, mental disorder, and social corruption). Noirs also

benefited from the influence of European emigres, including cinematographers

John Alton and Rudolph Mate, as well as directors Michael Curtiz, William

Dieterle, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Anatole Litvak, Otto Preminger, Robert

Siodmak, Andre de Toth, Jacques Tourneur, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Billy Wilder.

Partly because of these emigres, noirs often shared a signature visual style,

involving black-and-white images, high-contrast lighting, and oblique angles.6

Still, few noirs contained all of these hallmarks, and scholars have spent

decades arguing whether these movies constitute a genre, cycle, style, or

movement.

5 All of the authors mentioned above appeared in publisher Marcel Duhamel’s Serie noire, a collection of paperback translations of American mystery and crime novels. When French critics designated certain movies as noirs, they were implicitly comparing these movies to this collection. See Borde and Chaumeton, 4 n.3; Naremore, 12-13; Palmer, ed., 5-6; Spicer, 2.

6 More than contributing to a signature visual style, these emigres brought elements of prewar European cinematic conventions, particularly German Expressionism, Weimar “street films,” and French Poetic Realism, to Hollywood. For a brief discussion of the European influences on film noir, see Spicer, 11-16. V

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Even if the creators of these movies were unaware of the term, and no

one can satisfactorily define it, film noir has become an appellation too popular

to dismiss. Such popularity has prompted many scholars to try to identify every

film noir ever made, a somewhat arbitrary endeavor that has nevertheless

resulted in several useful catalogs of film noir.7 Some of these works include

examples of film noir from other countries and from the silent era to the present,

but most scholars agree that a classic period, a creative peak in terms of both

productivity and innovation, occurred in the United States in the 1940s and

1950s.8 (Scholars, in fact, sometimes set apart the films that came before and

after this period by calling them, respectively, noir antecedents and neo-noirs.)9

While none of the catalogs agree on the precise number of classic American

noirs, the efforts of Michael F. Keaney, Spencer Selby, and Alain Silver and

Elizabeth Ward to compile exhaustive lists have all resulted in totals somewhere

in the hundreds, with contents that overlap more than they differ. In the

absence of a stable definition, these catalogs at least provide a consensus-

based, taxonomic approach to film noir.

7 See Michael F. Keaney, Film Noir: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003); Arthur Lyons, Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir (USA: Da Capo, 2000); Spencer Selby, Dark City: The Film Noir (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1984); Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, eds., Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, 3rd ed. (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1980); Spicer. While Keaney, Selby, Silver and Ward, and Spicer have attempted to compile comprehensive lists, Lyons has sought to identify only low- budget noirs.

8 Examples of film noir from other countries appear in Keaney and Spicer. Noirs from the silent era to the near present appear in Silver and Ward, eds., and Spicer; nevertheless, even these authors acknowledge that there was a classic period.

9 For further information on neo-noirs, see Silver and Ward, eds., app. E; Spicer, chaps. 7-8; Foster Hirsch, Detours and Lost Highways: A Map ofNeo-Noir (New York: Limelight Editions, 1999). Vi

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In this paper, I argue that the creators of what is now considered classic

film noir generally contributed to and sometimes hastened an industry-wide

trend toward better representation of African Americans in Hollywood, both

onscreen and behind the camera. One aspect of this argument requires treating

film noir as a whole and comparing it to the balance of Hollywood productions in

the 1940s and 1950s. In order to avoid subjectivity and instead construct a

consensus-based definition of film noir, I consulted filmographies compiled by

Arthur Lyons and Andrew Spicer, as well as Keaney, Selby, and Silver and

Ward. I followed three of these authors—Keaney, Selby, and Spicer—in

assuming that the classic period lasted from 1940 to 1959. I quickly discounted

the lists by Keaney and Spicer, however, since both authors consider certain

western, war, and sci-fi pictures—as well as certain category-defying movies like

Citizen Kane (1940) and Casablanca (1943)—as noirs, a practice not in keeping

with contemporary observations, which emphasized these movies’ frequent

depiction of urban crime and perverse psychology.10 Finally, after subtracting

24 titles that either Keaney, Selby, or Spicer identify as British in origin, I arrived

at a total of 578 American movies (released between 1940 and 1959) that

Lyons, Selby, or Silver and Ward consider noirs. For the purposes of this paper,

10 By the end of World W ar II, Americans were taking notice of the apparently new-fangled qualities of movies that are now considered noirs. Their descriptions often focused on the criminal and psychological aspects of these movies. Reporter Lloyd Shearer remarked on the recent “trend in Hollywood toward the wholesale production of lusty, hard-boiled, gat-and-gore crime stories, all fashioned on a theme with a combination of plausibly motivated murder and high-powered Freudian implication.” See NYT, 5 Aug. 1945, 77+. Similarly, Philip K. Scheuer referred to “a crime and/or psychological cycle” that started with movies like The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. See LAT, 30 Dec. 1945, B1+.

vii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. film noir consists of these 578 movies. Fortunately, I have watched 272—

almost half—of these movies, many of which I saw before I began my research

in earnest.

VIII

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper had an unusually long gestation period, benefiting from

many people’s support and advice before it reached its current form. The topic

and part of the argument outlined here first occurred to me more than seven

years ago in an undergraduate English seminar at UC Berkeley. I must thank

the instructor of that course, Julia Bader, not only for reviewing an early version

of this paper but also for introducing me to the wonders of film noir. Ever since

that introduction, I have had an obsession with these movies, watching,

collecting, and writing about as many of them as possible.

Fortunately for me, my love for them has not been a solitary affair.

When I lived in Berkeley, I spent many evenings sharing these movies with

another film noir enthusiast, my friend and former poetry instructor Ed

Smallfield. Later, when I came to American University to pursue graduate

studies in U.S. history, I met Erik Dussere, a Literature professor who was

teaching a course on film noir and was kind enough to review two relatively

recent versions of this paper. Perhaps without his realizing, his encouragement

prompted me to turn my ideas into a thesis for the History department.

As I began my research in earnest, several professors in the History

department provided guidance and help. At a very early stage, Peter Kuznick

and Kimberly Simms pointed me toward possible sources and analytical

frameworks. Todd Robinson shepherded me through the first few months of ix

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. research, forcing me to commit my initial discoveries to paper while also giving

me the liberty to explore in a somewhat serendipitous fashion. Bob Griffith, my

faculty advisor and research seminar instructor, supervised me while I

conducted the brunt of the research and as I drafted the first half of this paper.

Throughout these early stages, I also received assistance from many helpful

librarians at American University, the University of the District of Columbia, and

the Library of Congress. Although it is not entirely fair to single out one person, I

must thank Christopher Lewis, who directed me to several important primary

and secondary sources available right on my own campus.

Thanks to a network of people, beginning with Peter Kuznick, I had the

incredible fortune to obtain an interview with Harry Belafonte, who produced and

starred in what is essentially the culminating film in this paper. I wish to thank

Mr. Belafonte for generously sharing his time, intelligence, and insights

regarding Hollywood, the McCarthy era, and the civil rights movement. Over the

telephone, he proved an extraordinarily thought-provoking speaker, and much of

what he said provided me with direct access to some of the events in this paper.

In addition to the people I have already mentioned, I want to thank all of

my colleagues in the research seminar, who responded to my writing both by

posing hard questions and by giving enthusiastic encouragement. For similar

reasons, I wish to thank (again!) the members of my review committee, Bob

Griffith and Peter Kuznick. Every piece of advice they gave me was valuable

and, if it were not for time constraints, would have made its way into this paper.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I can only hope I used the last few weeks before my deadline to the best

possible advantage.

Finally, on a more personal note, I wish to thank Jade Davis, who has

shared her life with me for the past three years, a period that has included my

entire graduate career and my most intense work on this project. During this

time, she unflaggingly supported me in countless ways, doing whatever she

could to ensure that I had the time and peace of mind to complete my studies

and finish this paper. Not long ago, she gave me further assistance by reading

a draft of the entire paper and offering many invaluable comments. Well before

I decided to write a thesis, I knew I was lucky to have her in my life. My love for

her trumps even something as close to my heart as film noir, and I am very

pleased to know that I will marry her next spring.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

PREFACE...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... ix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...... xiv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS...... xv

Chapter

1. BLACK PEOPLE IN BLACK FILM...... 1

2. THE BIRTH OF FILM NOIR, 1940-46 ...... 14

3. THE BENEFITS OF WAR, 1947-49 ...... 39

Noir with a Message I: Crossfire (1947)

Servants, Prisoners, Musicians, and More

The Black Friend I: Body and Soul (1947)

In This Corner. . . James Edwards

A Black Film from a Black Writer

4. EXPLORING RACE RELATIONS, 1949-54 ...... 72

Noir with a Message II: No Way Out (1950)

Other Problem Pictures

Blacks on the Sidelines

The Black Friend II: The Breaking Point (1950)

xii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5. THE DECLINE OF FILM NOIR, 1955-59 ...... 118

Hammer Gets Hip

In Other Corners . . . James Edwards

The Decline Continues

Noirs with Jazz

Playing the Odds

Noir and the 1960s

APPENDIX...... 172

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 177

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Page

1. Double Indemnity (Paramount, 1944)...... 27

2. Mildred Pierce (Warner, 1945) ...... 36

3. Crossfire RKO,( 1947)...... 43

4. Out of the Past (RKO, 1947)...... 49

5. Body and Soul (UA, 1947)...... 53

6. The Set-Up (RKO, 1949)...... 62

7. No Way Out (Fox, 1950)...... 82

8. The H/e//(UA, 1951) ...... 101

9. The Killing (UA, 1956)...... 137

10. Odds against Tomorrow (UA, 1959)...... 158

xiv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ANL Anti-Nazi League

ANT American Negro Theater

CD Chicago Defender

CDT Chicago Daily Tribune

Fox Twentieth-Century Fox

HU AC House Un-American Activities Committee

LAT Los Angeles Times

Metro Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

NAG Negro Actors Guild

NYT New York Times

OWI Office of War Information

RKO Radio-Keith-Orpheum

SANE National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy

SDG Screen Directors Guild

UA United Artists

Warner Warner Brothers

WP Washington Post

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

BLACK PEOPLE IN BLACK FILM

In the 1940s and 1950s, a new wave of American movies broke on the

screen and in the process turned many of Hollywood’s conventions on their

head. These movies, now known collectively as film noir, confronted audiences

with a host of heretofore unusual cinematographic techniques, narrative

structures, and thematic elements. They often featured minimal lighting, off-

kilter camera angles, and stories of lust, greed, and violence told by way of

multiple flashbacks or voice-over narration. Many presented their protagonists

as unsavory, even antiheroic, and some went so far as to invert traditional

gender roles, depicting passive, vulnerable men and aggressive, dominating

women. The creators of film noir often worked on the margins of the motion

picture industry, with low budgets and under the auspices of independent

production units. In some instances, they also worked outside the Hollywood

lots, incorporating on-location photography and emulating a documentary style.

Such conditions gave their picture a barely mainstream status, enabling them

not only to push the limits of what was permissible under the Production Code

but also to turn a critical eye on contemporary American life. Their movies were

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2

a kind of counter-cinema—“the dark side of the screen,”1 as one writer later

called it—and stood in marked contrast to the usual brightly-lit, glamorized

confection that came off the soundstage and always, no matter how implausibly,

arrived at a happy ending.

While much has been written about these movies, scholars have

devoted little attention to African Americans in film noir. Over the last ten years,

Manthia Diawara, E. Ann Kaplan, Julian Murphet, James Naremore, and Kelly

Oliver and Benigno Trigo have maintained that black people were generally

absent from these movies or played such marginal roles that they seem absent.

Indeed, Kaplan, Murphet, and Oliver and Trigo have argued that film noir’s

creators repressed racial Otherness so effectively that it only appears in the

subtext of their movies. While Kaplan, Naremore, Oliver and Trigo, and Paula

Rabinowitz have noted a few instances in which black people appeared in film

noir, only Eric Lott has examined enough of these instances to suggest that they

were fairly common. Even so, Lott has asserted that black people had the same

effect as any other nonwhite signifier in film noir: they served to indicate the

corruption of white characters and, at the same time, to protect the ideal of

whiteness.2 Such arguments have contributed to the prevailing opinion that film

1 See Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983).

2 Manthia Diawara, “Noir by Noirs: Toward a New Realism in Black Cinema,” in Shades of Noir: A Reader, ed. Joan Copjec (New York: Verso, 1993), 261-263; E. Ann Kaplan, “The Dark Continent of Film Noir’: Race, Displacement, and Metaphor in Tourneur’s Cat People (1942) and Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai (1948),” in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, new ed. (London: British Film Institute, 1998), 183, 186, 194-195; Julian Murphet, “Film Noir and the Racial Unconscious,” Screen 39, no. 1 (1998): 28, 31; James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 239-242; Kelly Oliver and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3

noir was fraught with racism, and the African Americans in these movies were

so marginal that they did little more than help valorize whiteness.

Strangely, these arguments are at odds with more general studies of

African Americans in Hollywood. Scholars like Donald Bogle and Thomas

Cripps have argued that the 1940s and early 1950s—the very years in which

film noir gradually emerged and reached a productive peak—brought a sudden

expansion of onscreen opportunities for black performers.3 In contrast to the

1930s, when even celebrated black performers like Louise Beavers, Hattie

McDaniel, Bill Robinson, and Paul Robeson appeared almost invariably as

servants, blacks in the 1940s enjoyed an effusion of film roles. They were able

to exhibit musical talent in all-black musicals, display valor in war pictures, and

play sympathetic characters in a variety of dramas. By the end of the decade,

some movies even addressed the problem of racial discrimination, thereby

raising black characters to the level of protagonist. Such opportunities

continued to expand in the 1950s, but, by and large, Hollywood filmmakers fed

the moviegoing public a bland diet of integrationist tales, many of which starred

Sidney Poitier.

Benigno Trigo, Noir Anxiety (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 6-8, 63; Paula Rabinowitz, Black & White & Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 60, 62, 72; Eric Lott, “The Whiteness of Film Noir,”American Literary History 9, no. 3(1997): 545-46

3 See Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Film, new expanded ed. (New York: Continuum, 1989); Thomas Cripps, Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4

The onscreen opportunities of the 1940s and 1950 came to pass for

several reasons. By the end of the 1930s, veteran black actors like Louise

Beavers, Clarence Muse, Hattie McDaniel, and her brother, Sam, had helped

develop a vigorous Los Angeles branch of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had entered the ranks of the

Screen Actors Guild; at the same time, a younger generation of black actors and

journalists began to judge racial progress in Hollywood less by the number of

jobs available and more by the quality of the roles. In the midst of World War II,

NAACP executive secretary Walter White and his counsel, former Republican

presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, threw their weight behind this new

definition of progress by lobbying studio executives to increase the prominence

of blacks onscreen while diminishing the number of servant roles. In short time,

the studios moved in this direction, but not so much to oblige NAACP leadership

as to forestall impending government intervention. Studio executives acceded

to the Roosevelt Administration’s demand for wartime propaganda that

promoted ideals of democracy and racial equality, while directors,

cinematographers, and writers joined the propaganda effort through

membership in wartime agencies like the Office of War Information (OWI) and

the Army Signal Corps. Later, as the war ended and the atomic age began,

Hollywood reflected widespread fears of social collapse and desires to contain

social division by making movies that addressed American social problems, not

least of which were the problems of racial discrimination and segregation.

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As Hollywood gradually expanded the onscreen opportunities for

African Americans, the creators of film noir often contributed to and sometimes

hastened this trend. Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire (1947), a picture about an

anti-Semitic killer, helped give Hollywood moviemakers the courage to tackle

racism by demonstrating that a movie could explore the problem of prejudice

and still be profitable. Shortly thereafter, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out

(1950) and Robert Wise’s The Set-Up (1949), respectively, initiated the

cinematic careers of Sidney Poitier and James Edwards, an actor best known

for his role as a paralyzed black soldier inHome of the Brave (1949). Along with

No Way Out, noirs like Russell Rouse’sThe Well (1951), Phil Karlson’sThe

Phenix City Story (1956), and Wise’s Odds against Tomorrow (1959) depicted

racial violence in starker terms than previous pictures; at the same time, No

Way Out and Odds against Tomorrow provided leading roles for Sidney Poitier

and Harry Belafonte, respectively. Other noirs, like Wise’s I Want to Live!

(1957) and Alexander MacKendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (1958), helped

improve the onscreen representation of black jazz musicians. Additionally,

Robert Rossen’sBody and Soul (1947) and Michael Curtiz’s The Breaking Point

(1950) anticipated the integrationist aims of the civil rights movement by

providing memorable examples of interracial friendship.

Scholars like Diawara, Kaplan, Lott, and Murphet, and Oliver and Trigo

hardly mention these accomplishments because they tend to treat film noir as

uniform whole rather than as an evolving decades-long series of movies. That

the creators of film noir either repressed racial Otherness or used nonwhite

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signifiers to suggest corruption is true in many cases, but, as with American

movies in general, these practices became less common over time. That the

creators of film noir tended to marginalize black people is also generally correct.

Black people were, in fact, absent from the majority of noirs, and, when they did

appear in these movies, they often valorized whiteness—if in no other way than

by performing as servants to whites. From 1940 and 1959, however, African

American actors, actresses, and extras appeared in probably three out of seven

and certainly more than two out of every nine noirs.4 The frequency of these

appearances—whatever the exact ratio—is roughly commensurate with other

Hollywood movies from this period. So is the fact that, over the years, African

Americans in film noir played an increasing number of speaking roles, appeared

less often as servants to whites (e.g., as butlers, cooks, maids, porters, and

waiters), and acted less often in a stereotypical manner (e.g., with servility,

foolishness, and excessive emotionalism).

Aside from the quality of onscreen roles, the representation of African

Americans in Hollywood can be measured in the number of positions they

obtained behind the camera. Unfortunately, during the 1940s and 1950s, blacks

and other minorities were almost completely shut out from non-acting roles on

4 I arrived at these estimates by presuming there were 578 noirs produced in the United States between 1940 and 1959, according to the process outlined in the Preface. Of these 578 noirs, I have seen 272, and at least 120 contain African Americans. Assuming that the pictures I have seen comprise a representative sample, African Americans appear in over three-sevenths (120/272 > 3/7) of all noirs. Aside from watching films, I used the Internet Movie Database to determine that African Americans appear in at least an additional 15 noirs. In the extremely unlikely case that there are no other noirs that contain African Americans, the proportion is still more than two-ninths (135/578 > 2/9). For a list of noirs in which African Americans appear, see the Appendix.

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the studio lots. Still, at least a few noirs managed to include blacks in the pre-

and post-production stages. In a rare move, Nicholas Ray’sKnock on Any Door

(1949) adapted a novel by an African American author Willard Motley. More

importantly, however, Robert Wise’sOdds against Tomorrow was the work of

independent production company owned by Harry Belafonte. The film not only

boasted a black producer; it featured a score composed by African American

pianist John Lewis and credited African American novelist John O. Killens as the

screenwriter. Released in the last year of film noir’s classic period, Odds

against Tomorrow stands as a final, glaring example of the opportunities noirs

provided for African Americans in Hollywood

Compared to Hollywood filmmakers in general, the creators of film noir

had several specific reasons for improving the representation of African

Americans in Hollywood. On the whole, they were focusing their cameras on

urban settings at a time when urban blacks were becoming more numerous and

more affluent. They were adopting semi-documentary techniques and telling

stories in a social-realist fashion, which discouraged them from presenting

African Americans as stereotypical buffoons. Additionally, film noir’s greatest

talent came from the Hollywood Left, which, at least in principle, supported civil

rights and racial tolerance.

The majority of noirs take place within the crumbling and corrupting

infrastructure of modern cities. Urban settings were, in fact, such an important

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element that the word “city” often appeared in the titles of these movies.5 In

many noirs, the barrooms, boxing rings, nightclubs, street corners, and train

stations of urban America brought ostensibly white, tough-guy protagonists into

contact with black servants, entertainers, and athletes. While pictures in the

1930s often depicted African Americans in similar contexts, the creators of film

noir trained their cameras American cities at a time when black urban

populations were rapidly growing, partly in response to wartime mobilization and

an industrial boom. Though the people behind these movies rarely set out to

provide authentic documentation of street life, several noirs reflected their time

well enough to show blacks occupying the city on their own terms—whether

loitering in a train station (inThe Maltese Falcon), frequenting a nightclub (in Out

of the Past), interning in a hospital (inNo Way Out), raising a child (in The

Breaking Point, The Well, The Phenix City Story, and Odds against Tomorrow),

or living in a segregated neighborhood (inNo Way Out and The Well). Since

black people were achieving greater prominence and affluence in urban

America, it was entirely natural for noirs likeNo Way Out and Odds against

Tomorrow to feature black actors in leading roles.

While some noirs showed black people behaving in a stereotypical

manner, these movies more often enhanced cinematic depictions of black

people by presenting them in a social-realist fashion. This sort of approach

5 Such titles include Canon City, The City that Never Sleeps, Dark City, The Naked City, and The Phenix City Story. On the importance of urban space in classic film noir, see Edward Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

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derived from the fact that the creators of film noir, like no other mainstream

moviemakers, emulated a documentary style, especially after the wartime rise of

documentary filmmaking and the introduction of relatively inexpensive hand-held

movie cameras. Even though noirs always presented more drama than actual

documentation, the people behind them often had an affinity for documentary

and journalistic work. Louis De Rochemont produced noirs and also contributed

to the March of Time newsreel series. Similarly, noir directors include John

Huston, who shot footage of the Allied invasion of Italy; Billy Wilder, who

assembled a 30-minute German-language documentary on concentration

camps for OWI; Stanley Kubrick, who worked as a photojournalistLook! for

magazine; and Samuel Fuller, who served as a reporter for the New York

Graphic and a combat photographer during World War II. Even when the

people behind noirs did not have any direct documentary experience, recent

advances in the quality and cultural impact of documentary footage inspired

them to accentuate their pictures with such semi-documentary techniques as

on-location camera work, aerial photography, extended tracking shots, and

third-person narration. This semi-documentary approach led to a greater

emphasis on social-realism, which meant that black people, even when cast in

conventional servant roles, appeared more often as competent, dignified

individuals than as bumbling stereotypes.

African Americans also benefited from film noir because it often served

as a vehicle for the Hollywood Left, which, at least in principle, supported civil

rights and racial tolerance. Individuals of every political persuasion contributed

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to film noir, but many of these movies—especially the ones with the most social

content—were products of what Michael Denning has called the “Cultural Front,”

a loose alliance of communists, socialists, progressives, and liberals in the arts.6

As the cultural arm of the Popular Front, this coalition flourished in the 1930s,

before the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Still, even as it withered under

political repression in the 1940s and 1950s, many of its members continued to

influence the arts, laying the cultural groundwork for the New Left of the 1960s

and 1970s. From the beginning, crime stories provided leftist authors and

filmmakers with an outlet for presenting proletarian protagonists, critiquing

capitalism, and exploring issues of social justice.7 Film noir, with its emphasis

on criminal enterprise and social corruption, was particularly attractive among

the Hollywood Left.

Many of the most talented people behind film noir were, at least at one

time, Marxists. Such was the case with novelists like Dashiell Hammett and

Graham Greene, who never actually worked on a film noir but helped provide

the literary basis for these movies. The same was true of producer Adrian Scott;

directors Edward Dmytryk, Jules Dassin, Cyril Endfield, Nicholas Ray, and

Robert Rossen; writers Albert Maltz, Clifford Odets, Abraham Polonsky, Dalton

Trumbo, and Vera Caspary; and actor Sterling Hayden. Others talents included

6 Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1998), 19, 86. See also Mike Davis,City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1990; New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1992), 40-41; Naremore, 103-4.

7 On the longevity of the Popular Front, see Denning, 22-27. Regarding the Left’s attraction to stories of drifters, detectives, and gangsters, see Ibid., 221, 228, 254-58.

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emigres like Fritz Lang, who had fled fascism in Europe and sought to prevent it

in the United States. Still others were tireless, and sometimes outspoken,

native-born liberals—for instance, directors Robert Aldrich, John Huston, Robert

Wise, and Orson Welles; writers A.I. Bezzerides, Richard Brooks, and Daniel

Mainwaring; and actors Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield, Edward G. Robinson,

and Robert Ryan. On the whole, these individuals gravitated toward movies that

examined social problems and challenged the status quo. Through creative

choices, charitable works, labor activities, political contributions, and affiliation

with progressive groups such as the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), the Sleepy

Lagoon Defense Committee, Writers Mobilization, and the Hollywood

Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, these

individuals, with varying degrees of fervor, worked to achieve social equality,

end racial violence, promote better film roles for minorities, and diversify the

entertainment industry—all of which stood to benefit African Americans.

Leftists, of course, were not the only ones working on behalf of African

Americans in Hollywood, nor were they always effective in doing so. If they had

been, the representation of African Americans would not have continued to

improve just as red-baiting politicians, columnists, and peers were proceeding to

damage the careers and lives of so many of them. Also, even in cases where

leftists were involved, the industry-wide practices of collaboration, censorship,

and test screening, as well as the desire to reach mass audiences, militated

against movies that served a single ideology. Movies, as John Bodnar has

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indicated, are generally cultural sites where ideological views are exchanged.8

In the classic studio system, especially, those who wished to promote their

views or effect change had to contend with a multitude of disparate individuals

and interests whenever they worked on a picture. More often than not,

advances came when those who sought change worked with modest or low

budgets, with sympathetic producers, or under the auspices of independent

production companies.9

Inexpensive budgets, understanding producers, and creative

independence certainly helped as far as African Americans and film noir were

concerned. Noirs were often made on the cheap, and this fact helps explain

why these movies often used minimal lighting, since lights were expensive, and

shadows could mask shoddy sets. While there were also many high-end noirs,

the ones that featured prominent black roles, dealt with race relations, or

included blacks in positions behind the camera were, in most cases, low- to

modest-budget productions. After all, investors were more likely to recoup the

cost of an inexpensive movie, even if its subject matter was controversial.

African Americans also benefited from studio executives who were willing to

take risks on movies that attacked social problems. In an era when

Hollywood’s leading producers did little to protect leftists from repression and

blacklisting, a few—like Dore Schary at Radio-Keith-Orpheum (and later Metro-

8 John Bodnar, Blue-Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy, and Working People in American Film (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).xxvii.

9 On the importance of liberal producers and the rise of independent production, see Denning, 91-92.

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Goldwyn-Mayer) and Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth-Century Fox—still valued

religious and racial tolerance enough to back pictures that tackled prejudice, not

least of which were the noirs Crossfire and No Way Out. The rise of

independent production companies, spurred by federal efforts to make the

motion picture industry more competitive, also brought advances. Beginning in

the late 1940s, an increasing number of freelance producers, directors, and

actors involved themselves in independent productions—such asBody and

Soul, Knock on Any Door, The Well, and Odds against Tomorrow—that helped

improve the representation of blacks in front of and behind the camera. Though

these improvements were by no means limited to film noir, a confluence of

urban settings, social-realist qualities, leftist involvement, and modest budgets

guaranteed that many noirs would provide new opportunities for African

Americans in Hollywood.

To be sure, the majority of noirs did little to promote African Americans

in Hollywood. As mentioned earlier, only a fraction of the movies featured

African Americans onscreen, and only a handful provided African Americans

with positions behind the camera. The point is that, over time, film noir helped

improve the representation of African Americans as much as—and, in some

cases, more than—other types of movies made in the Hollywood in the 1940s

and 1950s. There is no better way to appreciate film noir’s later advances,

however, than to return to its somewhat inauspicious beginning.

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THE BIRTH OF FILM NOIR, 1940-46

The notion that film noir depicted black people only occasionally and for

the sake of valorizing whiteness was never more accurate than at the beginning

of film noir’s classic period. From 1940 to 1946, blacks in the motion picture

industry found few opportunities in film noir. They did not attain any positions

behind the camera. They worked in these movies only as actors and extras,

generally in bit parts that involved serving whites. Too often, these movies went

beyond simply relegating blacks to a lower position than whites. In some cases,

black actors confirmed racial stereotypes by displaying excessive servility,

foolishness, and emotionalism. In others, the movies themselves associated

black people with white protagonists’ moral descent and their diminishing ability

to control their own lives. Initially, even the best noirs tended to marginalize and

stigmatize black people, and even those most sympathetic to their cause were

rarely in a position to reverse this practice.

During this period, the best roles for African Americans were not in film

noir but in several of Hollywood’s war pictures and musicals. With America’s

entry into World War II and the federal government’s rapidly increasing

involvement in moviemaking, Hollywood gravitated to war pictures and musicals

as vehicles to promote democracy and racial tolerance, ideals which set the

United States apart from fascist Germany and imperial Japan. Over the course 14

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of the war, Hollywood developed two types of war pictures with prominent black

roles. The more obvious type of war pictures—represented by Bataan (1943),

Crash Dive (1943), and Sahara (1943)—featured a lone black man who

contributes to the success of a U.S. or Allied military unit. The less obvious

type, represented by Casablanca (1943) and Lifeboat (1944), presented a lone

black man who helps or comforts civilians trapped in a desperate, war-torn

setting. In contrast to these pictures, which set a black man among whites,

musicals like Cabin in the Sky (1943) and Stormy Weather (1943) relied on

minimal story lines in order to showcase talented, all-black casts. As these

movies indicate, Hollywood attempted to improve African American roles either

by presenting token black men as part of a largely white war effort or by

depicting entirely black communities unaffected by war.

Compared to war pictures and musicals, the wartime noirs seemed less

responsive to America’s propagandistic needs. Rather than championing the

American way of life, Hollywood’s dark movies tended to focus on the unseemly

side of America’s home front. Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, two

authors whose pre-war novels had inspired multiple wartime noirs, both felt that

these movies had less to do with the ongoing conflict than with the stories on

which they were based. In 1945, when asked to comment on the recent

success of movies likeDouble Indemnity (1944) and Murder, My Sweet (1944),

Chandler argued that “the public likes well-done crime films for the same reason

they like good detective stories. They’re escapist and interesting.” Similarly,

Cain remarked, “Hollywood is making . . . these so-called hard-boiled crime

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pictures . . . [because] the producers are now belatedly realizing that these

stories make good movies. It’s got nothing to do with the war or how it’s

affected the public or any of that bunk.”1 These statements suggest that the

makers of the early noirs were not responding to the war so much as capitalizing

on the popularity of hard-boiled crime fiction. Because these movies were often

emulating a preexisting body of literature, they made poor vehicles for wartime

propaganda.

Of course, Chandler’s characterization of these movies as “escapist”

and Cain’s claim that they had “nothing to do with the war” were a bit overdrawn.

Because these movies often turned a critical eye on modern institutions (e.g.,

the press, courts, prison), audiences could hardly depend on film noir for sheerly

escapist pleasure. Also, even though these movies made poor vehicles for

wartime propaganda, the war had a noticeable effect on them. At mid-century,

photographers and writers exposed Americans, like never before, to the carnage

of warfare. Reflecting the public’s familiarity with the war’s massive casualties,

acts of genocide, and deliberate attacks on civilian targets, film noir helped

liberalize screen violence, particularly by emphasizing violence’s perverse

nature. At the same time, the deceitful, domineering femmes fatales that are so

common in film noir mirrored contemporary anxieties over women’s position in

the labor force and over the fidelity of women whose boyfriends and husbands

had left them to serve overseas. The war also had an effect on these movies’

male characters in that they were often veterans or, like many veterans, were

1 NYT, 5 Aug. 1945, 77+.

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somehow physically or mentally damaged. To some extent, too, the minimal

lighting and cheap sets of many film noirs were the result of wartime rationing.2

All told, World War II decidedly influenced film noir, even though these movies

did little to advance wartime propaganda.

Rather than reshape Hollywood’s racial conventions for the sake of

propaganda, the makers of early noirs often challenged industry-wide

prohibitions against needless violence, illicit sex, and positive portrayals of

criminals. Double Indemnity is a case in point. When Billy Wilder and Raymond

Chandler collaborated on the screenplay, they were adapting a James M. Cain

novel that the Hays office had banned years earlier, largely because it recounts

a disreputable salesman’s acts of adultery, murder, and insurance fraud from his

point of view.3 Though Wilder prevailed in bringing the book’s overall plot to the

screen, he was able to push the censors only so far and had to leave an

excruciating sequence detailing the protagonist’s execution in a gas chamber on

the cutting room floor.4 The final product, however, was so well-received that it

garnered six Academy Award nominations and encouraged others to shoot

similar stories of murder and mayhem. As Arthur Lyons indicates, Hollywood’s

output of noirs, which beforeDouble Indemnity was a trickle, soon became a

2 Regarding the influences of World W ar II on film noir, see Sheri Chinen Biesen, Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). See also Naremore, 102-3; Spicer, 20-21, 86-87.

3 NYT, 5 Aug. 1945, 7; Lyons, 17.

4 For a discussion of Double Indemnity’s deleted execution scene, see Naremore, 81-82, 91-93, 95

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flood.5 Within a year, Fritz Lang went so far as to show the protagonist of

Scarlet Street (1945) murdering his supposed lover with an ice pick, even

though censors rejected a scene in which the same character climbs a

telephone pole to watch an execution. Though the makers of early noirs were

rarely as excessive as Lang, they often tested the limits of censorship when it

came to sex, violence, and crime.

Early on, those involved in the creation of film noir were often too

preoccupied with the struggle to incorporate previously taboo themes into their

pictures to attempt to reshape racial conventions as well. Indeed, from 1940 to

1946, film noir exhibited few signs that it would ever contribute to better

representation of African Americans in Hollywood. African Americans were

absent from the majority of these movies, and when they did appear, they

usually enacted brief, un-credited roles, speaking a line or two of dialogue at

best. These roles almost invariably involved serving whites. African American

men played porters in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Irving Reis’s Crack-Up

(1946), and Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946); janitors in

Double Indemnity and Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street, and bootblacks in Otto

Preminger’s Fallen Angel (1945) and Henry Hathaway’s The House on 92nd

Street (1945). In other un-credited roles, Charles R. Moore served as a Pullman

waiter in Frank Tuttle’s This Gun for Hire (1942), and Hattie McDaniel’s brother,

Sam, as a garage attendant in Double Indemnity. In one of the few credited

5 Lyons, 18.

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roles, George Reed appeared as a butler in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Strange Illusion

(1945).

African American women obtained even fewer parts than these men. In

some roles, as inStrange Illusion and Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945),

they played maids, but in others, they did not perform strictly as servants. In

Stuart Heisler’s The Glass Key (1942), for example, Lillian Randolph—an

actress best known for her role as Birdie on radio and television’sThe Great

Gildersleeve—played a piano and sang “I Don’t Want to Walk without You” in a

truly seedy, subterranean dive appropriately named The Basement Club. In the

Chicago Defender, one reviewer judged Randolph’s version of the song the best

it had ever been sung.6 Even this performance, however, represented a form of

service to whites, as all the dive’s other occupants were white, and the song

particularly seemed to underscore the rotten mood of a drunken thug named

Jeff (William Bendix).

In these years, there were a number of missed opportunities to give

African Americans more prominence in film noir. While war pictures and

musicals often highlighted the talents of critically acclaimed African American

stage actors like Rex Ingram (in Sahara and Cabin in the Sky) and Canada Lee

(in Lifeboat ), the early noirs did little to exploit the dramatic talents of veteran

actors like Clarence Muse. In 1916, Muse had become a founding member of

the Lafayette Players, generally considered the first black stock company in the

6 CD, 31 Oct. 1942, 20.

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United States.7 In 1929, he played a ninety-year-old man in Hollywood’s second

talkie, Hearts in Dixie. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, he appeared in

several movies each year, often with screen credits, including his performance

with Paul Robeson inTales of Manhattan (1942). When it came to film noir,

however, Muse managed only to play bit parts such as janitors Doublein

Indemnity and Scarlet Street. As a Pullman porter in Alfred Hitchcock’sShadow

of a Doubt (1943), Muse obtained his only credited role in a film noir.

Instead of employing experienced, dramatic actors like Muse, Lee, and

Ingram, the makers of some noirs opted for African American actors best known

for their comedic talents. Willie Best, who was billed as Sleep ‘n’ Eat in several

movies from the early 1930s, brought his shuffling, illiterate mannerisms to the

role of Algernon in Raoul Walsh’sHigh Sierra (1941). Matthew Beard, who had

played Stymie in the “Our Gang” series, appeared as a shoeshine boy in Fallen

Angel. Butterfly McQueen—who started as a comedic actor in black theatres,

played Prissy in Gone with the Wind (1939), and frequently appeared on Jack

Benny’s radio program—appeared as a flighty maid named Lottie in Mildred

Pierce. Whereas Beard had a brief, innocuous role, Best’s and McQueen’s

prominence, and the silliness of their acts, exacerbated the fact that they were

playing servants. As if performing as servants to whites were not bad enough,

these actors played servants who were not entirely competent at their jobs.

7 An Interview with Clarence Muse, prod, and dir. John Winninger, 60 min, Indiana University Audio-Visual Center, 1982, videocassette.

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McQueen’s performance, in particular, drew the ire of some African

Americans. While reviews and articles in the black press generally celebrated

her ability to find work in Hollywood, Staff Sergeant Leon Conner charged

Warner Brothers with exceedingly poor taste in a letter for which he obtained the

signature of three hundred others in MacDill Field, Florida: “Whether your

portrayal of Negroes as being inferior and ignorant is a studied subtle attempt to

discredit the race, or just another instance of the puerility of some producers,

such practices should be discontinued.” Weeks later, Conner fired off another

letter that castigated McQueen, claiming, “Any person who accepts such ignoble

roles is a traitor to the race.” For this letter, however, the sergeant obtained

considerably fewer signatures.8

The tendency to depict African American as servants, whether

incompetent or not, was so great among the makers of early film noir that, at

least in one case, it resulted in a drastic alteration of the novel on which the

movie was based. The movie in question was Edward Dmytryk’sMurder, My

Sweet, based on Raymond Chandler’s second novel,Farewell, My Lovely.

Near the beginning of the novel, private investigator Philip Marlowe witnesses a

giant goon named Moose Malloy beat up the bouncer and murder the owner of

a bar along Los Angeles’s predominantly black Central Avenue. When police

take Marlowe in for questioning, the detective assigned to the case refers to it

8 CD, 17 Nov. 1945, 16; Ibid., 7 Dec. 1946, 11; Ibid., 27 Oct. 1945, 12; Ibid., 8 Dec. 1945, 14.

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dismissively as “another shine killing,”9 which prompts Marlowe to investigate

the murder himself. This scene, which not only depicted a predominantly black

neighborhood but also underscored the unequal justice that blacks received in

1940s Los Angeles, looked very different and made less of an impact when it

finally reached the screen. In the film, Malloy (Mike Mazurki) simply

manhandles the owner of an all-white bar, and the police never become

involved. Though the makers ofMurder, My Sweet missed a great opportunity

to depict racial injustice, their decision to alter this scene was in keeping with

most early noirs’ failure to portray black men as anything but servants.

Unlike Murder, My Sweet, Henry Hathaway’s The Killers (1946)

remained faithful to the Ernest Hemingway story on which it was based by

including a black servant, a short-order cook named Sam (Bill Walker).

Unfortunately, when two hired killers (William Conrad and Charles McGraw)

enter the diner where he works and tie up all the occupants, Sam acts

considerably more frightened than the diner’s white occupants. Even after the

killers have left, a white waiter has to help Sam calm down. Hence, even when

noirs did not omit blacks, they often depicted them as inferior to whites.

Despite the general failure of these movies to give African Americans

more prominence, or to prevent them from playing demeaning roles, some

filmmakers attempted to improve their representation. John Huston, for

example, was one of the screenwriters assigned to The Killers and toHigh

9 Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (New York: Knopf, 1940; reprint, New York, Vintage Books, 1988), 11.

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Sierra, in which Willie Best appeared, but his first directorial venture, The

Maltese Falcon (1941), contained a brief scene in which a well-dressed black

man and woman appear at the ticket counter in a train station. For Thomas

Cripps, this instance reveals a “conscience-liberal sensibility.” It is a scene that

“required forethought and action, if no more than a telephone call specifically

asking for two black extras rather than the whites who routinely would have

been cast.”10 It functioned as a liberal gesture not simply by including black

extras but also by allowing these extras to perform as something other than

servants to whites. Robert Siodmak’sPhantom Lady (1944) involved a similar

gesture: in a scene not found in the novel by Cornell Woolrich, a black woman

(Lillian Randolph) makes a sudden, late-night appearance on an elevated train

platform, frightening a lying bartender who helped frame an innocent man for

murder into jumping to his death. Moreover, as much as Butterfly McQueen’s

flighty maid in Mildred Pierce may have reinforced racial stereotypes, the fact

that she appears in the film at all represented an attempt to give African

Americans more prominence, since the maid in the novel is actually a white

woman named Lettie.

In these years, however, the creators of film noir were too busy

challenging the motion picture industry’s moralizing impulse to focus on

providing opportunities for African Americans in Hollywood. Even those who

were generally sympathetic to the problems black people faced, such as

directors Billy Wilder and Orson Welles, did little to challenge racial conventions

10 Cripps, Making Movies, 31-32.

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and instead turned to film noir to explore the titillating themes of sex, violence,

and crime. Because the central concern of these pictures was often a white

protagonist’s descent into immorality, many of the early noirs that featured black

people, whether in bit parts or more prominent roles, ended up associating black

people with corruption and contamination. There is not enough evidence to

suggest that this practice was always the result of deliberately prejudiced

decision-making. On the contrary, given Hollywood’s history of marginalizing

and stereotyping black people, the makers of film noir often inadvertently served

a racist agenda simply by choosing to address topics other than race.

Near the end of the war, three otherwise excellent noirs —Double

Indemnity, Scarlet Street, and Mildred Pierce—provided particularly insidious

examples of how movies could use black people to signal the worst qualities of

white people. Rather than simply placing blacks in a stereotype that viewers

could either accept or reject, these pictures linked black people to the increasing

corruption and diminishing autonomy of white people.

When Billy Wilder shot Double Indemnity, he employed Clarence Muse

and Sam McDaniel, black actors who had worked for years in Hollywood. He

also hired Oscar Smith, the owner of a shoeshine stand on the Paramount lot

where he preferred spending time smoking cigars and telling dirty jokes. (Wilder

was hardly “discovering” him; in fact, Smith had been parlaying his presence on

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the studio into occasional film work since the late 1920s.)11 Given that Wilder

obviously appreciated black people not only for their acting experience but also

for their companionship, it is surprising that his picture relegated them to bit

parts where they were associated with moral corruption and lack of autonomy.

Double Indemnity, however, was an early entry in a new kind of moviemaking.

Generally, the focus of these dark movies was a white protagonist’s moral

descent, and the occasional black person in these stories usually became swept

up in the protagonist’s increasing corruption.

Double Indemnity begins at night, as insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred

MacMurray) hurries to his workplace, the main branch of the Pacific All-Risk

Insurance Company. Neff’s reason for hurrying there is to leave a murder

confession on the Dictaphone in his office. Just outside the office, however, he

momentarily pauses on the balcony and looks down to the floor below. This

pause, as slight as it is, forms a bridge between the acts of reckless haste Neff

commits on the way to the Pacific Building (veering to avoid construction work,

running a stop signal, and nearly colliding with a truck) and the almost serene

but nevertheless painstaking acts of deliberation he is about to perform in his

office (lighting a cigarette and recording his confession, both with his use of only

one arm). By casting his gaze over the workplace that is so familiar to him, Neff

checks his speed and in fact braces himself for the deliberation that a lengthy

confession requires.

11 Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 132; Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942 (New York: Oxford University Press), 102.

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Neff succeeds in delivering his confession despite the fact that his gaze

reveals a workplace unlike the one he remembers. In scenes from the past, the

lower floor is full of white people carrying out the daily business of the insurance

company. In this scene, however, a trio of black people, one man and two

women, carry out the nightly cleaning. That Neff’s memory of the workplace at

daytime does not include blacks points to the kind of shadow world they occupy:

blacks work for the insurance company, too, but under the cover of night, when

few whites are present. Because these blacks work at night, the actions they

perform (mopping, dusting, and taking out the trash) are normally invisible to

whites. On the other hand, the results of their work (cleanliness and order)

sustain the work of the company’s white employees, even when these whites do

not know it. Neffs last glimpse of his workplace, then, is a peep into the

shadows, a vision of the normally invisible black bodies that serve and sustain

the predominantly white workaday world.

The normally invisible services these janitors perform resemble that of

another black worker, the “colored woman” who, Neff says, cleans his apartment

“a couple times a week.” Though the woman is not present, her handiwork is

evident enough for Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) to wonder who does

it. Unlike the janitors, this woman never appears onscreen. In fact, it is only

when Neff’s behavior becomes increasingly duplicitous and illegal that he sees

black workers. During the scene in which he and Mrs. Dietrichson discuss the

maid, Neff has done nothing worse than flirt with a married woman. Yet, on the

night that he plans to murder Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers), Neff partly

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Figure 1. Double IndemnityParamount, ( 1944). A black man and two black women clean the Pacific All-Risk Insurance building in a scene made possible by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder’s framing device. Throughout the film, black servants appear at key moments in salesman Walter Neffs moral decline

establishes his alibi by asking Charlie (Sam R. McDaniel), a black garage

attendant, to wash his car. Then, when he disguises himself as Mr. Dietrichson

and boards a train, he asks a black porter12 to make up his berth. Finally, on

the same night that he murders Mrs. Dietrichson, he watches three janitors

clean his workplace. Whereas Neffs allusion to an invisible black woman

12 On occasion, as is the case above, I am unable to provide the name of the actor who performed the role in question. I have referred to the full cast credits for all of the films cited in this paper, but some extras and bit players are not listed. Also, even when such people appear in the credits, it can still be difficult to match them to their parts if the credits include roles such as “Porter #1” and “Porter #2.”

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occurs near the beginning of his moral decline, his vision of three blacks at work

occurs after reaching the bottom.Double Indemnity thus introduces black

figures at key moments in Neff’s moral decline.

As to the significance of this connection, Eric Lott provides a starting

point. He characterizes Neff’s increasing immorality as “a passage out of

whiteness.” In other words, the more Neff resorts to violence and deceit, the

more he associates with nonwhite elements. Indeed, just by remembering his

“dark deeds,” Neff seems in danger of turning black, for his bullet wound

appears onscreen as a gradually expanding, black stain. Lott, however,

incorporates blackness with other forms of non-whiteness. Hence the Greek-

American businessman Sam Garlopis (Fortunio Bonanova) prefigures Neff in

that he does not profit from trying to fool claims manager Barton Keyes (Edward

G. Robinson). Also, Neff establishes an alibi not only by visiting a black garage

attendant but by calling his Jewish co-worker, Lou Schwartz (Douglas Spencer).

In the end, Neff believes that his last chance to escape is to cross the Mexican

border.13 Such are only the more extreme examples of Neffs alignment with

corruption and, at the same time, ethnicity.

Double Indemnity indeed associates corruption with ethnicity, but by

conflating racial blackness with every other type of non-whiteness, Lott

overlooks an important distinction. In contrast to blacks, Double most of

Indemnity’s other ethnic characters demonstrate a degree of independence:

Sam Garlopis, a Greek-American, runs a business; Lou Schwartz, a Jew, is an

13 Lott, 546-47.

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insurance salesman; and Nino Zachetti (Byron Barr), possibly an Italian-

American, is pursuing a medical degree. The film’s blacks, however, seem to

exist only to save whites from drudgery. These blacks are so far from autonomy

that, rather than “characters,” it is best to call them “figures.” Three such

figures, the janitors who work for Pacific All-Risk, save the company’s white

employees from cleaning after themselves. Other black figures work for Neff in

particular: a maid cleans his apartment, a garage attendant washes his car, and

a porter makes up his berth. None of these services, however, are easy to spot.

Unlike the film’s ethnic characters, who generally make themselves known, its

practically invisible black figures appear, if at all, at night and, except for Charlie,

remain nameless. While it remains true that the ethnic characters possess non

white qualities, they are able to pass for independent whites in ways unavailable

to black figures.

Neff’s association with black figures is more crucial than his association

with ethnic characters in that, in addition to signaling his increasing corruption, it

indicates his diminishing autonomy. In other words, as Neff encounters more

and more blacks, he becomes increasingly mired in a path of duplicity and

violence. His nameless black cleaning woman appears to have fewer

responsibilities than the Dietrichsons’ white maid, Nettie (Betty Farrington). This

situation renders him more like a servant himself, for he has to answer his own

door and, in so doing, performs a menial task that exposes him to unwanted

guests: at first, Mrs. Dietrichson and, much later, Barton Keyes. Neff again

resembles a servant when, on the night he murders Mr. Dietrichson, he exits

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and enters his apartment by way of the service stairs, presumably the same

stairs his cleaning woman uses. That same night, his attempt to hide his face

from a porter resembles the porter’s own, obsequiously lowered head.

When Neff associates with visible black figures, an even clearer

symptom of his diminishing autonomy is his increasingly limited movement. For

instance, Neff’s asking Charlie to wash his car not only helps establish his alibi

but also forces him to walk. That same night, when, surrounded by porters, he

boards a train, his movement becomes more restricted: in order to impersonate

Mr. Dietrichson, he walks with a cast on one leg and a crutch under each arm.

Finally, just after watching the three janitors in his workplace, Neff stops moving

altogether; he sits in his office, records his confession, and by the time he tries

to flee, he is too weak from blood loss to reach the elevator. Because blacks

bring out his resemblance to a servant as well as his inability to move, they

indicate Neffs diminishing autonomy. In light of the film’s black figures, Neff

appears as a door-to-door salesman who becomes vulnerable at his own door,

as an insurance agent who loses his agency.

A world of difference nevertheless exists between Neffs lack of

autonomy and that of the film’s black figures. For the film’s blacks,

nonautonomy is an apparently permanent condition that renders them amoral.

In other words, they exist only to serve whites; their actions proceed not from

moral judgment but from obedience to whites. For Neff, however, nonautonomy

is a state that gradually overcomes him as he commits more and more immoral

acts. In Neff’s words, “I fought it, only . . . I guess I didn’t fight it hard enough.”

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Black figures support white order by sweeping up dirt, throwing out trash,

cleaning apartments, washing cars, and making up berths when few whites are

around to observe, unless some white exploits these services for immoral

purposes (such as when Neff asks Charlie to wash his car in order to establish

an alibi). Unlike the services blacks provide, Neff’s “dirty work”—which he, in

the manner of black figures, carries out at night— begins to contradict the order

of the white workaday world.

In this light, Neff’s expanding wound represents not only the onset of

moral and racial blackness but also the reduction of his life to a moral and

physical stain. Neff’s claim—“I’m not trying to whitewash myself—suggests that

he considers himself not only a blackened white man but also a living stain.

Most of the services that blacks perform involve removing foulness and disorder

in the form of dirt, spills, stains, and trash, and at the bottom of Neff’s moral

decline, he corresponds to these forms. Just before recording his confession,

he, in Keyes’s words, “leaked a little blood.” It is only appropriate that a black

janitor notices this leak, realizes Neff needs to be removed, and phones Keyes

to make it so. When, at the end of the film, Keyes confronts Neff, he forgoes his

usual “big speech . . . with all the two-dollar words” to tell Neff what any of the

film’s black figures could say of a stain about to be expunged: “Walter, you’re all

washed up.”

Fritz Lang, the director ofScarlet Street, ranked among Hollywood’s

most politically active European emigres. An Austrian of partly Jewish descent,

Lang became a founding member of the Hollywood ANL, a group that opposed

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fascism in the late 1930s, well before American participation in World War II

made it fashionable to do so. Since one of the perceived threats of fascism was

racial suppression, Lang and the ANL commiserated, to some extent, with the

plight of black people in the United States and abroad. For this reason, the

Hollywood ANL invited no less an eminence than W.E.B. DuBois to speak at a

1937 rally.14 Additionally, Lang directed Fury (1936), a movie that attacked

lynching and mob violence in the United States. Given Lang’s somewhat

indirect support of black people, it is surprising that Scarlet Street, like Wilder’s

Double Indemnity, relegated Clarence Muse to a bit part in which he helped

underscore the misdeeds of a white protagonist.

In Scarlet Street, one of director Fritz Lang’s earliest forays in classic

film noir, the protagonist is a cashier and an amateur painter named Christopher

Cross (Edward G. Robinson). One night, after being awarded a watch by his

employer for “twenty-five years of loyal service,” Chris witnesses a man

attacking a woman on a street corner. Assuming that the woman needs help,

Chris uses his umbrella to fight off the attacker. In actuality, his help is not

wanted; the woman, Kitty March (Joan Bennett), is a model-turned-prostitute

and the man, Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea), is her boyfriend and pimp. Chris

offers to walk Kitty home, and along the way, the two weave a web of

misperception. Kitty gives the impression that she is an aspiring actress, and

that she likes Chris. When she jumps to the conclusion that Chris is a wealthy

14 Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960 {Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1980), 104, 108.

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artist, one better known in Europe than in America, he does nothing to correct

her assumption. From this point on, Chris and Kitty are tied in a relationship

based on mutual deceit, one fed by her love of money and his hunger for love.

Soon, at Johnny’s insistence, Kitty tells Chris that she needs a new

apartment but cannot afford one. As if keeping Kitty were not reason enough for

Chris to pay for the apartment, his wife begins threatening to throw out his

paintings. Chris can hardly afford a second apartment himself, but the desire to

keep Kitty as well as his paintings eventually drives him to steal some of the

savings bonds his wife’s first husband willed to her. Chris’s ill-gotten gains,

however, last only so long before Kitty lets on that she needs more money.

Hoping to please her, Chris resorts to stealing cash from the safe at his

workplace, but just before he reaches this new low, the film’s only black person

appears onscreen. A pipe-smoking janitor named Ben (Clarence Muse)

approaches the cashier’s cage in which Chris works and asks him if he is

working late. When Chris answers that he will be leaving soon, Ben proceeds to

carry his cleaning supplies downstairs. As soon as Ben leaves, Chris stuffs

some money from the safe into an envelope. Although stealing money from

work does not serve as the endpoint of Chris’s moral decline, it is his most

significant step in that direction because it is the one action that stamps out the

particular kind of goodness, that of loyal service, for which he is honored at the

film’s outset. Only seconds before this most significant of actions takes place, a

black figure’s actual descent to a lower floor prefigures Chris’s moral descent,

which by the end of the film, leads to murder and madness.

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More so thanDouble Indemnity and Scarlet Street, Mildred Pierce

stands as strong evidence that the early noirs were too preoccupied with new

ways to explore sex, violence, and crime to be suited for portraying black people

in a favorable light. Lottie, the black maid inMildred Pierce, not only helps

signal the white protagonist’s lack of control over her own life; she also ranks as

one of the most blatant racial stereotypes in classic film noir. The way in which

this picture exploits Lottie is hardly a result of poor movie-making, for its director

was Michael Curtiz, who had just won an Oscar for directingCasablanca, and its

star, Joan Crawford, delivered what became an Oscar-winning performance.

Lottie, too, is hardly an indication that film noir was essentially racist or that its

director was an irredeemable bigot, for Curtiz had already depicted a black man

in a fairly progressive role in Casablanca and would do the same five years later

in the film noirThe Breaking Point (1950). Curtiz’s adaptation of Mildred Pierce

revised the Cain novel by including a black woman, but it stuck to the story’s

central concerns—sexual infidelity and familial dysfunction—so well that it left

little room for presenting her with dignity.

In the film, Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) separates from her husband,

Bert (Bruce Bennett), and takes a job as a waitress to support herself and her

children. Soon after becoming a waitress, she hires a black maid named Lottie

(Butterfly McQueen). Eventually, Mildred divorces Bert and starts her own

restaurant, which becomes so successful that she develops a chain of

restaurants. Her initial success as a single mother and a businesswoman

disappears, however, when she marries an aristocratic charmer named Monte

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Beragon (Zachary Scott). By the end of the film, Monte not only forces Mildred

to sell the business but also seduces her oldest daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth).

Eric Lott indicates that, throughout Mildred’s rise and fall, Lottie

shadows her “at every step.”15 Lottie’s constant presence, on one hand, implies

Mildred’s superior status and, on the other hand, resembles Mildred’s own

status as a servant. Reflecting notions of white supremacy, the two women

form an idealized racial relationship, one in which a working-class black serves

a middle-class white. Lottie’s service under Mildred not only confirms Mildred’s

superior status but also changes as Mildred’s status rises. In other words, as

Mildred’s lifestyle changes, so does the nature of Lottie’s service. At first, when

Mildred becomes a waitress, she hires Lottie to help around the house. Later,

when she starts her first restaurant, she puts Lottie to work in the restaurant

kitchen. Finally, when she marries Monte and moves into his mansion, she has

Lottie receive and announce guests.

Although Lottie’s constant service confirms Mildred’s superiority, it also

resembles Mildred’s own state of servitude. Early in the film, for example,

Mildred recalls, “I was always in the kitchen. I felt as though I’d been born in the

kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get

married.” These words are not literally true, but they accurately represent how

narrowly defined Mildred’s place in society is. Mildred’s status may be superior

to Lottie’s, but as women, both act out roles of servitude. Mildred, whether as a

waitress or a restaurant owner, earns a living by serving others; Lottie, in turn,

15 Lott, 560.

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Figure 2. Mildred Pierce (Warner, 1945). A black woman named Lottie (Butterfly McQueen) helps her employer, restaurateur Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford), in the kitchen. Though Mildred’s status is ultimately superior to Lottie’s, both women are confined to roles that involve serving others.

serves Mildred. From the moment Mildred hires Lottie, the two always appear in

the kitchen together. Mildred’s main difference is that she demonstrates agency

while Lottie remains an adjunct, a shadow of the white woman who employs her.

Lottie’s presence nevertheless suggests that Mildred’s superior status

is not enough to escape servitude. In Lott’s words, “Lottie is the kitchen worker

that always lurks somewhere inside Mildred, less the representative of the hard

labor that Mildred is willing to perform than of the ‘nigger work’ this labor

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echoes.”16 Mildred’s work seems to promise the possibility of escaping

servitude, of leaving the domestic kitchen, but the work itself not only involves

serving others but also ties her to a restaurant kitchen. Both Monte and Veda

mock the “smell of grease” that surrounds Mildred’s work, and Lottie, with her

dark skin, seems to be the embodiment of grease, a woman so sullied by her

work that the grease will not come off. Moreover, as much as Mildred rises in

status, Veda reminds her that the services she and Lottie perform are nearly the

same. Lott indicates, for example, that Veda ridicules her mother’s job as a

waitress by making Lottie wear the uniform.17 Even when Mildred becomes the

owner of a restaurant franchise, Veda calls her “a common frump.” In both

cases, either directly or indirectly, Veda equates Mildred’s work with Lottie’s.

Whereas Veda points out Mildred and Lottie’s similarities, the film

ultimately establishes a distinction between employer and employee. Even

though Mildred never escapes her life of servitude, she differs from Lottie

because she can choose whom to serve. In contrast to Lottie, who remains

faithful to the end, Mildred divorces Bert, spurns the advances of Bert’s former

partner, Wally Fay (Jack Carter), and proceeds to serve paying customers, first

as a waitress and then as a restaurateur. Along with marrying Monte, these

actions seem designed to satisfy Veda’s expensive tastes, but rather than

remain faithful to Veda, Mildred eventually returns to Bert’s side. At the end of

the film, as she and her ex-husband walk out of the Hall of Justice and into the

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

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sunlight, she distances herself from two washerwomen, who scrub on their

hands and knees and in the shadows. As much as her reconciliation with Bert

implies that her options are limited, the fact that Mildred exercises some degree

of choice sets her apart from the more abject kind of servitude that her black

maid, Lottie, and the two racially indistinguishable washerwomen represent.

Double Indemnity, Scarlet Street, and Mildred Pierce were all top-

drawer noirs that tested the limits of Hollywood censorship near the end of

World War II. Despite the new and better opportunities war pictures and

musicals were providing to black actors and entertainers, and the fact that

Wilder, Lang, and Curtiz in some ways supported blacks, these early noirs were

concerned with topics other than race. As a result, their portrayal of black

people suffered considerably. Such portrayals are emblematic of the way most

early noirs treated black people, and they substantiate the claim that film noir

used black people to valorize whiteness. They do not prove, however, that film

noir was essentially racist.

The classic noirs remained consistent in some ways and changed in

others. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the creators of film noir repeatedly

ran against the limits of censorship. Still, once the seeming novelty of exploring

crime, sex, and violence wore off, many of these individuals began to make

noirs that not only accented murder and mayhem but also benefited black

people. This new phase in film noir production did not begin until after the war,

but when it did, a number of noirs emerged to help blacks achieve better

representation in Hollywood.

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THE BENEFITS OF WAR, 1947-49

In the late 1940s, the popularity of Hollywood’s war pictures and

musicals quickly receded. During and shortly after World War II, the studios

succeed in glutting theatres with such a steady output of war pictures that the

movie-going public was surely ready for other types of movies. By the end of

the war, many Americans were weary of warfare, especially the kind that

involved acts of genocide and the atomic annihilation of defenseless civilians.

Still, whether or not all Americans had reached surfeit, the end of the war meant,

at least temporarily, that war pictures had lost their topicality and had diminished

in relevance. Without the need for antifascist propaganda, Hollywood no longer

turned to war pictures to promote racial tolerance.

In terms of how these movies treated black people, African American

intellectuals tended to respond more favorably to war pictures than to musicals.

As they saw it, war pictures, by placing a black man among whites, dealt at least

implicitly with racial relations, but musicals failed to present their entirely black

casts in any broader social context. During the war, Walter White saw inCrash

Dive (1943) and Casablanca (1943) “exciting changes in the pattern” of

depicting blacks as “menials” but, at the same time, flatly stated his

disappointment with Cabin in the Sky (1943). Similarly, in the years after the

war, Langston Hughes fondly remembered movies like Bataan (1943) and 39

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Casablanca for their portrayal of black people with “some semblance of

normalcy.” Meanwhile, columnist A.S. Young characterized musicals like

Stormy l/l/ieaf/7er (1943) and Cabin in the Sky as “trial balloons” and examples of

the “aren’t they a quaint people school.” 1 Just as many Americans grew weary

of Hollywood’s war pictures, a number of influential African American expressed

dissatisfaction with its musicals.

The diminishing popularity of war pictures and musicals created a

vacuum that some other types of moviemaking had to fill. After all, the war had

aroused both propagandistic and social-realist tendencies in moviemaking

worldwide. It had also initiated what Langston Hughes described as a

“progressive trend” in the opportunities available for African Americans in

Hollywood.2 The decline in war pictures and musicals was hardly enough to

counter these inclinations; instead, other kinds of movies became outlets for

propaganda, expressions of social-realism, and sources of opportunity for black

people. In Hollywood, between 1947 and 1949, film noir began to take on these

roles, largely because urban crime stories presented attractive creative

possibilities both for those on the left and for those intent on using new-fangled

semi-documentary techniques. This distinctive post-war combination of leftist

involvement and social-realist tendencies resulted in better opportunities for

African Americans in film noir.

1 CD, 8 May 1943, 15; Ibid., 17 Dec. 1949, 1-2; Ibid., 16 May 1953, 11.

2 Ibid., 26 Apr. 1947, 13.

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Noir with a Message I: Crossfire (1947)

The first signs of change occurred between 1947 and 1949, and

Crossfire (1947) represented the first major salvo on behalf of tolerance. This

movie, which depicted U.S. soldiers just as they were returning from the war,

was a direct descendant of the war pictures. Its genesis, in fact, began during

the war, while Robert Ryan—an actor at RKO who had only recently gained

notice for his role opposite Ginger Rogers inTender Comrade (1943)—was

serving as a Marine drill instructor at Camp Pendleton. There, in 1945, Ryan

met Richard Brooks, an aspiring writer whose novel,The Brick Foxhole,

concerned returning U.S. soldiers, one of whom murders a gay man. Upon

reading it, Ryan told Brooks that, if the book ever became a movie, he would

want to play the murderer. A few years later, Ryan realized his wish when RKO

producer Adrian Scott, director Edward Dmytryk, and writer John Paxton

decided that they would be able to turn The Brick Foxhole into a movie that

satisfied both studio executives and the Breen office if, instead of a homosexual,

the murdered man was a Jew.3 Once again, the makers of a film noir tested the

limits of censorship but, this time, in a way that attacked prejudice and

intolerance.

As released, Crossfire opens as Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene), a

Jew, is murdered in his own apartment by an unknown assailant. Detective

Finlay (Robert Young) begins the homicide investigation at Samuels’s

3 Franklin Jarlett, Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990), 20, 22, 25; Naremore, 114-16.

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apartment, where he encounters a Gl named Montgomery (Robert Ryan).

Montgomery informs Finlay that, earlier that evening, he and three of his Army

buddies— Floyd (Steve Brodie), Leroy (William Phipps), and Mitchell (George

Cooper)— had followed Samuels to the apartment for drinks. Montgomery also

says that Mitchell acted unusual and left early, giving Finlay reason to believe

that Mitchell may have committed the murder. As Finlay begins the search for

Mitchell, he meets Sgt. Keeley (Robert Mitchum), who not only attempts to

convince the detective that Mitchell is innocent but also helps Mitchell hide from

the police. Gradually, Finlay’s suspicions shift toward Montgomery, who does

little to conceal his contempt for Samuels’s Jewish ancestry or Leroy’s Southern

background. After Montgomery murders Floyd to prevent him from going to the

police, Finlay and Keeley persuade Leroy to help incriminate Montgomery.

Their plan works, but Montgomery evades arrest. After warning him to stop,

Finlay fires his gun from an open window and kills Montgomery.

Appearing in theatres months before Gentleman’s Agreement, Crossfire

became the first Hollywood movie to deal with native-born anti-Semitism.4 The

movie was a relatively low-budget production, and it easily turned a profit at the

box office. For the most part, the response of reviewers was adulatory. In the

mainstream press, critics tended to single out Robert Ryan’s performance.

Hedda Hopper called it “terrific,” and Bosley Crowther wrote, “Ryan is

frighteningly real as the hard, sinewy, loud-mouthed, intolerant and vicious

4 Hollywood had depicted anti-Semitic villains before, as in Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die! (1943) and Orson Welles’s The Stranger ( 1946), but the bad guys were invariably foreigners.

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Figure 3. Crossfire (RKO, 1947). A violently anti-Semitic ex-GI named Montgomery (Robert Ryan), left, faces his interrogator, Detective Finlay (Robert Young). The success of this film led the way for other movies to address socially significant topics, including prejudice against people of color.

murderer.” Not surprisingly, Ryan received an Academy Award nomination for

his performance, and Dore Schary, who had recently become an executive at

RKO, regarded Crossfire as a model for future productions that would combine

talented individuals, interesting stories, and modest budgets.5

Some reviews, however, regarded Crossfire’s blatant depiction of anti-

Semitism with misgivings. Hedda Hopper felt that accenting people’s

5 CDT, 27 Jun. 1947, 22; NYT, 23 Jul. 1947, 19; Ibid., 28 Sep. 1947, X5.

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differences was perhaps not the best way to promote tolerance. Similarly,

James Agee was embarrassed to see a movie “Come Right Out Against Anti-

Semitism” just as he would be if one had “Come Right Out Against torturing

children.” He also suggested that, in addressing anti-Semitism, the makers of

Crossfire were not being bold so much as shrewd. According to Agee, by

deciding to make the homosexual in the novel a Jew, the makers ofCrossfire

were hoping to beat Gentleman’s Agreement at the box office. Also, in the

movie, when Finlay seeks the assistance of the Southerner, Leroy, by lecturing

on the ills of prejudice, he never mentions racism against blacks.6

Among African Americans, the response was somewhat different. On

one hand, Walter White agreed with Agee that Crossfire “ducks the Negro

question like the plague.” On the other hand, he characterized the movie as “a

blistering frontal attack on race prejudice” and urged his readers to see it. For

White, the success of Crossfire had clear implications for African Americans. “If

the producers continue to make intelligent films and make money on these

films,” he wrote, “perhaps in time Hollywood will have the courage to attack anti-

Negroism.” Over a year later, even as the House Un-American Activities

Committee (HUAC) investigations intensified, actress and entertainer Lena

Horne expressed hope that the success of movies like Crossfire and

6 CDT, 27 Jun. 1947, 22; James Agee,Agee on Film (London: Peter Owen, 1963), 269-70.

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Gentleman’s Agreement would open up better roles for African Americans and

lead to movies that dealt with prejudice against African Americans.7

Although Crossfire’s example would ultimately bear fruit for African

Americans, several of those involved in the making of movie soon became

targets of the Hollywood investigation. When one considers Crossfirethat made

a villain out of an otherwise handsome American G.I., this reaction is not

surprising. As reward for their efforts, HUAC named Scott and Dmytryk among

the group of suspected Communists who would become known as the

Hollywood Ten. Additionally, Schary faced pressure to fire Scott and Dmytryk,

but he agreed to do so only if their status as Communists had been undeniably

proven. For taking such a stance, Hedda Hopper labeled Schary a “pinko.”8

Then, against his wishes, RKO’s board of trustees voted to fire Scott and

Dmytryk; subsequently, he resigned. To some extent, Schary’s defense of

Crossfire and its personnel contradicts Agee’s belief that the filmmakers were

only engaging in a calculated sort of boldness. In addition, Robert Ryan

demonstrated an extraordinary sense of commitment Crossfire’sto message by

almost immediately embarking on a lecture tour among civic organizations in ten

major cities. Years later, Ryan, who had starred not only Crossfirein but also

Tender Comrade (a movie that had gotten Dalton Trumbo named among the

7 CD, 23 Aug. 1947, 15; Ibid., 7 May 1949, 16.

a LAT, 19 Jul. 1948, 14.

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Hollywood Ten), surmised that, if it were not for his military record and Irish

Catholic background, he too would have been blacklisted.9

Despite the assault on Crossfire’s personnel, the general response to

the movie had several immediately positive consequences. First, it encouraged

other filmmakers, particularly those involved in the creation of film noir, to

address socially significant topics. Indeed, the year after the release of

Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement, an independently produced, low-budget

film noir called Open Secret depicted an anti-Semitic, Klan-like organization in a

small town. Second, it tested Dore Schary’s commitment to liberal ideals and to

expressing those ideals through film. Even after Scott and Dmytryk had been

called before HUAC, Schary insisted that, if given the choice again, he would

still make Crossfire.10 (In keeping with this statement, Schary would later work

at MGM, where, in spite of the studio’s reputation for glamorous, big-budget

productions, he would champion the creation of noirs and movies with social

significance.) Finally, it jumpstarted the career of Robert Ryan, an actor who

would not only star in many noirs but also consistently support opportunities for

African Americans.

Servants, Prisoners, Musicians, and More

Of course, the success ofCrossfire did not immediately create

opportunities for African Americans in film noir. African Americans were still

9 Ibid., 16 Nov. 1947, B3; NYT, 12 Jul. 1973.

10 NYT, 25 Jan. 1948, X5.

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absent in the majority of noirs. When they did appear, they still usually played

brief, un-credited roles as servants. Among other roles, African Americans

appeared as porters in Robert Wise’s Born to Kill (1947), John Cromwell’sDead

Reckoning (1947), and Robert Florey’sThe Crooked Way (1949); butlers or

maids in John Farrow’sThe Big Clock (1948), Orson Welles’s The Lady from

Shanghai (1948), George Sherman’s Larceny (1948), Edgar G. Ulmer’s

Ruthless (1948), Michael Curtiz’s Flamingo Road (1949), Max Ophuls’s The

Reckless Moment (1949), and Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool (1949); waiters in

Dead Reckoning and Lew Landers’s Inner Sanctum (1948); a bootblack in Roy

Rowland’sScene of the Crime (1949); and a restroom attendant in Nicholas

Ray’s They Live by Night. Moreover, when they played musicians or singers, as

in Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death (1947), Abraham Polonsky’sForce of Evil

(1948), Byron Haskin’sI Walk Alone (1948), and They Live by Night, they

continued to serve white patrons only.

To make matters worse, African Americans played prisoners in noirs

more often than they had before. Sir Lancelot, a Bahamian calypso singer,

appeared as a prisoner in Jules Dassin’s Brute Force (1947). Similarly, actor

Bill Walker played a prisoner in William Nigh’s / Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes

(1948) and Crane Wilbur’s Canon City (1948). Although prisoner roles tended

to associate African American with stereotypically criminal tendencies, the larger

context of a film sometimes worked against such an association.Brute In

Force, for example, Sir Lancelot plays Calypso, the only black convict in an

otherwise white prison. When several prisoners, led by Joe Collins (Burt

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Lancaster), respond to Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn)’s iron rule by plotting a

desperate escape attempt, Calypso is one of the few prisoner who continues to

go about his business, thereby avoiding the carnage that ensues. Certainly, Sir

Lancelot’s part in the movie was unusual enough to gather attention in the black

press. In the Chicago Defender, for example, one reviewer remarked on how

Sir Lancelot’s singing provided bittersweet commentary to the actions in the

movie.11

The larger context of a film could also make the inclusion of African

American servant or musician roles more meaningful than one might expect.

The Lady from Shanghai provides one example. In the movie, a black maid

named Bessie (Evelyn Ellis) argues with sailor Mike O’ Hara (Orson Welles) and

protects her mistress, Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), in the fashion of a

traditional mammy figure. Nevertheless, Elsa’s husband, Arthur (Everett

Sloane) speaks of Bessie in such a patronizing way that he provides an early

sign of his willingness to exploit others, including, ultimately, Mike and Elsa.

Similarly, in Kiss of Death, J.C. Heard’s jazz combo performs at Club 66 for an

entirely white audience. (The Chicago Defender noted that the songs were

original compositions.)12 One audience member, however, is gangster Tommy

Udo (Richard Widmark), who displays sociopathic tendencies by snapping his

fingers, grunting, and barking directions in a bizarre attempt to get the band to

play faster. Scenes like the ones in The Lady from Shanghai and Kiss of Death

11 CD, 17 May 1947, 19.

12 Ibid., 10 May 1947, 19.

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exposed the vices and flaws of white characters and, by way of contrast, made

blacks seem dignified and professional.

Still, if servant, musician, and prisoner roles did little overall to improve

the representation of African Americans, film noir exhibited definite signs of

change. On several occasions, African Americans appeared in roles and

situations that, at least for film noir, were new. For example, in a scene from

Jacques Tourneur’sOut of the Past (1947), African Americans appear outside of

-XsJp , t r

Figure 4. Out of the Past (RKO, 1947). In a scene that presented well-dressed black people away from work and in their own social sphere, private detective Jeff Markham (Robert Mitchum), left, questions an off-duty maid named Eunice Leonard (Theresa Harris) regarding the whereabouts of her former employer.

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their work roles. In an effort to locate a gangster’s estranged lover, private

detective Jeff Markham (Robert Mitchum) enters an all-black nightclub in order

to question her former maid, Eunice (Theresa Harris). A waiter directs him to

her table, where she sits with an escort (Caleb Peterson). To Markham’s

questions, she answers with noticeable coolness and deliberately attempts to

conceal the location of her former mistress. Her status as a maid is not as

material to this scene as is the fact that she is a well-dressed black woman

spending a night on the town, and Markham is a white man somewhat out of his

element.

Aside from depicting African Americans outside of their roles as

servants, some noirs featured them in roles that did not involve servitude. While

Jacques Tourneur’sBerlin Express (1948) briefly showed two black soldiers

walking through a train car, and Robert Rossen’sBody and Soul (1947), William

Keighley’s The Street with No Name (1948), and Robert Wise’s The Set-Up

(1949), contained scenes with black boxers. While neither black soldiers nor

black boxers were entirely new roles in Hollywood, the fact that noirs began to

include these roles indicated that the representation of Africans Americans in

film noir was improving and becoming more relevant.

The Black Friend I: Body and Soul (1947)

Another sign of improvement lay in the fact that, while the African

American boxers in The Street with No Name simply appeared in the

background, those inBody and Soul and The Set-Up were full-fledged

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characters. Not surprisingly, the first major sign of improvement would come out

of an independent production company. In 1946, after more than seven years at

Warner Brothers, John Garfield was looking for more creative control over his

film work. With his business manager, Bob Roberts, Garfield formed Bob

Roberts Productions and invested in Enterprise, a small independent studio that

had just gone into business that year. For their first project, the two men

planned a biopic of boxing champion and war hero Barney Ross, and Roberts

tapped Robert Rossen, a screenwriter with only one directorial credit to his

name, to direct. Rossen, a leading member of Writers Mobilization, consulted

with Walter White during the 1943 Writers Congress; that same year, he and

Canada Lee had discussed the possibility of working together, at some point in

the future, on a boxing picture.13

Enterprise scrapped the project, however, when Barney Ross made

headlines by admitting that he had acquired a morphine addiction. Garfield,

Roberts, and Rossen then turned to Abraham Polonsky, a young writer who

crafted a script less about a boxer than about the corrupt and exploitative world

of boxing. From there, this decidedly left-wing team (Rossen and Polonsky

were members of the Communist Party) enlisted the service of a racially diverse

13 Patrick J. McGrath, John Garfield: The Illustrated Career in Films and on Stage (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993), 90, 92; Robert Nott, He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield (New York: Limelight Editions, 2003), 194, 196; Mona Z. Smith, Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee (New York: Faber & Faber, 2004), 228-29.

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Figure 5. Body and Soul (UA, 1947). Two victims of the exploitative world of prizefighting, white boxer Charley Davis (John Garfield) and black boxer Ben Chaplin (Canada Lee) share a private moment as friends. In this film, as in others, the white protagonist fully realizes the error of his ways only after the death of his black friend.

Editing. Not surprisingly, reviews written by African Americans focused on

Canada Lee’s role. A.S. Young deemed it far superior to Lee’s role inLifeboat.

Walter White thought it had been “written with dignity and sympathy but without

sentimentality”; he also credited Rossen, Lee, and Enterprise Studios with

“daring to break with the Hollywood stereotype.” Additionally, Langston Hughes

observed with pleasant surprise that, in Body and Soul, Charlie and Ben refer to

each other by their first names. He considered the movie “advanced treatment

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cast and crew that included cinematographer James Wong Howe, Canada Lee,

and about thirty black extras.14

In the finished film, released the following year as Body and Soul,

Charlie Davis (John Garfield) pursues boxing in order to escape the poverty and

crime of the slums. In his pursuit of wealth and glory, Charlie surrounds himself

with a deceitful manager named Quinn (William Conrad) and a dishonest fight

promoter named Roberts (Lloyd Gough). He also grows distant from the people

who love him most—his mother, Anna (Anne Revere), and his girlfriend, Peg

(Lilli Palmer). At one point, Roberts arranges a fight between Charlie and black

ex-champion Ben Chaplin (Canada Lee), but he does not inform Charlie that

Ben is suffering from a brain embolus. Charlie wins the bout but, to his dismay,

almost kills the ex-champ. Soon after, Roberts asks him to throw his next fight,

but when Ben suddenly dies trying to protect him, Charlie blames his promoter

and proceeds to win the fight. In the end, when the scheming promoter and his

henchmen confront him, Charlie snarls, “What are you gonna do, kill me?

Everybody dies.”

Netting nearly $3 million, Body and Soul became the first and only

financial success for Enterprise Studios.15 It received widespread critical

acclaim, garnered Academy Award nominations for Garfield (Best Actor) and

Polonsky (Best Writing, Original Screenplay), and won an Oscar for Best Film

14 Nott, 197-98; Smith, 231.

15 Ibid., 249; Nott, 234.

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of Negro-white relationships on the screen” because the two characters “are

portrayed as friends, real friends, with no bowing or scraping on the part of the

Negro.” For the very reasons that Hughes mentioned, Garfield and Lee received

citations from Interracial Unity, a Protestant church organization, in 1948.16

For some in the black press, much of this praise was overblown.

Responding to claims thatBody and Soul was the first film to treat an African

American as a human being, Harry Levette, a Hollywood insider who had served

as a publicity director in the segregated film industry, compiled a list of more

than a dozen major movies, going back to the silent era, in which black actors

and actresses performed with distinction.17

Notwithstanding these earlier movies, Canada Lee’s part in Body and

Soul represented a major achievement. Prior to Body and Soul, the interracial

friendships that Hollywood depicted, even that of Sam and Rick inCasablanca,

failed to resemble a true relationship between peers. In addition, Lee’s role was

so prominent, and so intrinsic to the plot, that even the mainstream press took

notice. In theNew York Times, for instance, Bosley Crowther wrote, “Canada

Lee . . . brings to focus the horrible pathos of the cruelly exploited prizefighter.

As a Negro ex-champ who is meanly shoved aside, he shows scorn for the

greed of shrewder men who have enslaved him, sapped his strength and then

16 CD, 17 Dec. 1949, 1-2; Ibid., 13 Sep. 1947, 15; Ibid., 4 Oct. 1947, 14; LAT, 28 Jan. 1948, 17.

17 CD, 8 Nov. 1947, 10.

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tossed him out to die. The inclusion of this portrait is one of the finer things

about this film.”18

Arguably, the only problem with this portrait is that Ben dies and thus,

according to Thomas Cripps, has no stake in the movie’s outcome.19 Instead of

sharing in Charlie’s newfound integrity, he becomes a black man whose

sacrificial death helps the white protagonist see the error of his ways.

Still, Body and Soul would prove to have a far-reaching impact, not only

on future films but on the political climate. In the months and years that

followed, its personnel—like that ofCrossfire — became subjects in the HUAC

investigations. These events interrupted, and even curtailed, the careers of not

only dyed-in-the-wool Communists like Rossen, Polonsky, and Gough but also

politically committed liberals like Garfield and Lee.

In This Corner ... James Edwards

Despite the political fate that ultimately befell many of those involved in

its production,Body and Soufs critical and financial success inspired other

movies to include prominent roles for African Americans. Perhaps the

filmmakers most directly inspired by this success were those of The Set-Up, a

film noir RKO released in 1949. The movie drew upon a poem by Joseph

Moncure March about a black boxer named Candy Jones who refuses to throw

a fight and instead throws himself in front of a subway train when gangsters

18 NYT, 10 Nov. 1947, 21.

19 Cripps, Making Movies, 210.

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chase him. A faithful adaptation of this poem would have resulted in a movie in

which a black protagonist dies refusing to submit to the corruption of the boxing

world. As Thomas Cripps points out,The Set-Up could have been a powerful

vehicle for a black actor, allowing him to suffer from bigotry and still act as

defiantly as John Garfield’s character did at the end ofBody and Soul. In fact,

months beforeThe Set-Up appeared in theatres, press releases announced that

black actor James Edwards would star in the movie.20

Unfortunately, the director ofThe Set-Up, Robert Wise, did not have the

kind of creative control that those involved in the productionBody of and Soul

had. Wise began his career at RKO as a sound effects editor, later served as

the film editor for Orson Welles’sCitizen Kane (1940), and eventually started

directing low-budget movies like the horror filmThe Curse of the Cat People

(1944) and the film noir Born to Kill (1947). By 1949, however, RKO was

undergoing a financial downturn, which the studio’s board of executives

temporarily staved off by selling Howard Hughes a controlling interest. Hughes

proceeded to fire many of the studio’s staff members and prompted Dore Schary

to leave the studio while in the midst of his duties as executive producer forThe

Set-Up. Wise, who secretly objected to “Hughes’s Don Quixote-like way of

running a studio,” expected to be fired at any moment. On what would become

20 Ibid., 213.

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his final project at RKO, he gathered whoever was available and shot The Set-

Up in less than four weeks.21

Well before shooting began, audience polls and the studio’s political

wrangles had forced significant changes from the original poem. Screenwriter

Art Cohn, a sportswriter from San Francsico, developed a slightly more

optimistic ending and renamed the main character Bill “Stoker” Thompson.

More importantly, Wise, claiming that he could not obtain a “black star with

sufficient name value to carry the film,” hired white actor Robert Ryan to play

Thompson. Ryan’s experience as a heavyweight champion at Dartmouth

College made him an attractive choice for Wise, and he in fact helped

choreograph the fight scenes.22

In the movie, Stoker Thompson is, at the age of thirty-five, an over-the-

hill boxer whose wife, Julie (Audrey Totter), can no longer stand to see him fight.

A gambler named Little Boy (Alan Baxter) gives Stoker’s manager, Tiny (George

Tobias), fifty dollars so that Stoker will throw the fight. Tiny, however, is so

confident that Stoker will lose that he does not bother to tell him and proceeds to

split the money with Stoker’s trainer, Red (Percy Helton). Against all

expectations, Stoker punishes his opponent, Tiger Nelson (Hal Fieberling), and

then, even after Tiny and Red let him in on the set-up, knocks out Tiger in the

fourth round. Tiny and Red immediately abandon him, and Little Boy and his

goons confront Stoker in an alley and break one of his hands. Moments later,

21 Jarlett, 37; Porfirio, Silver, and Ursini, eds., 129, 131.

22 Cripps, Making Movies, 213; Jarlett, 5, 37-38; LAT, 27 Jun. 1947, A2; Ibid., 31 Oct. 1948, D3.

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Julie discovers Stoker in the alley. When he tells her he won and shows her his

broken hand, she says, “It looks like we both won.”

Despite the liberties that the movie took with the March poem, The Set-

Up received much praise. An article in the Los Angeles Times drew attention to

the film’s “unique production methods,” including the semi-documentary

depiction of action in real time, the physical training that Ryan underwent, and

an unrehearsed portion of the final fight scene. Edwin Schallert described the

end result as “something approaching the ultra real” and considered Ryan’s

performance worthy of an Academy Award. For Robert Hatch,The Set-Up

represented “one of [Ryan’s] best performances,” and it served as “reassurance

that there are still craftsmen around the studios.” Adulation came from not only

critics but also director Samuel Fuller, who would later work with Ryan on the

film noirHouse of Bamboo (1955). Fuller, who greatly enjoyed the March poem,

initially thought Ryan would serve as a poor substitute for the black boxer Candy

Jones. But after seeing the film, he admitted, “Ryan was that Black fighter. . . .

[He] caught all the nuances of guts and shattered hopes, and small-time

aspirations of a never-was beating the hell out of the desperation of being a club

fighter.”23 As Fuller’s comment indicates, even lovers of the poem did not

necessarily mind that a white man had replaced March’s black protagonist.

Most of the acclamations thatThe Set-Up received, however, ignored

the fact that the movie still contained a black character, boxer Luther Hawkins

(James Edwards). Because the film approximates real time, and Stoker’s bout

23 Ibid.; Jarlett, 38, 200.

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with Tiger Nelson comes last on the program, a significant portion of the movie

takes place in a dressing room, where five other fighters await their turn in the

ring. One boxer, named Moore (Kenny O’Morrison), is an experienced, tough-

talking fighter who looks forward to meeting his latest girlfriend after the fight;

another, Shanley, is a nervous fledgling. A third fighter, Tony Sousa (Phillip

Pine), evinces greater pride in reading the Bible than in doing well in the ring.

Meanwhile, Gunboat Johnson (David Clarke) is an older, obviously punchy

boxer who still dreams big by staking his hopes on the memory of Frankie

Manilla, a fighter who lost twenty-one matches before winning the

championship. As the evening wears on, Moore and Shanley win their

respective bouts, and Sousa and Gunboat lose theirs. The fifth fighter, and only

African American one, is the young, energetic, and seemingly unafraid Luther

Hawkins. When his turn in the ring comes, he also wins. In direct contrast to

the March poem, the only African American boxer in the film does not have to

fight corruption to achieve victory in the ring.

Stoker, though somewhat laconic, interacts with each of the boxers in

the dressing room. With Shanley and Sousa, he is noticeably empathetic. The

fact that Shanley is about to enter his first professional match reminds Stoker of

his own first fight, back in 1928. When Shanley becomes so anxious that he

runs to the toilet (presumably to vomit), Stoker admits that he was scared before

his first fight as well. Then, after Shanley wins, Stoker congratulates him.

Stoker also indicates empathy for Sousa by defending him from the chiding of

his trainer. When the trainer indignantly characterizes Sousa’s study of the

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Bible as “making book on the hereafter,” Stoker replies, “I don’t know, everybody

makes book on something.” (The cutaway to Julie, which immediately follows

this statement, suggests that, just as Sousa hangs his hopes on religion, Stoker

hangs his on Julie). Later, when the trainer takes Sousa to task for losing the

fight, calling him “yellow,” Stoker tells the trainer to “leave him alone.” As these

small gestures indicate, Stoker can relate to Shanley and Sousa because he,

too, knows what it is to be both fearful and hopeful.

In contrast to his empathy for Shanley and Sousa, Stoker is somewhat

off-put by Moore’s cockiness. In two instances, Moore’s boasting causes

another boxer’s anxiousness. Shanley, who is understandably nervous, runs to

the toilet only moments after Moore graphically describes punching his

opponent repeatedly in the stomach. A little later, when Moore brags about his

new girlfriend, and one of the dressing room attendants warms him against

women (“I never seen a dame yet that’s still around when you hit the skids”),

Stoker tells the two to “cut it out.” A comment from Moore (“Gee, Stoke, I didn’t

know you still worried about dames”) and Stoker’s own glance out the window

and in the direction of his hotel room further underscore his fear that Julie may

leave him.

While Moore brings out his anxieties over Julie, and Shanley and Sousa

receive his empathy, Gunboat signifies Stoker’s hopes and fears better than any

other boxer. Not surprisingly, Stoker acts ambivalently toward him. On one

hand, he shares Gunboat’s memory of Frankie Manilla’s accomplishment.

(Earlier, when he tells Julie he is “one punch away” from “a top spot,” he reveals

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that, like Gunboat, he hopes to go against all expectations and make it big.) On

the other hand, too much talk about Manilla seems to remind him of the

unlikelihood of repeating such a success; indeed, at one point, Stoker avoids

Gunboat’s attempt to discuss Manilla by reminding him to put on his gloves.

This subtle evasion becomes more understandable when Gunboat loses his

bout and deliriously claims to be Frankie Manilla, for then he seems to be the

living embodiment of Stoker and Julie’s greatest fear: that Stoker’s hope of

getting even top billing is baseless, and that he, like Gunboat, will end up a

scarred, punch-drunk loser. (Gunboat in fact embodies Julie’s fear so well that,

when he is knocked out in his second round, Julie, listening to the fight over the

radio, momentarily mistakes him for Stoker.)

Just as Gunboat is a negative omen for Stoker, Luther Hawkins is a

positive one. Unlike Gunboat, Hawkins is a young, up-and-coming boxer. In the

waiting room, Hawkins indicates that he is possibly three bouts away from a title

match: “I get a main go in Philadelphia on the fifteenth. After that, New York.

Then I want a crack at title.” Rather than respond with jealousy or self-doubt,

Stoker listens to Luther’s plans with clear admiration. Despite their difference in

age, race, and success, the two men look toward the immediate future with a

deeply held sense of optimism. As a result, they speak a common language.

Stoker, for example, says before his upcoming match, “I can take this kid. I feel

it.” Luther similarly says of his opponent, “He’s a good man, but I’ll take him. I

can feel it.” (Stoker, in fact, looks at him with a start, perhaps of recognition,

when he says he “can feel it.”) Also, just as Stoker insists he is “one punch

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Figure 6. The Set-Up (RKO, 1949). Fresh from victory in the ring, black boxer Luther Hawkins (James Edwards) wishes white boxer Bill “Stoker” Thompson (Robert Ryan) good luck in the next match. In this film, the black character represents an ideal to which the white protagonist desperately aspires.

away” from “a top spot,” Luther point out that “it only takes one [punch]” to knock

out his opponent and bring an early end to the match.

While Luther’s optimism likely derives from past success, Stoker’s flies

in the face of recent experience. Stoker has lost more than his share of fights,

including the last one, and even his best hope is not a title match but simply to

receive top billing. In almost imperceptible ways, however, Luther helps Stoker

to keep fighting and to win. When Stoker enters the waiting room, Luther is the

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first person to greet him, and, when he heads to the ring, Luther is the only

person to wish him good luck. Besides giving him these small signs of

friendliness and encouragement, Luther provides a model for Stoker by scoring

a quick victory in the ring immediately before Stoker’s own bout. Though

Stoker’s match is by no means quick or easy, it proves, to some extent, to be

simply a matter of repeating Luther’s success.

As a character, Luther Hawkins never dominates a scene the way

Candy Jones does in the March poem, or even Ben Chaplin inBody and Soul.

Nor does Luther exhibit the kind of defiance that even Ben manages to muster;

in fact, when Luther’s turn in the ring comes, he responds without hesitation to a

white man telling him, “Okay, boy. Now let’s go.” Still, even though the

relationship between Stoker and Luther is not nearly as apparent or profound as

the friendship between Charlie and Ben in Body and Soul, both films depict a

kind of camaraderie between two boxers on opposite sides of the color line.

Whereas, in the Enterprise film, Charlie finds redemption only after Ben’s

sacrificial death, the makers of The Set-Up provided their own contribution to

racial representation by depicting a nearly desperate white man admiring and

drawing inspiration from the successes of a black man. However hard-won and

bitter Stoker’s redemption is, it occurs in part because of the living example that

Luther provides.

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A Black Film from a Black Writer

In the same year that The Set-Up was released, another film noir,

Knock on Any Door (1949), also featured an interracial friendship, but instead of

boxers, the two friends were young men from the slums. Beyond depicting an

interracial friendship, however, the makers of Knock on Any Door contributed to

the representation of African Americans in Hollywood by using as their source

material a novel by African American author Willard Motley, who had once

served as a reporter and an editor for the Chicago Defender. Motley’s 1947

best-selling novel, which depicts how squalid living conditions and brutal

treatment lead young Nicholas Romano almost inescapably to hoodlumism and

murder, was a blistering expose of Chicago’s impoverished and crime-ridden

West Side, as well as an indictment of society’s complaisance in the face of

such slums. As an example of naturalism,Knock on Any Door drew frequent

(though not always flattering) comparison to the works of Theodore Dreiser and

James T. Ferrell.24 Such a novel provided not only excellent material for a

sociologically relevant film noir but also, because the novel’s Italian-American

protagonist has a black friend name Jim “Sunshine” Jackson, an opportunity for

Hollywood to depict another interracial friendship.

The novel was such a “hot property” that, within months of its

publication, newspaper columnist, playwright, and producer Mark Hellinger

purchased the film rights. Hellinger’s past productions included the noirs The

24 CDT, 27 Apr. 1947, B5; Ibid., 4 May 1947, B3; Ibid., 4 May 1947, BR3; NYT, 5 May 1947, 21; WP, 11 May 1947, S11.

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Killers (1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), Brute Force, and The Naked City

(1948), and a major shareholder in his independent company was Humphrey

Bogart, whose contract with Warner was about to expire. An early press release

indicated that the film would be distributed by the Selznick Releasing

Organization and its cast would include Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, and a

young Marlon Brando in the lead role. Well before production began, however,

Hellinger died from a sudden heart attack at the age of forty-four. In the weeks

that followed, Bogart, along with Hellinger’s secretary-treasurer A. Morgan

Maree and director-producer Robert Lord, assumed control of the company and

rechristened it Santana Productions, after Bogart’s yacht. In their first year,

while Bogart and his associates sold off the company’s existing rights to what

would become the noirsAct of Violence (1949) and Cry Danger (1951) and

allowed an option on Hemingway’sThe Snows of Kilimanjaro to lapse, they

retained control over the Motley novel and, as an added sign of its value,

decided to make shooting it their first order of business. In doing so, Bogart,

Maree, and Lord signed a distribution deal with Columbia, enlisted Nicholas Ray

to direct, and hired a cast that—with the exception of Bogart in a secondary role

and Casablanca’s Dooley Wilson in a bit part—consisted mainly of relative

newcomers and virtual unknowns.25

For the founders of Santana Productions, especially Bogart, shooting

Knock on Any Door represented something more than good business sense.

25 CD, 11 Oct. 1947, 15; LAT, 1 Oct. 1947, A9; NYT, 21 Feb. 1948, 9; LA7, 14 Apr. 1948, 22; NYT, 29 May 1948, 8; Ibid., 22 Aug. 1948, X4; LAT, 7 Apr. 1948, 17; NYT, 8 Aug. 1948, X3; CD, 4 Sep. 1948, 9.

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Santana, it should be noted, could have capitalized more readily on Bogart’s

name value by making its first project one in which he played the lead; instead,

Bogart, Lord, and Maree chose to adapt a novel that addressed the problem of

juvenile delinquency, one with a protagonist too young for the forty-nine-year-old

Bogart to play. Bogart, who opted to appear in the film as Nicholas Romano’s

defense attorney, felt so sincerely about the social problems the novel raised

that, in conjunction withKnock on Any Door's Chicago premier, he and his wife,

Lauren Bacall, met with Willard Motley at a press conference at the Ambassador

Hotel; while Motley described how the conditions of American slums give rise to

delinquency, Bogart and Bacall drew attention to similar conditions in war-torn

Italy and expressed their support of relief programs such as Boys Town in

Italy.26 For Bogart at least, Knock on Any Door spoke to social ills that extended

far beyond Chicago’s West Side.

Despite the seemingly global nature of delinquency, Bogart and his

associates were no less sensitive to the novel’s racial elements, opting to keep

the “Sunshine” character and an allusion to segregation in the film. Bogart in

fact hand-picked Robert A. Davis, the actor who played “Sunshine,” after seeing

him in a UCLA campus play. Davis, an ex-GI and a student at the Los Angeles

Actor’s Laboratory, may have appealed to Bogart in part because he was a

former resident of Chicago. Bogart’s concern over racial issues, however, was

not simply a matter of including a black character and picking the right actor for

the job. Indeed, within weeks of the film’s initial release, Bogart attended a

26 CDT, 30 Mar. 1949, A3; Photograph, CD, 2 Apr. 1949.

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reception in his honor at Harlem’s Hotel Theresa, where he fielded questions

from members of the National Negro Press Association.27

Knock on Any Door, the film Bogart chose to be his first independent

venture, opens as policemen are chasing the culprits of a bungled robbery.

Most of the robbers manage to escape, although one falls to his death and a

policeman is fatally shot in the process. Shortly thereafter, the police arrest and

charge young Nicholas Romano (John Derek) for murdering the policeman.

Attorney Andrew Morton (Humphrey Bogart) defends Nick in court, and, in his

opening remarks, retells much of Nick’s life story.

He starts off by admitting that, because of his own inattention, Nick’s

father was convicted of a crime he did not commit and died in prison. Morton

provided Nick’s family with some financial assistance, but that ended when he

went off to serve in World War II. In the meantime, the impoverished Romano

family moved to the slums, and Nick turned to a life of crime. Eventually, Nick

wound up in a brutal reformatory, where one of his friends died. Morton, who

had lived in the slums and been to a reformatory himself, returned from the war

shortly before Nick’s release, at which time he encouraged Nick to get a job and

stop living like a hoodlum. Although Morton’s advice did not immediately take, a

girl named Emma (Allene Roberts) eventually inspired Nick to “go straight.” The

two married and set up an apartment, but with Nick’s criminal past and his hot

temper, he was never able to keep a job for long. One night, after losing yet

27 LAT, 4 Aug. 1948, A7; NYT, 8 Aug. 1948, X3; CD, 4 Sep. 1948, 9; Ibid., 13 Nov. 1948, 17; Photograph, Ibid., 26 Mar. 1949, 4.

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another job and gambling away his last paycheck, Nick discovered that Emma

was pregnant. At that moment, Nick felt so exasperated that he not only

decided to join some friends in a robbery but also told Emma not to have the

baby. Later that night, the robbery went awry, and a policeman was killed.

Even worse, when Nick returned to his apartment, he discovered that Emma

had committed suicide.

Before and during the trial, Morton questions several of Nick’s friends,

including Sunshine (Robert A. Davis). All of them swear that Nick was at the

Cobra Tavern on the night of robbery. At first, Morton appears to be winning the

case, but the district attorney (George Macready) soon invalidates Sunshine’s

testimony by pointing out that the Cobra Tavern does not serve blacks. Then,

when Nick takes the stand and the district attorney accuses him of driving his

wife to suicide, he breaks down and admits his guilt. Morton mounts a last-ditch

effort to save Nick by claiming that the true culprit in this case is society, which

allows poverty and crime to fester in the slums. Unfortunately, Morton’s appeal

fails to sway the jury, and Nick receives a death sentence. Morton, ridden by

guilt that he could save neither the father nor the son, can only promise Nick

that he will remember him.

As the reception in Bogart’s honor indicates, the black press lavished

much attention on the filming ofKnock on Any Door. Much of this attention,

especially prior to the film’s release, amounted simply to enthusiastic

speculation. Even before the film went into production, one columnist

suggested that a black actor might get to play the main character, since Nick, an

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Italian-American, was supposedly “sleek and dark.” Later, when it became

known that Dooley Wilson would appear in the film, others hoped to see a

Bogart-Wilson reunion on par with Casablanca. Although a white actor

ultimately played Nick, and Wilson only received a bit part, members of the

black press welcomed the news that the “Sunshine” character would remain in

the film and that Robert A. Davis would play him. Moreover, in their quickness

to discuss the film’s faithfulness to the novel and its Chicago setting, some

pointed out that Davis was a former resident of Chicago and that his brother,

Charles, was a reporter for the Defender.28

The response that greeted the final product, however, was much cooler.

In the mainstream press, critics frequently attacked the filmmakers’ ham-handed

attempt to blame society for all of Romano’s criminal acts. While one writer

called the plotting “unwieldy,” another consideredKnock on Any Door “more

effective as a movie than a message.” Bosley Crowther described the film’s

depiction of Romano as “outrageously heroized,” arguing that “the justifications

for the boy’s delinquency [are] inept and superficial.” Richard L. Coe similarly

opined that, even with Nick’s background, “one keeps thinking, others have

risen to respect from the same tawdry street.” Members of the black press, on

the other hand, tended to criticize the film for not doing justice to the book.

Langston Hughes quipped that, while the novel was “prose poetry,” the film

“keeps the sociology but somewhere along the line loses the poetry.” For

28 Ibid., 7 Mar. 1948, 1; Ibid., 25 Sep. 1948, 8; Ibid., 25 Sep. 1948, 8; Ibid., 4 Sep. 1948, 9; Ibid., 13 Nov. 1948, 17; Ibid., 11 Sep. 1948, 9.

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others, one of the film’s flaws was the way it overemphasized Nick’s lawyer—“to

show off Bogart,” as one writer put it. Because of this overemphasis, and the

frequent use of flashbacks, Lillian Scott maintained that the film “resulted in a

jumbled kaleidoscope of Nick’s life.”29 As these reviews indicate, Knock on Any

Door disappointed many people for a number of reasons.

Despite the disappointment that the film generated, the makers of

Knock on Any Door could still take pride in what they had accomplished. Even

Lillian Scott, who described the film’s recreation of the book as “an abortive

process,” found many reasons to commend it: all of the actors performed well;

the scenes featuring Davis were marked by “intelligent handling”; the producers

demonstrated an “obvious good intention to point an accusing finger at society”;

and, finally, the script retained much of Motley’s writing, including its recognition

of urban segregation. Although the district attorney only briefly alludes to the

Cobra Tavern’s policy of barring blacks, Scott found the scene “especially

realistic” because it ran counter to Hollywood’s prevailing tendency against

openly acknowledging segregation or any other form of discrimination against

blacks. In a similar vein, Langston Hughes indicated that, if nothing else,Knock

on Any Door had managed to put the name of an African American author “in

big letters” on a Broadway marquee. Such publicity helped push sales of

Motley’s novel well past 100,000 copies by the end of 1949.30 Beyond

29 LAT, 9 Mar. 1949, 17; C D 7, 5 Apr. 1949, A7;NYT, 23 Feb. 1949, 31; WP, 26 Apr. 1949, B8; CD, 7 May 1949, 6; Ibid., 7 May 1949, 16; Ibid., 5 Mar. 1949, 16.

30 Ibid., 5 Mar. 1949, 16; Ibid., 7 May 1949, 6; Photograph, Ibid., 3 Apr. 1949, 26.

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recognizing discrimination against blacks and enhancing Willard Motley’s

notoriety, Bogart and his associates also succeeded in using the work of an

African American writer for a mainstream Hollywood production. Whether or not

the film was as successful as the novel in conveying this theme, and even

though white screenwriters got the job of adapting Motley’s novel for the screen,

the makers of the film had managed to include an African American behind the

camera, at the first stage of the writing process.

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EXPLORING RACE RELATIONS, 1949-54

Just as the decade ended, Hollywood released several films that

addressed the problem of prejudice against people of color. Between 1949 and

1950, five “message” movies managed to tackle this topic. In order of

appearance, they were Home of the Brave, Lost Boundaries, Pinky, Intruder in

the Dust, and No Way Out. In Home of the Brave (1949), a white army

psychiatrist helps a black G.I., who is paralyzed from the waist down,

understand that his condition was a psychosomatic response to a lifetime of

racial discrimination, and that ultimately he is just like everyone else. Lost

Boundaries (1949), from aReader’s Digest article, which in turn was based on a

true story, depicts a light-skinned doctor and wife’s attempt to pass as white in a

small New England town, where years later their children and the other

townsfolk discover, and learn to accept, their true racial identity. Pinky In

(1949), a light-skinned nurse in a Southern town resists the temptation to pass

as white, goes to work for a white woman, and, after the woman’s death,

defends in court her right to turn the woman’s home into a clinic and nursery

school for blacks.Intruder in the Dust (1949), based on the Faulkner novel, also

takes place in a Southern town, where a black man, whom whites generally

resent for his refusal to act submissively, is nearly lynched for shooting a white

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man—that is, until the townspeople learn that one of the dead man’s relatives

committed the crime In the last of these movies, No Way Out (1950), a young

black intern at a county hospital proves that he was in no way responsible for

the death of white man under his care, but only after risking a criminal conviction

as well as retaliation from the white man’s relatives.

It may be surprising that such racially progressive movies as these

emerged just as HUAC was contributing to a major political crisis in Hollywood;

however, by the late 1940s, Hollywood also faced an economic crisis. With the

advent of television, movie theater attendance steadily declined. Moreover, in

the1948 United States v. Paramount decision, the Supreme Court forced the

five largest studios to sell their theater franchises. This decision removed the

major studios’ stranglehold on distribution and led to increased competition

among the majors, smaller companies, and independent producers. Faced with

growing competition over a diminishing market, filmmakers became more likely

to take on new approaches, technologies, and subject matter in the hope of

ending up with a profitable movie. Since Crossfire (1947) and Gentleman’s

Agreement (1947) had recently demonstrated that movies about minority groups

could be profitable, some filmmakers turned to another minority group, African

Americans, in the hope of similar profits. As Dore Schary announced to Metro

salesmen when he became production chief, “Don’t be afraid of that term—

social background. . . Crossfire. had social background, and did fine.”1

1 Cripps, Making Movies, 218.

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In keeping with Schary’s view, the new cycle of message movies was

rather successful. The first film in this cycle, Home of the Brave, generated

much popular and critical enthusiasm and, because it treated racism as a

national rather than a Southern problem, easily found a market among theaters

in the South. Lost Boundaries, though it received some criticism for portraying

African Americans in a less than favorable light, became a rallying point for

various production agencies and civil rights groups when censors in Atlanta and

Memphis demanded cuts. Eventually, the opponents of censorship prevailed,

Lost Boundaries played wherever it had previously been denied access, and it

made a modest profit. Pinky made an even larger profit, earning $4 million

within a year, but it was also a larger production. In contrast to the first two

films, which were shot by independent production companies, Pinky was a

lavish Fox production, personally overseen by Darryl Zanuck, who sent a draft of

the script to the NAACP for suggestions, and directed by Elia Kazan, who had

recently won an Oscar forGentleman’s Agreement. Intruder in the Dust

similarly benefited from the backing of a major studio, MGM, and the association

with Faulkner gave it additional status; indeed, many critics, white and black,

deemed it the best of the message movies.2

The last of the five films, No Way Out, did not fare as well. Although it

was the second Fox project in this vein, and received the oversight of Zanuck as

well, it was a much grittier picture than Pinky, or any of the 1949-50 message

movies for that matter. Compared to its predecessors,No Way Out depicted the

2 Ibid., 224-26, 228, 231, 234, 239-40, 243-44.

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most virulent of white supremacists and black militants; it also contained the

most racial epithets, by far, and was the only one to include a scene with a race

riot. For all these reasons, Southern censors refused to show it. Elsewhere,

review boards in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania demanded cuts, and the

Massachusetts Department of Public Safety prohibited it from being shown on

Sundays. In Chicago,No Way Out prompted a brief political battle. When the

police department’s censor division recommended banning the film, seven civic

and civil rights groups responded by issuing a joint letter of protest to Mayor

Martin H. Kennelly. The mayor then turned over the decision to a specially

appointed, interracial task force. The six task force members—three white men,

two black men, and one black woman—finally recommended that the film be

shown with cuts. Because of widespread resistance and frequent banning, No

Way Out failed to turn a profit. In retrospect, Zanuck admitted that, while other

message movies were “enormous money-makers,” his latest installment “didn’t

click” because it “was too tough for the public.”3

Noir with a Message II: No Way Out (1950)

No Way Out stands apart from its predecessors not only in its failure to

make money but also because scholars consider it a film noir.4 As a picture

3 Aram Goudsouzian, Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 72-73; NYT, 2 Sep. 1950, 22; Ibid., 31 Aug. 1950, 33; CDT, 24, Aug. 1950, 23; NYT, 24 Aug. 1950, 41; CDT, 19 Oct. 1952, C2.

4 Perhaps because of No Way Oufs high production values and hybrid nature, neither Lyons nor Silver and Ward list it as a film noir. Selby, however, considers it a film noir, as do a number other scholars. See Selby, 167, 207, 216; Hirsch,Dark Side, 10, 160, 180-81; Keaney, 312-13, 484, 490, 496; Spicer, 168, 230.

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that presents urban violence and crime in a semi-documentary fashion,No Way

Out had more in common with other Fox noirs—includingHouse on 92nd Street

(1945), The Dark Corner (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), The Street with No Name

(1948), and House of Strangers (1949)—than with Pinky and its sleepy

Southern locale.No Way Out also boasted a few veterans from Fox’s other

noirs. The villain ofNo Way Out was Ray Biddle, a deranged white bigot played

by Richard Widmark, who had established his career portraying similarly

unbalanced villains inKiss of Death, Road House (1948), and The Street with

No Name. Actress Linda Darnell, who played the ex-wife of Ray Biddle’s

brother, had recently played a similarly tawdry working-class woman inFallen

Angel. Even writer/director Joseph Mankiewicz, who is best remembered for

urbane and sociologically incisive dramas likeA Letter to Three Wives (1949)

and All about Eve (1950), had directed other noirs, such asSomewhere in the

Night (1946) and House of Strangers.

Although No Way Out is the only film noir among the 1949-50 message

movies, other noirs certainly helped make the cycle possible. While Pinky and

No Way Out are largely the result of Zanuck’s success with Gentleman’s

Agreement, the film noirCrossfire had demonstrated, even before Gentleman’s

Agreement, that a movie about discrimination could be profitable. In particular,

Crossfire influenced the makers of Home of the Brave: the latter movie

originated as an Arthur Laurents play about anti-Semitism in the army, but,

realizing that “anti-Semitism’s been done,” director Mark Robson and writer Carl

Foreman made the protagonist black. Crossfire’s combination of prestige and

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popularity also drove Dore Schary to produceIntruder in the Dust. Having

advocated on behalf ofCrossfire and its personnel while at RKO, Schary signed

with MGM only after obtaining a contractual guarantee that he could make

Intruder in the Dust.5 Even among the two Fox productions, the plotNo of Way

Out, which centers on whether a black doctor is responsible for a white man’s

death, owes more toCrossfire’s murder mystery than to the social expose that is

Gentleman’s Agreement. Aside from the influence ofCrossfire, Home of Brave

would not have been possible without the backing of Enterprise Productions, the

independent company that had gone into business to makeBody and Soul

(1947). In addition, producer Louis de Rochemont tookLost on Boundaries,

with its real-life basis, partly because, after producing March of Time newsreels

and wartime documentaries, he had developed his skill with semi

documentaries on the noirsHouse on 92nd Street, 13 Rue Madeleine (1947),

and Boomerang! (1947). For these reasons, the 1949-50 message movies owe

a debt to film noir.

Even so, as the only 1949-50 message movie that was also a legitimate

film noir,No Way Out deserves particular attention. It began life as a story

about a black intern’s struggle to overcome racial prejudice. The author, Lesser

Samuels, wrote it in order to reveal, in his words, “the predicament of upper-

level Negroes in any city in the country—people who because of their talent or

learning have proved their value to society only to be ostracized and frustrated

simply because they are black.” The story quickly generated interest in

5 Ibid., 222, 240.

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Hollywood, and Samuels received bids from the five largest studios. Even

Humphrey Bogart, at Santana Productions, wanted the story, blaming timid

investors for his inability to buy it. Ultimately, Zanuck purchased it from

Samuels for $87,500, which included a guaranteed ten-week writing contract.

Assigning Philip Yordan, the writer of an all-black version of the playAnna

Lucasta, to help Samuels adapt the story, Zanuck began the search for the right

director. Jean Negulescu, Otto Preminger, and Robert Rossen, all of whom had

directed noirs, expressed an interest,6 but Zanuck finally chose Joseph

Mankiewicz, who had just won Best Writer and Best Director Oscars forLetter A

to Three Wives and would repeat the same feat the following year with All about

Eve. That Zanuck chose such an acclaimed director indicates how seriously he

regarded the project.

When Mankiewicz came onto the project, the screenplay was still a

muddled affair. Under Yordan’s influence, Lesser’s story had taken on such a

raw and violent quality that, by its conclusion, the black intern, Dr. Luther

Brooks, dies in a coal cellar at the hands of the villainous Ray Biddle. While

Zanuck accepted the idea that No Way Out should serve as “powerful

propaganda against intolerance,” even if it meant being banned in certain cities,

he opposed having Dr. Brooks die. Regarding the character just as he would a

white protagonist, Zanuck cautioned Yordan to “never kill the leading man

unless something is gained by it.” With Mankiewicz’s arrival, the script acquired

6 NYT, 30 Jul. 1950, X5; CDT, 20 Jun. 1949, B10; NYT, 9 Jan. 1949, X5; Cripps,Making Movies, 245; George F. Custen, Twentieth Century’s Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood (New York: BasicBooks, 1997), 333-34.

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a third contributor. Suggesting a way for Dr. Brooks to outwit the white man’s

efforts to kill him and still to refrain from violence himself, Mankiewicz provided

an ending that promised to be more palatable to the public and was certainly

more pleasing to Zanuck.7 By the time the script reached completion,

Mankiewicz’s touch was so evident that only he and Samuels received credit for

the screenplay.

Though Mankiewicz helped remove the most hyperbolic qualities of

Yordan’s script, Zanuck frequently intervened in order too keep the film from

being too heavy-handed. At Zanuck’s urging, Mankiewicz cut some of the

harshest dialogue and made the riot scene mercifully brief. Even with these

changes, the final script verged on the excessive. Most noticeably, it contained

a bloody street brawl between blacks and the white residents of Beaver Canal.

It had Ray Biddle spit out a number of racial epithets, including “Sambo,” “coon,”

“boogie,” and “nigger.” It also set up a stark contrast between the squalid,

isolated existence of whites in Beaver Canal and the modest polish of the

Brooks apartment, where Luther lived within the warm, supportive circle of his

extended family. (This last touch was partly the result of Zanuck’s requirement

that “we will go into Luther’s home. We will see real Negroes and how they live,

as human beings.”)8 No Way Out promised to be a starker, more brutal

depiction of prejudice than any of the message movies that had preceded it.

7 Ibid., 335-36; Goudsouzian, 66-67.

8 Custen, 335-37.

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In keeping with Zanuck’s desire to depict “real Negroes,” Mankiewicz

held screening tests in New York, making it much easier for talented members

of the American Negro Theatre (ANT) to audition.No Way Out in fact provided

the first Hollywood role for several ANT actors, including Sidney Poitier as Dr.

Brooks, Ossie Davis as his brother, and Ruby Dee as his sister-in-law. Another

ANT actor, Dots Johnson, appeared as an embittered elevator attendant named

Lefty.9 The people at Fox also hired black actors to play Brook’s wife, his

mother, and a maid, as well as dozens of black extras for crowd and riot scenes.

The large number of African-Americans in No Way Outs cast stood in marked

contrast toHome of the Brave and Intruder in the Dust, both of which contained

a lone black man, as well as toLost Boundaries and Pinky, which relied on

white actors to play light-skinned blacks.

Like other Hollywood studios, Fox was not entirely prepared to manage

so many blacks. The studio provided Poitier a hotel room in Westwood, an

upscale all-white neighborhood where he felt like “a visitor in a foreign culture.”

On the set, Ruby Dee encountered a crew unused to working with blacks, from

the costumers who treated her rudely to the hairdressers who had no idea what

to do with her hair. For similar reasons, crewmembers had occasional

difficulties providing Poitier with proper clothing and lighting. The studio also ran

into trouble when black extras protested unequal pay by smashing up dressing

rooms and stopping up toilets, prompting Mankiewicz to delay filming the riot

9 Ibid., 334-35; CD, 29 Jul. 1950, 21.

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scene until after the Screen Extras Guild negotiated a settlement.10 Despite

racial tension on the set, Fox completed production andNo put Way Out into

release on August 16, 1950.

As the film begins, brothers Ray and Johnny Biddle (Richard Widmark

and Dick Paxton) enter the prison ward of a county hospital after being shot

during a robbery attempt. The hospital’s first black doctor, Luther Brooks

(Sidney Poiter) begins to treat their wounds, but he suspects that Ray is

suffering from a brain tumor and instead administers a spinal tap. Unfortunately,

Johnny dies before Brooks can confirm his diagnosis, and Ray, a rabid racist,

blames the doctor for not immediately treating his brother’s gunshot wound.

Although an autopsy would quickly determine whether Brooks’s diagnosis was

correct, Ray refuses to grant permission. Brooks and his supervisor, Dr. Dan

Wharton (Stephen McNally), ask Johnny’s ex-wife, Edie (Linda Darnell), to talk

to Ray, hoping that she will change his mind. Ray, however, convinces her to

spread the word among the whites of Beaver Canal that a black doctor killed

Johnny. As dozens of whites prepare to invade what they derisively call “nigger

town,” an even larger contingent of blacks—including Brooks’s brother, John

(Ossie Davis), and his friend Lefty Jones (Dots Johnson)—ambush them in a

junkyard. Soon, the injured flood the hospital, where Brooks struggles to

provide all the riot’s participants with equal care. When a white patient’s mother

spits on him, however, Brooks immediately walks out of the hospital. The next

10 Sidney Poitier, This Life (New York: Knopf, 1980), 130; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee,With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together(New York: William Morrow, 1998); 198-99; Goudsouzian, 67-68.

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Figure 7. No Way Out (Fox, 1950). Black doctor Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier) treats the wound of his would-be killer, robber Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark). This film offered actor Sidney Poitier the first on many roles as a black man whose virtues win over whites and whose barely contained restraint helps to form a more harmonious society.

morning, he turns himself in for the murder of Johnny Biddle, knowing that his

confession will finally force an autopsy. When the coroner confirms that

Johnny’s death resulted from a brain tumor, Ray refuses to believe, escapes

police custody, and lures Brooks to Dr. Wharton’s home, where he plans to kill

him. Just as Ray is about to shoot Brooks, Edie turns off the lights, and Brooks

knocks Ray to the ground and disarms him. With Ray’s pistol and Edie’s scarf,

Brooks makes a tourniquet for Ray’s wounded leg, which has been exacerbated

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by his efforts to kill Brooks. As police sirens draw near, and Ray sobs in agony,

Brooks tell him, “Don’t cry, white boy. You’re going to live.”

Following its premiere, Mankiewicz maintained that No Way Out was “a

story which we all wanted to tell—we, who feel very strongly about the minorities

and about the decent behavior of people toward each other.”11 Few doubted his

words—or the good intentions of those behind the picture. Critics, black and

white, conceded that it was an especially audacious addition to the cycle of films

about racial prejudice. Bosley Crowther called it an “extraordinary account of

ugly and vicious racial tensions in an American town—as forthright and realistic

as any film on this subject that we’ve had.” Walter White similarly praised the

picture, crediting Zanuck “with a courage and clarity of vision that has been

matched by Hollywood only once or twice in picture making.” In recognition of

the picture’s contribution to race relations, the New York Foreign Language

Press Film Critics Circle presented Zanuck with a citation. For similar reasons,

Mankiewicz received an award from the New York chapter of the Anti-

Defamation League. Also in New York, the Negro Actors Guild (NAG) and the

ANT offered awards to Zanuck for lettingNo Way Out showcase the talents of

black actors. Laura Darnell accepted the former award on his behalf, appearing

with ANT founder Frederick O’Neal and others at the Theresa Hotel and, several

days later, visiting children at a hospital in Harlem. Richard Widmark,

meanwhile, accepted the latter, using his speech to lash out at racial

11 CD, 23 Sep. 1950,21.

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prejudice.12 Hence, when No Way Out received awards and acclaim for its

contribution to race relations, its crew and cast members often displayed their

commitment to the cause.

Most critics, even those who had objections, generally acknowledged

the high quality of acting in the picture. Reviews in the mainstream press often

singled out Sidney Poitier’s performance; they then proceeded to mention the

most prominent white actors: Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell, and Stephen

McNally. The black press, on the other hand, devoted greater attention to the

talents of the black cast members, referring to Dots Johnson, Ruby Dee, and

Ossie Davis about as often as Poitier. Among black audiences, Poitier was not

yet as well-known as the others: Dee and Davis had appeared in an acclaimed

ANT production ofAnna Lucasta, written by Philip Yordan, and even Johnson

had appeared in a foreign film, Roberto Rossellini’sPaisa (1946).

Despite being less well-known than his fellow black cast members,

Poitier, as the protagonist, received more screen time and thus commanded

viewers’ attention in a way that the others did not. In fact, for many mainstream

reviewers, Poitier’s performance was the only one by a black actor worth

mentioning: more than one called his portrayal “sensitive,” and Richard L. Coe

praised its “restraint and intelligence.” White also praised Poitier;13 however,

12 NYT, 3 Sep. 1950,43; CD, 26 Aug. 1950, 7; NYT, 7 Aug. 1950, 15; Ibid., 11 Sep. 1950,23; Ibid., 13 Sep. 1950,40; Ibid., 15 Aug. 1950, 25; Photograph, CD, 9 Sep. 1950, 24; Photograph, Ibid., 23 Sep. 1950,21.

13 NYT, 17 Aug. 1950, 23; CDT, 22 Sep. 1950, B11; WP, 14 Sep. 1950, 16; CD, 26 Aug. 1950, 7.

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reviewers in the black press did not uniformly appreciate his sensitive,

restrained style, especially in contrast to Widmark’s almost hyperactive

performance. While Widmark got to chew up the scenery—emoting, spitting on

the floor, and issuing a volley of racial epithets— Poitier had to act in a subtler

manner, his face registering his anger at the mistreatment his character silently

endured, his voice nearly concealing bitterness, even when telling Biddle, “Don’t

cry, white boy. You’re going to live.” After watching Poitier, theChicago

Defender’s Lillian Scott wrote, “It is, of course, a great relief to see Hollywood

portraying Negroes as highly intelligent, trained people for a change, but why do

these superior qualities always come packaged in an overly receptive,

humorless individual. . . ?”14

Few critics objected to Poitier’s performance, but many felt that, as a

story,No Way Out was far too overdrawn. One complaint was that Ray Biddle

was too abnormal a character to exemplify bigotry effectively. Edwin Schallert

felt that the movie offered only one conclusion—that Ray “is psychopathic, and

far less acceptable than his counterpart in . . . Crossfire.” Thomas M. Pryor

similarly registered disappointment that Ray “is too obviously a psychopathic

case.” For the Chicago Defender’s Lillian Scott, Ray was “a moronic, vicious

personification of absolute evil” because the picture dealt with “extreme

examples,” and compared to Ray, Brooks—“a noble, sensitive, superior human

14 Ibid., 12 Aug. 1950, 20.

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being”—was just as unusual.15 In all of these comments, the implication was

that No Way Out did not need to rely on any abnormal character, let alone a

deranged bigot, to generate racial conflict. Indeed, as Pryor suggested, the film

would have been more effective if it had depicted racists as “otherwise

reasonable and intelligent people.”16

The complaints about Ray, however, brought up a bigger problem.

Based on Ray’s pathological hatred, Brooks’s implication in the death of a

patient, and the eruption of a race riot, Pryor and Schallert both felt that the

picture depicted racial prejudice in too melodramatic a fashion. The Chicago

Defender’s Marion B. Campfield, who generally supported the film, admitted that

some of its scenes were “far-fetched” and “hardly plausible.”17 For these critics,

No Way Out had posed a social problem in extreme and unlikely terms. Coe

took issue with this approach, arguing that “the real tragedy of the Negro today

is a far more subtle one than expressed in No Way Out.” Still, the most stinging

criticism came from Schallert, who called No Way Out “a ruthless, horrible and

unnecessarily brutal presentation of a racial conflict, the least satisfactory

picture along these lines offered thus far.... It goes so far overboard that it

probably should end them.”18 Clearly,No Way Outs overstated quality inspired

many unfavorable reactions, ranging from mild disappointment to utter revulsion.

15 LAT, 14 Oct. 1950, 10; NYT, 17 Aug. 1950, 23; CD, 12 Aug. 1950,20.

16 NYT, 20 Aug. 1950, 81.

17 Ibid.; LAT, 14 Oct. 1950, 10; CD, 9 Sep. 1950, 10.

18 WP, 14 Sep. 1950, 16; LAT, 14 Oct. 1950, 10.

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Such reactions came from not only critics but also local censor boards.

Throughout the South, censors banned the picture outright. In other parts of the

country, reviewers allowed it to be shown only after its most excessive moments

had been removed, including some of the racial slurs as well as scenes of

whites and blacks preparing for the riot. While some censors demanded cuts

simply on the basis that the language and violence were in poor taste, Captain

Harry Fulmer, head of the Chicago police censor board, offered a slightly more

thoughtful rationale. The danger behind the language and violence was that

they gave expression to—and might even aggravate—racial antipathies. Fulmer

recommended banning No Way Out because “its showing in Chicago might

result in serious trouble.” He also argued, “The picture hasn’t, as I see it, any

moral balance. It doesn’t serve for a solution or an improvement of the

problem.”19 From this perspective, No Way Out was not simply a crass

Hollywood entertainment; it was a firebrand.

Amid all this criticism and censorship, many rose in support of the

picture. At a luncheon honoring Spyros Skouras, Fox’s president, distinguished

personalities including Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing, New York

Attorney General Nathaniel Goldstein, and former Secretary of War Robert P.

Patterson spoke in its praise. Ironically, this luncheon coincided with the

Chicago police department’s decision to ban the picture. As No Way Out

encountered increasing opposition from local censors, an editorial New in the

19 Goudsouzian, 73; NYT, 31 Aug. 1950, 33; Ibid., 2 Sep. 1950, 22; CDT, 22 Aug. 1950, 4; CD, 23 Sep. 1950, 21; NYT, 24 Aug. 1950, 41.

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York Times argued that the picture deserved to be shown: “We hope that cities

that have prohibited No Way Out—in defiance of the principle of Freedom of the

Screen—allow it to be seen. . . . It would be ironical indeed if Hollywood’s efforts

toward realism would have to turn back and be toned down to please anyone

but the people who should pass judgment, the audience.” Mankiewicz himself

publicly took issue with efforts to suppress his picture. In light of Captain

Fulmer’s charge that No Way Out failed to offer any solution, he remarked,

“Unfortunately, even Hollywood cannot present a simple solution to the race

hatred problem which has baffled the world these many years.”20 Indeed,

adding a forced “Hollywood ending” would have seriously undermined the

filmmakers’ attempt to explore racism’s problematic nature.

As one who understood the gravity of such an attempt, and who

enjoyed a close relationship with Zanuck, Walter White emerged as one of the

picture’s most vocal defenders. In perhaps the most glowing review No Way

Out ever received, White vigorously urged his readers to go out and make the

movie a success at the box office. He preferred it over Pinky, the picture over

which the NAACP had the most direct influence, and told his readers as much.

Also, citing his own experience with lynch mobs and race rioters, he defended

the picture from charges that it was implausible. Weeks later, White used his

nationally syndicated column to attack the Chicago police department’s decision

to ban the picture. He called Fulmer’s claim that it might incite a riot “ridiculous,”

especially since Chicago already had a bad record of racial violence. He added,

20 Ibid.; CD, 16 Sep. 1950, 7;NYT, 4 Sep. 1950, 10; CD, 23 Sep. 1950, 21.

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“It is because Chicago has so many psychotic bigots like Ray Biddle . . . that

Chicago needs to see the picture as much as the residents of Birmingham or

darkest Mississippi.” White, however, used more than the power of the press to

fight the Chicago ban. In his capacity as executive secretary of the NAACP,

he—along with representatives of six other national civic and civil rights

organizations—signed a letter of protest to Mayor Kennelly; he also called on

the organization’s Chicago branch to apply local pressure. Thanks to a well-

organized protest and national attention, both of which White helped along, the

decision of the Chicago police department was overturned, andNo Way Out

appeared in Chicago theatres.21

Despite the victory in Chicago and Fox’s willingness to reedit the film in

order to placate local censors,No Way Out suffered at the box office. In

Chicago and many other locales, review boards demanded cuts, thereby

delaying the picture’s release In Massachusetts, the Department of Public

Safety’s decision to prohibit its showing on Sundays served to diminish weekly

revenues. Worst of all, it failed to appear in an entire region of the United

States, as censors throughout the South had rejected it. Altogether, local

markets’ resistance to the picture prevented it from being a financial success.

In part, No Way Out failed as a financial venture because it represented

a sharp leap forward in Hollywood’s treatment of race relations. While it did

come at the tail end of a cycle of films on the subject, it was the only one of

21 Ibid., 26 Aug. 1950, 7; Ibid., 16 Sep. 1950, 7;CDT, 24 Aug. 1950, 23; NYT, 24 Aug. 1950,41; CDT, 31 Aug. 1950, A4; NYT, 31 Aug. 1950, 33; CD, 23 Sep. 1950, 21.

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these films to deal head-on with racism in contemporary urban America, the

very area of the country that was seeing an increasingly black presence. Like

no where else in America, the city was where the effects of racism were playing

out. Compared to other entries in the 1949-50 cycle,No Way Out also

succeeded in placing racial divisiveness in the starkest of terms. The film’s

violence, after all, resulted not simply from Ray’s and other whites’ prejudices,

but from Lefty’s and many other blacks’ embittered desire to lash out. In its

aftermath, no more than a semblance of order is restored, and even this result

would not have been obtained without the shaky alliance of Dr. Brooks, Dr.

Wharton, and ultimately Edie, who struggles to put the tawdriness of Beaver

Canal behind her. The movie, more clearly than its predecessors, painted the

problem of racism as so imperative that, without immediate interracial

cooperation among the middle classes, there would be no way out. As poor box

office returns indicated, audiences were not prepared for such a message.

Although audiences and even critics may not have appreciated it at the

time, the people behind No Way Out achieved at least three effects that would

influence future filmmaking. First, they presented a theme that Hollywood had

never explored so convincingly—namely, that prejudice is a self-destructive

force. In the movie, racism is as cankerous an affliction as the festering sore on

Ray Biddle’s leg. Ray’s wound, like his abiding hatred of blacks, stays with him

throughout movie, and his efforts to escape police custody and to lay a trap for

Dr. Brooks only aggravate it. By the time he confronts Dr. Brooks, he is so

fevered and weak that the doctor is able to overpower him with little more than a

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swift kick to his injured leg. The implication is that whatever detriment Ray’s

racial animosities bring to others are equaled, or even exceeded, by the harm

he does to himself. The film presents prejudice in a similar manner during the

aftermath of the riot, when black and white patients flood the emergency room.

As the scene indicates, neither the whites’ prejudice against blacks nor the

blacks’ bitterness toward whites leads to any kind of victory; instead, by giving in

to their mutual antagonisms, the rioters engage in a mutually self-destructive

act. While movies like Crossfire had already portrayed bigotry as a pathological

condition,No Way Out insisted, in the most physical sense possible, that

prejudices bring harm even to the ones who harbor them.

Arguably, No Way Out exerted an even stronger influence on future

films by propelling Sidney Poitier’s Hollywood career. Poitier’s first film role

proved incredibly momentous. Even though he received fourth billing, he was

already a black leading man in a mainstream movie. As such, he played a

character whose triumph—unlike those of the protagonists Homein of Brave,

Lost Boundaries, Pinky, orIntruder in the Dust—\s due not so much to the help

of whites as to his own moral qualities, particularly his ability to put doctorly

duties above racial sympathies. George F. Custen contends that, before No

Way Out, mainstream movies portrayed such successes as the exclusive

privilege of whites. For biographer Aram Goudsouzian, Poitier’s performance

also helped shatter the existing cinematic stereotypes of African-Americans. As

Luther Brooks, Poiter was not a sexual threat, an entertainer, or a member of

the lower classes; also, his “West Indian singsong overlaid by his self-trained,

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precise radio voice” did not resemble a Southern dialect or minstrel patter, nor

did his dark skin threaten “established racial boundaries” by raising the

possibility of passing as white.22 In place of all these potentially negative

associations, Poitier presented a well-spoken, non-threatening black man with

middle-class values, one who only wishes to be judged on the basis of his skill,

professionalism, and character. By giving him such a role, the people behind

No Way Out set the parameters of Poitier’s career through much of the 1950s

and 1960s. In movie after movie—includingCry, the Beloved Country (1951),

Blackboard Jungle (1954), Edge of the City (1957), Lilies of the Field (1963),

and In the Heat of the Night (1967)—he would play a black man whose virtues

win over whites and whose barely contained restraint helps to form a more

harmonious society.23

Other Problem Pictures

Because of No Way Outs failure at the box office, the dominant

perception was that it had tested the limits of the message movie formula and

even surpassed the public’s interest in minority issues. Even Zanuck felt that,

as a message movie, it occupied the “tail end of the cycle.”24 This perception,

however, was not entirely accurate. While, in a strict sense, the message movie

did disappear, films with black protagonists or that explored the problems blacks

22 Custen, 337; Goudsouzian, 69.

23 A more detailed discussion of these parameters appears in Cripps, Making Movies, 284-94.

24 CDT, 19 Oct. 1952, C2.

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faced continued to appear in theaters. In the early 1950s alone, Hollywood

produced more than half a dozen pictures along these lines. The Jackie

Robinson Story (1950), The Joe Louis Story (1953), and Go, Man, Go! (1954), a

movie about the Harlem Globetrotters, for example, were all low-budget biopics

about black athletes that invariably included incidents of racial discrimination.

Bright Victory (1951) dealt, in part, with a black corporal’s particular difficulties in

readjusting to civilian life, andRed Ball Express (1952) indicated some of the

contributions black soldiers made as truck drivers during World War II in spite of

Army segregation. More significantly, Cry, the Beloved Country, based on the

novel by Alan Paton, provided American moviegoers a glimpse of South Africa’s

apartheid system. Finally, Bright Road (1953) boasted a mainly black cast and

concerned a teacher’s and principal’s efforts to help a shy boy through a difficult

adjustment. The continued release of movies like these demonstrated that No

Way Out had hardly effaced filmmakers’ desire to portray black people’s

experiences or moviegoers’ interest in seeing the results.

Each of these movies, however, had its limitations. The biopics failed

to represent the situation of most African Americans because they focused on

athletes whose difficulties were in some ways mitigated by their talent and fame.

Bright Victory and Red Ball Express harked back to the wartime movies and to

black participation in World War II more than they explored the possibilities and

problems for blacks in postwar America. (In this respect, they resembled Home

of Brave, but at least Home of the Brave had the excuse of being the first picture

to deal so openly with prejudice against blacks.) Cry, the Beloved Country

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tackled racial discrimination, but it revealed more about the treatment of black

Africans than of black Americans. Finally,Bright Road resembled the all-black

musicals of the 1940s in terms of removing blacks from the larger social context.

Since the picture takes place in an all-black school and never alludes to

segregation, its lack of social context proved especially glaring when the Brown

v. Board of Education decision occurred scarcely one year later. Indeed, most

films released between 1950 and 1954 did little or nothing to examine the

experiences of ordinary African Americans in contemporary society.

Blacks on the Sidelines

Along with No Way Out, the major exceptions to this rule were noirs.

Film noir, after all, was a kind of moviemaking that revealed the failings of

contemporary society—and few failings were farther from Hollywood’s

conscience-liberal political culture than racial intolerance. One film noir,The

Underworld Story appeared in theaters a month before No Way Out, and

another, The Well, premiered the following year. In many ways, No Way Out

was the most noteworthy of the three. The other two were low-budget,

independent productions, and neither received the kind of newspaper coverage

that No Way Out had. Additionally, whatever the makers of The Underworld

Story and The Well meant to suggest about the general state of American race

relations was tempered by the fact that both pictures take place in small towns.

Most significantly, neither movie gave any of its black characters as active a role

as Dr. Brooks has inNo Way Out. Even so, The Underworld Story and The

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Well matched No Way Out in terms of how severely they portrayed social

problems. Like the Fox production, both pictures showed not only whites

treating blacks horrendously but also the results of mob violence. Taken

together, they also demonstrated that No Way Out was just as much in keeping

with other noirs as with the 1949-50 message movies.

In The Underworld Story (1950), a disreputable newsman named Mike

Reese (Dan Duryea) loses his job after planting an article that results in the

murder of a state’s witness. After discovering that he has been blacklisted by

every major newspaper, Mike collects five thousand dollars from Durham

(Howard Da Silva), the gangster who benefited from the article, in order to buy a

partnership in a small-town newspaper. As soon as he arrives in the town, the

daughter-in-law of one its most famous residents, newspaper publisher E.G.

Stanton (Herbert Marshall), turns up dead. Unbeknownst to anyone outside of

the family, E.G. was having an affair with his daughter-in-law; his son, Clark

(Gar Moore), killed her out of jealousy; and the two Stantons conspired to frame

Molly Rankin (Mary Anderson), one of their black maids. At first, Mike tries to

exploit Molly’s situation. He persuades her to turn herself in, hoping to receive a

twenty-five thousand dollar reward for her capture, and then sets up a defense

fund for her, expecting to skim off some of the money. When both attempts to

profit from her misfortunes fail, and shortly before he discovers evidence that

exonerates her, Reese decides to do everything in his power to save Molly. The

Stantons, however, are equally committed to obtaining Molly’s conviction. E.G.

uses his local influence as well as his sway over major newspaper syndicates to

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turn public opinion against Molly, Mike, and the defense fund, going so far as

exposing Mike’s ties to Durham. When these measures fail to stop Mike, Clark

asks Durham’s assistance in killing him. E.G. finally decides Clark has gone too

far and shoots him; by so doing, he saves Mike’s life and proves Molly’s

innocence.

The Underworld Story was independently produced by Hal E. Chester,

directed by Cyril Endfield, and released through United Artists. Under the

working title The Whipped, Henry Blankfort wrote the screenplay from Endfield’s

adaptation of a story by Craig Rice. In the film, Endfield and Blankfort alluded to

the Hollywood blacklist by depicting Mike as the victim of boycotting and slander

from every major newspaper. Not long after, Endfield and Blankfort became

victims of the blacklist themselves. Their collaboration, however, succeeded in

exposing moviegoers to a black woman’s exploitation as well as the dangers of

mob rule. In the film, Clark convinces his father to frame Molly for murder on the

grounds that “it will be our words against that of a nigger.” Later, after Molly

learns Mike persuaded her to surrender to the police in the hope of receiving a

reward, she bitterly remarks that twenty-five thousand dollars is more than

slaveowners would have paid for her grandfather. Also, as local opinion turns

against Molly and Mike, the townspeople not only withdraw their support from

the defense fund but also break windows and smash the printing press at Mike’s

newspaper office. As these scenes suggest, Endfield and Blankfort made a

bold effort to reveal the cause and effects of black exploitation and mob rule.

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Despite their effort, The Underworld Story failed to make even as much

of an impact on moviegoers asNo Way Out did. The problem was in part a

matter of money and timing:The Underworld Story premiered a month before

No Way Out, and the latter picture, which benefited from the kind of publicity

campaign that only a major studio like Fox could give it, quickly overshadowed

the former. Worse yet, critics in the mainstream press considered its plot far

fetched and largely dismissed it. The only review it received in the Chicago

Daily Tribune, for instance, consisted of three sentences and appeared under

the heading: “Skip This One.” Critics in the New York Times, Los Angeles

Times, and Washington Post devoted slightly more copy to the picture, but they

strongly objected to its treatment of the newspaper business. Many felt that, by

portraying Mike and E.G. as shamelessly opportunistic, and by showing

newspapers spreading falsehoods, it promoted a low opinion of journalism in

general. The Los Angeles Times’s Philip K. Scheuer was among the few critics

who thought the picture merited enough attention to mention its racial angle.

Still, the closest thing to a compliment he gave the movie was that it had “a

repellent kind of fascination.”25

In the black press, the response was slightly more charitable. A review

in the Chicago Defender commended the picture for realistically portraying how

public opinion can be motivated for or against an individual, especially through

the influence of newspaper organizations. The writer felt that the movie’s

25 CDT, 12 Aug. 1950, 15; NYT, 27 Jul. 1950, 37;LAT, 7 Aug. 1950, B9; WP, 21 Sep. 1950, 14; LAT, 4 Aug. 1950, A7.

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original title, The Whipped, expressed this theme better than The Underworld

Story and surmised that its critical look at the newspaper business accounted for

the many hostile reviews it had received. The same writer was nevertheless

displeased that Molly, a light-skinned black woman, was played by white actress

Mary Anderson. Of course, the makers ofLost Boundaries and Pinky had also

employed white actors to play light-skinned blacks, but many blacks, particularly

those affiliated with the NAG, opposed this practice. A.S. Young pointed out

that, while Fox had given the role ofPinky to white actress Jeanne Crain so that

it could get away with showing an interracial romance, no such excuse existed

for the makers ofThe Underworld Story. Several weeks before The Underworld

Story’s release, Young also complained that, ever since the advent of the Home

of the Brave and its ilk, Hollywood had done little to provide more jobs for

African Americans.26

Fortunately, the movie that followedThe Underworld Story and No Way

Out, The Well (1951), managed to employ several black actors and extras and

present a story of racial violence and reconciliation in the process.The Welfs

producers, brothers Harry M. and Leo C. Popkin, and its writers, Russell Rouse

and Clarence Greene, had just concluded work on the film noirD.O.A. (1950)

and would go on to collaborate on another filmThe noir, Thief (1952). Rouse

and Green first conceived the idea behind The Well after considering two

possible projects: one was a dramatization of three-year-old Kathy Fiscus’s

rescue from an abandoned well in San Marino, California, in the spring of 1949,

26 CD, 12 Aug. 1950, 21; Ibid., 19 Mar. 1949, 1; Ibid., 18 Feb. 1950, 20; Ibid., 20 May 1950, 21.

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and the other, a depiction of racial harmony. According to Greene, he and

Rouse eventually realized that the two stories could be combined because one

compelling quality of the Fiscus story was “the completely selfless outpouring of

a cross section of the community to give aid and sympathy. It dawned on us

that this unselfish unity was just what we were trying to get at in the racial

harmony idea.” With this thought in mind, they decided to write about a small

town’s response to the disappearance and subsequent discovery of a black girl

who fell into an abandoned well.27

Greene and Rouse’s story required a town with about as many blacks

as whites, and the Popkins, who had extensive experience working with black

actors, were quite willing to produce it. From 1937 to 1942, the brothers were

partners at Million Dollar Productions, a company that specialized in low-budget

movies with all-black casts for the segregated theater market. For most of the

company’s films, Harry served as producer and Leo, as director. Together, they

worked with many of the reigning stars in black cinema, including Louise

Beavers, Ralph Cooper, Jeni Le Gon, Theresa Harris, Lena Horne, Sam

McDaniel, Nina Mae McKinney, and Mantan Moreland. By the early 1940s,

increasing opportunities for blacks in mainstream Hollywood had effectively

quashed black moviegoers’ demand for low-budget, all-black features, and the

Popkins made the switch to more mainstream material. The Well, however,

allowed them to continue targeting a general audience while, at the same time,

drawing upon their experience working with black cast members. In fact, among

27 NYT, 9 Sep. 1951, X6.

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the dozens of blacks hired for the film, at least one, Alfred Grant, had appeared

in some of the Million Dollar pictures. By pairing Grant and other blacks with an

equally large number of white cast members, the Popkins were able to straddle

the separate but nevertheless similar worlds of black cinema and mainstream

moviemaking.

As the picture begins, Carolyn Crawford (Gwendolyn Laster), a five-

year-old black girl, falls down an abandoned well while picking flowers in a

meadow. When the girl does not show up for school, her father (Ernest

Anderson) and mother (Maidie Norman) entreat Ben Kellogg (Richard Rober),

the town sheriff, to find her. Kellogg learns that, shortly before Carolyn’s

disappearance, several people saw her walking with a stranger—a white man.

The mystery man proves to be the estranged nephew of Sam Packard (Barry

Kelley), who owns a construction business and is one of the town’s most

influential men. Although the nephew, Claude (Harry Morgan), insists that he

only bought Carolyn some flowers and helped her cross a busy street, many

townspeople, including Sam, fear that he murdered her.

With Claude in police custody, Carolyn’s father and uncle (Alfred Grant)

become so desperate for information that they accost Sam outside the police

station, inadvertently knocking him over and into the street. When a crowd of

whites gather, Carolyn’s father and uncle nervously flee the scene. In the wake

of this incident, and with little concrete information available to the public, racial

tensions emerge. Within their respective communities, the town’s whites and

blacks anxiously gossip, creating imagined insults and exaggerating actual

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Figure 8. The Well (UA, 1951). Accompanied by white sheriff Ben Kellogg (Richard Rober), Ralph and Martha Crawford (Ernest Anderson and Maidie Norman) inspect the abandoned well where their daughter is trapped. In this film, the black townspeople hardly participate in the rescue attempt and instead watch and pray from the sidelines.

occurrences. Eventually, vandalism, melees, and other incidents of racial

violence erupt all over town. With relatively few men or resources at his

disposal, Sheriff Kellogg is unable to contain the violence. Fearing a full-blown

race riot, he prevails on the mayor (Tom Powers) to summon the state militia.

Meanwhile, blacks and whites both begin organizing huge mobs, increasing the

likelihood that the militia will arrive too late.

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Just before an all-out racial clash can occur, a white boy (Pat Mitchell)

and his dog discover the well into which Carolyn fell. The boy, whose name is

Peter, informs Carolyn’s mother, who in turn tells Kellogg. Carolyn’s family,

Kellogg, and a crew of rescue workers quickly arrive at the well. Gradually, the

townspeople hear of Carolyn’s discovery, put aside their differences, and gather

to watch the rescue attempt. Sam, who was only recently organizing a mob of

white men to drive blacks out of town, lends his considerable expertise by

directing the drilling of a parallel shaft. Claude, an experienced miner,

volunteers to go down the shaft and tunnel into the well. Finally, Claude

extricates Carolyn’s unconscious body, medics determine that she will recover,

and the townspeople breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Despite its low budget and its spotty appearance in theaters, critics had

mainly good things to say aboutThe Well. Writers for the New York Times and

Los Angeles Times called it one of the best films of the year, and Edwin

Schallert went as far as to speculate that, in some circles, the movie would be

considered for an Oscar nomination.28 No such honor came to pass,The but

l/l/e// did win a good deal of critical praise. One reviewer credited its singularity

of vision to Green and Rouse’s involvement at every stage of production.

Another felt its realism derived from the writers’ careful research as well as the

use of location shooting and many non-actors. Again, while one critic remarked

on how the scenes of racial violence developed with “terrific momentum,”

another described them as “frighteningly realistic” and went on to compliment

28 Ibid.; LAT, 26 Oct. 1951, B9.

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the writers for skillfully showing how the community’s racial conflict is suddenly

channeled into a coordinated effort to save the girl.29

Among all the acclaim, a few complaints emerged. An otherwise

complimentary review in the Chicago Tribune, for instance, described the picture

as somewhat amateurish and “lacking in finesse.” Bosley Crowther expressed a

more severe criticism, drawing attention to the racial violence and the

consequent reconciliation. He felt the outbreak of violence was unconvincing

specifically because the movie, at one point, establishes that racial conflict had

never plagued the town before. Later, after Carolyn’s discovery, he found it

equally hard to that believe that racial tensions could dissipate as suddenly as

they had erupted. The manner in which the movie presents and resolves racial

conflict, he observed, “appears less calculated to understand society than to

create an effect.”30

The effect to which Crowther alluded was in many ways more powerful

than any comparable film noir. WhereasNo Way Out, even in its uncensored

version, cut away from a racial clash almost as soon as it began,The Well

captures several violent incidents, presenting them in an escalating pattern that

seem to portend a full-blown race riot. As if these scenes were not compelling

in their own right, one of the film’s black characters, Dr. Billings (Bill Walker),

encourages the mayor to summon the state militia by describing the horrors of a

29 NYT, 9 Sep. 1951, X6;CDT, 21 Oct. 1951, 13; LAT, 26 Oct. 1951, B9; CDT, 14 Jan. 1952, B4.

30 Ibid.; NYT, 27 Sep. 1951, 37.

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race riot he once witnessed. (Walker’s performance as Billings was hardly a

stretch: he had relocated to Hollywood after losing the restaurant he owned in a

race riot in Detroit.)31 The Well, however, counterbalances the effect of

escalating violence with an equally powerful climax and conclusion. In effect,

the attempt to rescue Carolyn becomes a redemptive act for those who witness

or participate in it, easing racial tensions among all the townspeople. The film’s

final sequence is so moving that even Crowther, who had trouble with how

quickly the townspeople put aside their differences, admitted that “it throbs with

legitimate excitement and the pulse of brotherly love.”32 In its conclusion,The

Well stood apart fromNo Way Out and The Underworld Story by resolving racial

animosities in a way that was likely to warm the hearts of most moviegoers.

The Well, however, fell short ofNo Way Out in one critical respect: it

lacked a black character who acted as decisively as Dr. Brooks had inNo Way

Out. Carolyn’s effect on the community is accidental, the result of falling down a

well. The same is true of her father and uncle, who draw the ire of many whites

by unintentionally knocking Sam off his feet. When blacks beat up whites and

vandalize property, they are not acting independently so much as blindly

retaliating. Arguably, the most decisive gesture by a black character is Dr.

Billings’s plea to the mayor to summon the state militia, but even his stirring

words do little more than echo those of Sheriff Kellogg. Because there is so

little that The Well’s black characters do intentionally and independently, only

31 Ibid., 9 Sep. 1951, X6.

32 Ibid., 27 Sep. 1951,37.

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whites end up truly participating in Carolyn’s discovery and rescue. After Peter

finds Carolyn, and Sam, Claude, and other whites work to rescue her, the black

townspeople are left to watch from the sidelines. Even the two people who care

most about Carolyn, her parents, have little to contribute to the rescue attempt.

Early on, they try to communicate with her, but their efforts prove unsuccessful.

Hence, despite its compelling treatment of racial violence and reconciliation, and

its large black cast, The Well did not contribute to the representation of African

Americans as effectively as No Way Out had.

Even with their respective weaknesses, The Underworld Story and The

Well came closest, out of all other movies from the 1950s, to capturing and

amplifying the contemporary themes of No Way Out and other message movies.

At the same time, other noirs, in their own small way, gave African Americans

more prominent roles than they had enjoyed in film noir in previous years. In a

few movies from this period, some of the best jazz musicians of the era

performed in key scenes, including Illinois Jacquet in D.O.A. (1950), Louis

Armstrong inThe Strip (1951), and Nat “King” Cole inBlue Gardenia (1953).

Another movie,The Breaking Point (1950), presented an interracial friendship

along the lines ofBody and Soul, but arguably in a more mature fashion.

The Black Friend II: The Breaking Point (1950)

The Breaking Point began production shortly after Jerry Wald, a

producer at Warner Brothers, sent John Garfield a script based on Ernest

Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not. By then, Warner had already used

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its rights to the novel twice. In 1944, director Howard Hawks and his team of

writers (which included William Faulkner) took extremely liberties with the novel,

turning it into a romantic action yarn and making it Humphrey Bogart and Lauren

Bacall’s first vehicle together. Three years later, John Huston lifted a shootout

aboard a fishing boat from the novel to serve as the climactic scene of another

Bogart-Bacall vehicle, Key Largo. In any case, Garfield received the script at a

time when he was enjoying a greater level of artistic independence than ever

before. Leaving Warner and co-founding Bob Roberts Productions had

provided him with more control over his own career. As an actor who had

always loved live theater, he was able to make more Broadway and television

appearances. (From 1947 to 1950 alone, he appeared on Broadway inSkipper

Next to God and The Big Knife and on television inCavalcade of Stars.) As a

free agent in Hollywood, he was better able to pick and choose scripts. This

freedom of choice allowed him to work on, among other projects,Gentleman’s

Agreement for Fox and the noirsBody and Soul and Force of Evil (1948) for his

own company. Garfield was interested in the script Wald had sent him, but he

agreed to do it only if Michael Curtiz or Fred Zinneman directed. Wald soon

acquired Curtiz, and Garfield signed a two-film contract with the studio. The fact

that Garfield was able to bargain with Wald over who would directThe Breaking

Point was a sign that the actor would have more creative control than when he

was under a long-term contract at Warner.33

33 Nott, 251-52.

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Garfield had good reason to want to work with Michael Curtiz. Long

before The Breaking Point, Curtiz, whose birth name was Mano Kertesz

Kaminer, had left his native Budapest, worked as an actor and director

throughout Europe, and arrived in Hollywood in 1926. By the 1940s, he had

become a veteran on the Warner lot, demonstrating an ability to direct films of

nearly every genre, including such Oscar-winning pictures as Yankee Doodle

Dandy (1942), Casablanca (1943), and Mildred Pierce (1945). While Curtiz is

hardly the first name among film noir directors, his noirs priorThe to Breaking

Point included Mildred Pierce, The Unsuspected (1947), and Flamingo Road

(1949). A decade earlier, Curtiz had initiated Garfield’s Hollywood career after

seeing his screen test, hiring him for Four Daughters (1938). Curtiz went on to

direct two more early efforts by Garfield—Four Wives (1939) andThe Sea Wolf

(1941). Garfield, who considered himself a character actor by nature, described

his previous work with the director as a transformative experience. “Curtiz,” he

once said, “gave me the screen personality that carried me to stardom.”34

Curtiz, therefore, was not simply a notable director but, just as important, a

director who brought out noteworthy performances from Garfield.

Along with having a say over who would direct, Garfield influenced the

final form ofThe Breaking Point by taking advantage of his acquaintance with

Curtiz. Early on, he wrote a letter to the director suggesting several script

changes. Curtiz, who did not usually take advice from actors, not only accepted

many of these suggestions but also invited Garfield to his ranch for

34 LAT, 16 Apr. 1950, C1; Nott, 256.

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preproduction conferences with the screenwriter Ranald MacDougall. Garfield

likened these sessions to the kind of work he did for his own projects, saying

that he and MacDougall would often “talk out a sequence and then he’d write or

rewrite it.” By the time shooting began, Garfield had put so much of himself in

the picture that, he admitted, “Mike sometimes has to remind me that he IS the

director.”35

Some aspects of the script, of course, did not bear Garfield’s stamp.

Early on, two major decisions had been made. First, MacDougall chose to focus

on the third part of Hemingway’s novel, in which fisherman Harry Morgan is so

desperate for money that he agrees to smuggle revolutionaries into Cuba.

Second, the studio decided to avoid any controversy over Cuba’s current state

of affairs by transplanting the story from the Caribbean to the coasts of

California and Mexico and turning the revolutionaries into a gang of robbers.

When Garfield added his input, however, he helped guarantee that the

protagonist in the film would be at least as interesting as the one in the novel. In

his letter to Curtiz, which he wrote only after rereading To Have and Have Not,

Garfield urged that the script go into greater detail regarding Harry’s

relationships: the enduring partnership between him and his wife, the

camaraderie between him and his shipmate, and the anxiety he feels toward

another woman. Garfield also thought Harry should lose his arm at the end of

35 Ibid., 252-54; McGrath, 135-37; LAT, 16 Apr. 1950, C1+.

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the movie, as he does in the book.36 By getting Curtiz and MacDougall to work

these suggestions into the script, Garfield helped ensure that, in spite of the

change of setting, Harry Morgan would remain a compelling character with

intriguing relationships and problems.

To this end, Garfield gave much attention to Harry’s friendship with his

shipmate, a black man named Eddie. While Hemingway’s novel had not

explored this relationship too deeply, Garfield felt it was imperative that the film

present this interracial friendship as one between virtual equals. As he saw it,

Harry and Eddie were, despite their racial differences, two men whose

livelihoods depended on the sea and, as such, faced very similar circumstances.

In his letter to Curtiz, he wrote, “Since Eddie is to be a Negro, I am of the

opinion that the relationship between Eddie and Harry can also be gone into a

little more detail to show that Eddie has similar problems to Harry’s. . . . Their

regard for each other, without being too sentimental, can be kicked up a bit

more.”37 Garfield’s vision of Harry and Eddy’s relationship, at least in terms of

their sharing common problems, resembled that of Charlie and Ben inBody and

Soul. In fact, the kind of friendship he hoped to convey owed little to

Hemingway’s novel and quite a lot to the success ofBody and Soul.

Along with many of Garfield’s other suggestions, Curtiz and MacDougall

incorporated his ideas about Harry and Eddie into the script. At some point,

however, they changed the shipmate’s name to Wesley Parks. Canada Lee

36 Nott, 252-54; McGrath, 135-37.

37 Nott, 253; McGrath, 137.

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would have been a natural choice for the part; unfortunately, by the time

shooting began, he had become the subject of red-baiting rumors and had

retreated to London. Instead of Lee, Curtiz hired Juano Hernandez. This

decision was an easy one to make because Hernandez was still enjoying critical

acclaim for playing Lucas Beauchamp in Intruder in the Dust. In addition, Curtiz

had just finished directing Hernandez as Kirk Douglas’s musical mentor in

Young Man with a Horn (1950). Garfield, too, had worked with Hernandez on at

least one occasion: in March 1948, both men appeared on an NBC radio

program commemorating National Negro Newspaper Week.38 Hernandez’s

recent success and his experience working with Curtiz and Garfield made him a

more desirable, and less dangerous, choice than Lee in 1950.

Fortunately for those involvedThe in Breaking Point, Hernandez was

very much an actor of Lee’s caliber. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in

1901, was orphaned at young age, and spent his youth as a carnival performer,

a boxer, and a vaudeville entertainer. Although he never obtained any formal

schooling, he was a lifelong learner who somehow managed to acquire the

ability to read and to speak English without the hint of an accent. By the 1940s,

he had established himself as a fixture on radio and the New York stage. In

1945, he became the first African American board member of the American

Federation of Radio Artists, and three years later, starred on Broadway opposite

Canada Lee in Set My People Free, a dramatization of Denmark Vesey’s

abortive slave revolt. By the time The Breaking Point was released, Hernandez

38 Photograph, CD, 27 Mar. 1948, 7.

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had designed a twenty minute long, one-man version ofOthello, which he

played on Broadway, and had even earned an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts

degree from the University of Puerto Rico.39 Surprisingly, given his success on

stage and radio, Intruder in the Dust was Hernandez’s first foray into

mainstream moviemaking. By directing him in Young Man with a Horn and The

Breaking Point, Curtiz helped ensure that it would not be his last.

In the film, Harry Morgan (John Garfield) is the captain of theSea

Queen, a charter boat based out of Newport, California. Harry had dreams of

starting an entire charter line, but business was bad; now, he can barely support

his wife and two daughters and owes money on the boat to a man named

Phillips. A flashy fisherman named Hannagan hires Harry to take him and his

mistress, Leona (Patricia Neal), to Mexico. After disembarking in Mexico,

Hannagan skips out without paying the bill, leaving Leona, Harry, and his

shipmate of twelve years, Wesley Park (Juano Hernandez), without so much as

the docking fee necessary for them to return home. Wesley points out that they

could raise enough money by selling off their fishing reels, but Harry insists on

protecting his boat and his business. A shady lawyer named Duncan (Wallace

Ford) spots Harry and puts him in touch with Mr. Sing, who offers him $1600 to

smuggle eight Chinese men into the United States. Reluctantly, Harry takes a

$300 advance, pays the docking fee, and gives Wesley and Leona money to

return to California by bus. Without realizing what Harry is up to, Wesley and

39 NYT, 28 May 1950, 51; CD, 21 Jul. 1945, 6; Smith, 262-63, 267;CD, 20 Nov. 1948, 17;NYT, 1 Jun. 1950, 8.

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Leona instead sneak aboard theSea Queen and are on hand when he takes

the Chinese aboard. Mr. Sing, however, fails to deliver the amount he

promised; instead, he draws a gun on Harry, the two men struggle over it, and it

accidentally goes off, killing Mr. Sing. Harry immediately puts the Chinese off

his boat and heads back to Newport. Unfortunately for Harry, the Coast Guard

learns of the smuggling attempt and impounds the Sea Queen.

Before Harry’s situation becomes too desperate, Duncan arrives in

California and obtains a court order forSea the Queen’s release. Harry is glad

for the help, but he still owes money on the boat. Phillips wants to repossess it,

but Harry stalls him for a couple of weeks. At first, Harry tries to raise the

money by legitimate means. When those prove ineffective, he goes to Duncan

for another shady deal. Duncan soon puts him in touch with some crooks who

are planning a race track heist and need a boat to take them past Catalina

Island, where they will rendezvous with another boat. He accepts the job, and

they give him $1,000. Secretly, however, Harry plans to prevent their escape

and collect a reward for their capture. When the day of the heist comes, Harry

is surprised to find Wesley at the docks. Not wanting to get his friend involved,

Harry tries to send him off on a needless errand, but Wesley quickly senses

something is wrong. When the robbers arrive, and Wesley warns Harry not to

let them aboard, one of the men fatally shoots him. The robbers then force

Harry to take his boat beyond the harbor and dump Wesley’s body overboard.

A few minutes later, Harry distracts them by feigning engine trouble and gets a

couple of revolvers he had hidden beforehand. In the ensuing shootout, all the

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crooks die, and Harry is seriously wounded. He collapses on deck, expecting to

bleed to death, but the Coast Guard finds him in time to save his life. When he

awakes, his wife (Phyllis Thaxter) explains that the doctors need his permission

to amputate his left arm and reassures him that she will still love him. Harry

agrees to the amputation, and an ambulance drives him and his wife away from

the harbor. Meanwhile, Wesley’s young son (played by Juano Hernandez’s

real-life son, Juan), stands alone on the docks, unaware that his father will never

return.

On the whole, the response to The Breaking Point was positive. The

press generally complimented the actors’ performances, as well as the picture’s

tightly paced plot and its on-location camerawork. Crowther maintained that

MacDougall’s script had preserved the best and most essential qualities of

Hemingway’s novel, and even those who consideredTo Have and Have Not the

worst book Hemingway had ever written—Orval Hopkins, for instance—thought

that MacDougall had made a vast improvement on the original. More than one

review described the unusually restrained quality of Garfield’s performance, as

well as the quiet dignity that Hernandez brought to his role. Critics frequently

admitted to being moved by the camaraderie between Harry and Wesley, the

black man’s demise, and the scene where his son waits in vain for his return. In

keeping with some of the picture’s best reviews, Garfield held The Breaking

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Point in high regard: “I think it’s the best I’ve done since Body and Soul. Better

than that.”40

Garfield’s comparison between Body and Soul and The Breaking Point

was an especially appropriate one. In both movies, there is a strong, man-to-

man friendship between a black and a white character. Even though the black

man is under the employ of the white man, the two are from nearly the same

station in life and relate as peers, especially by looking out for one another.

Because the white man fails to heed his friend’s advice and to follow the

straight-and-narrow path when it is most crucial to do so, the black man loses

his life. Both movies, in other words, present a black and a white man as virtual

equals and then rescinded their apparent equality by having the black man die

and his white friend live. In death, however, the black man emerges as a

sacrificial figure, prompting the white man to perform a redemptive act. As

Garfield’s comparison suggests, Body and Soul served as a model for The

Breaking Point—especially in terms of including an interracial friendship.

The Breaking Point, however, was not simply a pale imitation ofBody

and Soul. In truth, Wesley Park and Ben Chaplain are very different characters.

Of the two, Ben is more aggressive. Moments before his death from a burst

brain embolus, Ben seems ready to duke it out with the men who have exploited

both him and Charlie. In a very direct sense, Ben’s dying words and actions

lead Charlie to go against Roberts and cronies. Wesley, on the other hand, is

40 LAT, 16 Sep. 1950, 9;CDT, 10 Oct. 1950, A2; NYT, 15 Oct. 1950, X1; Ibid., 7 Oct. 1950, 22; WP, 6 Oct. 1950, 21; McGrath, 139; Nott, 254

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more soft-spoken. He influences Harry not through a final, dramatic gesture but

rather by gently prodding his friend to do the right thing. Though Harry

repeatedly ignores his advice, Wesley’s frequent presence and his voice of

reason obviously have an effect on his friend because, in the end, Harry decides

to stop the gang of robbers before Wesley even knows about the heist.

Arguably, by showing Harry’s gradual response to Wesley’s advice, The

Breaking Point offered a less dramatic but nevertheless more typical picture of

how friends, regardless of race, affect one another.

Compared toBody and Soul, The Breaking Point also evokes more

pain and sorrow surrounding the black friend’s death. Body In and Soul, only

Charlie feels the pain of losing Ben, and he expresses this sorrow primarily

through his own willingness to die and his desire to fight the very men who

exploited his friend. In The Breaking Point, the pain that Harry feels when

Wesley dies is so real that it finds its physical equivalent in the loss of his left

arm. The appearance of Wesley’s son in the final scene, however, reveals that

such pain is not simply for the white protagonist to feel. Whatever effect

Wesley’s death has on Harry, even if it proves as permanent as the loss of an

arm, is not nearly as profound as the one it will have once the boy realizes his

father will never return. As if The Breaking Point had not rendered Wesley’s

death sorrowfully enough, the fact that it occurs after Harry had already decided

to stop the robbers makes it seem even more senseless than Ben’s demise in

Body and Soul. In both films, the black man’s death prompts the white

protagonist to perform a redemptive act; however, because The Breaking Point

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succeeds in presenting Wesley as a man with a life and family of his own, the

loss created by his death is more readily apparent than that created by Ben’s

death in Body and Soul.

Although The Breaking Point represented a signification variation on the

kind of interracial friendship depicted in Body and Soul, it did relatively little to

further either Hernandez’s or Garfield’s film career. After The Breaking Point,

Hernandez did not appear in another movie until 1955. His difficulty finding

work in Hollywood derived partly from his age, as he was already forty-nine

years old by the time The Breaking Point appeared in theaters. Still, the

success and economic stability that his 1950 film work gave him enabled him to

move his family to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he spent several years

teaching acting at the University of Puerto Rico.41

While Hernandez’s movie career went on hiatus, Garfield’s quickly

declined. Scarcely three months before The Breaking Points release, Red

Channels listed Garfield in connection with seventeen communist organizations.

Garfield’s appearance in this anticommunist publication hurt his career almost

immediately. Despite those at Warner who felt The Breaking Point might be

anotherCasablanca, the studio released the movie with little publicity. Though it

still managed to make a profit, the studio discharged Garfield from his

contractual obligation to star in a second picture 42 Finding work in Hollywood

scarce, Garfield and his business partner Bob Roberts eventually put up the

41 NYT, 28 May 1950, 51; Ibid., 1 Jun. 1950, .CD, 8 14 Jun. 1958, 19.

42 Nott, 261-63.

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money to shoot a film noir,He Ran All the Way. Its director, John Berry, and

screenwriters—Hugo Butler, Guy Endore, and Dalto Trumbo—all ended up on

the blacklist, and Garfield himself appeared in a contentious April 1951 interview

before HU AC. The Breaking Point and He Ran All the Way proved to be his

final two movies, and he died of a heart attack on May 21,1952.

With the death of John Garfield, African Americans lost a great ally in

their struggle for better representation in Hollywood. Because Garfield

repeatedly brought his acting talent to bear on some of Hollywood’s fine dark

movies, film noir was not quite the same without him. In fact, by the mid-1950s,

the blacklisting and political repression of many of the leftists who contributed to

film noir, as well as the flight of Jules Dassin, Edwark Dmytryk, John Huston,

Orson Welles, and other talented directors to Europe, served to place film noir

on the whole in a state of decline.

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THE DECLINE OF FILM NOIR, 1955-59

By the mid-1950s, there were definite signs that film noir was in a state

of decline. After hitting a productive peak at the beginning of the 1950s, the

creators of these dark movies began releasing fewer and fewer each year. As

the number of these movies diminished, so did the number of roles for African

Americans in these movies. None of these movies would ever feature Sidney

Poitier’s talent again, and both Juano Hernandez and James Edwards went

from their roles in noirs to biopics and more convetional dramas, at least for

most of the early 1950s.

Hammer Gets Hip

In 1955, however, Kiss Me Deadly brought blacks back to greater

prominence in film noir; it also provided Juano Hernandez with a small role,

signaling his return to Hollywood. Not surprisingly, the movie’s producer-

director had worked fairly closely with John Garfield and his colleagues at Bob

Roberts Productions. Before makingKiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich had

served as assistant director in the company’s two noirs starring Garfield and

written by Abraham Polonsky,Body and Soul (1947) and Force of Evil (1948).

(Polonsky also directed the latter picture.) After striking out on his own, Aldrich

continued to maintain artistic ties to his colleagues at Bob Roberts Productions.

118

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His first effort as producer-director,World for Ransom (1954), employed an

uncredited Hugo Butler after the screenwriter had been blacklisted; his third

picture in this capacity, The Big Knife (1955), was based on the Clifford Odets

play that Garfield had made famous on Broadway.

Kiss Me Deadly was based on a best-selling novel by popular hard-

boiled writer Mickey Spillane and was also the second of three Spillane

treatments released under the banner of Victor Saville’s recently organized

Parklane Productions. Although the movie was Aldrich’s second outing as both

producer and director, neither he nor screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides were

particularly excited about the material. Aldrich later admitted his “disgust for the

whole mess,” and Bezzerides stated, “I wrote it fast, because I had contempt for

it.” Both men were liberals, and their objections to the material centered upon

the narcissistic, right-wing, white male chauvinism of Spillane’s protagonist,

private eye Mike Hammer. Prompted by their distaste for the novel, the director

and the writer found many ways to distance themselves from it. As James

Naremore notes, they refrained from using first-person narration, which

Spillane’s novels and several noirs used; they had the film’s three main female

characters seriously critique Mike’s personality; and they also overcame the

novel’s lowbrow character by peppering the movie with fragments of classical

music and allusions to Pre-Raphaelite poetry, Greek mythology, and the Bible.1

Aldrich and Bezzerides, however, were not so much opposed to the

material as desirous to improve it. In truth, Aldrich prided himself on the fact

1 Naremore, 152-53.

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that, within the strictures of contemporary movie censorship, he and his crew

“kept faith with 60 million Mickey Spillane readers,” providing them with the

“action, violence, and suspense” they expected. The threat of censorship, of

course, led the director and his crew to make many revisions to the crude

violence and pornography of Spillane’s novels. The most significant of these

revisions, in that it ensured the movie’s eventual cult status, was that, prompted

by restrictions against drugs in movies, they switched the plot from one about a

narcotics ring to one involving stolen radioactive materials and the unleashing of

a nuclear apocalypse. (In Naremore’s opinion, the movie’s “final, spectacular

shots are brief but stunning, pushing the ‘lone wolf myth of private-eye fiction to

its self-destructive limit and reducing an entire genre to nuclear waste.”)2 In

addition to creating an outrageously memorable plot, they madeKiss Me Deadly

far more interesting from a cinematographic standpoint than any of the other

Spillane adaptations. Aldrich, for example, set out to shoot 80% of the movie on

location in Los Angeles and, with the assistance of his director of photography,

Ernest Laszlo, more or less did so. Because they made use of grainy film stock,

oblique angles, wide-angle tracking shots, and deep-focus compositions,Kiss

Me Deadly had, according to Naremore, a more off-kilter look than most

previous Hollywood pictures.3

Aldrich and Bezzerides’s adaptation also made private eye Mike

Hammer a more complex, sympathetic personality than in Spillane’s novels. In

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., 153-54.

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Naremore’s opinion, the film maintains “a divided attitude toward the hero, who

can be viewed as a conventional tough guy or as a kind of monster.”4 In the

film, this divided attitude becomes increasingly apparent as Mike (Ralph

Meeker) draws closer to the heart of the mystery. Like a monster, he becomes

more violent and more willing to put his friends’ lives in jeopardy. But, like a

more sympathetic tough guy, he rues the death and disappearance of his

friends and endures beatings and interrogations by the villains. Aldrich and

Bezzerides also made Mike more sympathetic by discarding much of his bigotry

and recasting him as someone capable of maintaining interethnic and interracial

friendships. Mike, for instance, shares a love of sports cars with his Greek

mechanic, Nick (Nick Dennis). In the course of his investigations, he also

befriends an old Italian man (Silvio Minciotti) by helping him carry a trunk into an

apartment. Because Mike befriends these ethnic characters, Nick is willing to

do some legwork for him, and the Italian man supplies him with a clue.

Mike is also clearly friendly with a number of black characters. In one

scene, he enters a gym whose occupants are predominantly black in order to

question Eddie Yeager (Juano Hernandez) about a boxer he used to manage.

Mike and Eddie are obviously very familiar with each other: Eddie proudly shows

off the fighter he is currently promoting, and Mike gently chides him for his habit

of exploiting fighters. Eddie declines to answer Mike’s questions about the

boxer, but not because he distrusts Mike. On the contrary, Eddie explains that

two thugs, Charlie Max (Jack Elam) and Sugar Smallhouse (Jack Lambert),

4 Ibid., 152.

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threatened to kill him if he talked about the boxer in question. Just as Mike’s

friendliness towards Nick and the Italian man give them reason to help him, his

friendship with Eddie encourages the boxing manager to help him as much

possible. Though Eddie is too afraid to talk to anyone about the boxer, he

names the two men who threatened him, thereby providing Mike with an

unexpected clue.

In another scene, after discovering the body of his friend Nick, Mike

drops into a saloon entirely populated by blacks, where he clearly knows the

bartender (Art Loggins) and the singer (Madi Comfort). As he proceeds to drink

himself into a stupor, he turns, with teary eyes, to listen to the singer offer her

rendition of a Nat “King” Cole tune he had heard on his car radio at the

beginning of the movie. The song’s refrain, which closely matches Mike’s grief

over Nick’s death, is, “I’d rather have the blues than what I’ve got.” Mike

proceeds to pass out, but later the bartender wakes him to inform him that his

secretary, Velda (Maxine Cooper), has been kidnapped. The singer, now off

duty, offers Mike her sympathies. Surrounded by these two black characters,

Hammer is at his most emotionally vulnerable moment, having realized that, as

a result of his single-minded quest for what Velda terms “the great whatsit,” he

has lost two close friends.

Like his friendliness toward ethnic characters, Mike’s affinity for black

characters makes him seem what Naremore calls “a relatively sympathetic

embodiment of urban liberalism.” Still, to befriend black characters, rather than

ethnic characters, Mike must enter physical spaces—a gym and a saloon—

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occupied predominantly by blacks. In contrast to most previous Hollywood

protagonists, Mike enters these segregated spaces almost seamlessly. When

Jeff Markham questions Eunice inOut of the Past (1947), for example, a black

couple sitting with her suddenly leave, and Eunice and her companion eye him

with a combination of nervousness and defiance. When Mike enters the gym

and the saloon, however, no one bats an eye or calls out his racial difference.

Mike’s ability to move among blacks, not to mention his listening to Nat “King”

Cole’s music, lend him a certain aura of “coolness” that few previous Hollywood

protagonists had. Indeed, Kiss Me Deadly is perhaps the first film noir in which

the white protagonist is a true hipster, an individual whose sympathetic and

sophisticated qualities derive largely from his ability to relate to black people.5

Despite Kiss Me Deadly's positive attitude toward interracial

friendships, critics responded poorly to the picture’s frequent scenes of violence

and womanizing, as well as its apocalyptic ending. The New York Times did not

deem the picture worthy of a review. The Chicago Daily Tribune called it a

“crudely constructed sample of sex and sadism,” and Richard L. Coe, writing in

the Washington Post, complained, “There are no motivations for anything and

violence is the film’s raison d’etre.” The best any critic could say about it was

that it was better than the two previous Spillane adaptations, I, the Jury (1953)

5 Naremore argues that Out of the Past and Casablanca (1943) are also pictures in which the white protagonist obtains an aura of coolness by associating with black characters (240-41). One could make the same point about Body and Soul (1947), Knock on Any Door (1949), The Set-Up (1949), or The Breaking Point (1950), as they are all noirs that feature interracial friendships. What distinguishesKiss Me Deadly from all of these movies, and what make its protagonist a true hipster, is that Mike Hammer is able to enter segregated spaces and befriend the blacks he meets there with very little awkwardness or resistance.

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and The Long Wait (1954). This was the point Philip Scheuer made in the Los

Angeles Times, but he granted the picture this concession only because “it

contains moments that are comparatively lucid and almost begin to make

sense.”6

In some circles, Kiss Me Dead/y exemplified Hollywood’s penchant for

excessive sex and violence, sparking renewed conflict over the motion picture

industry’s standards of decency, the Production Code. As part of a more

general attack on Hollywood standards, the National Roman Catholic Legion of

Decency raised strong objections toKiss Me Deadlys release. A few weeks

later, Estes Kefauver, chairman of a Senate subcommittee to investigate

juvenile delinquency, commenced hearings in Los Angeles on the subject of

violence in motion pictures. On the first day, William Mooring, a prominent

Catholic film reviewer, challenged the efficacy of the Production Code, claiming

that Kiss Me Deadly and several other recent movies were “morally vicious.” In

the wake of these attacks, Los Angeles’s KNXT-TV refused to run

advertisements for Kiss Me Deadly. Aldrich, regardless of how he felt about

Spillane’s novels, vigorously defended his adaptation on the grounds that it had

passed the Production Code. He protested the arbitrariness of KNXT-TV’s

decision not to advertiseKiss Me Deadly given that the station had previously

shown ads for a movie that had not passed the Code. Aldrich also spearheaded

a Screen Directors Guild (SDG) resolution that called on the American Motion

6 CDT, 5 May 1955, D10; WP, 4 Jun. 1955, 4; LAT, 19 May 1955, B11.

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Picture Producers to refuse any and all censorship efforts by special interest

groups once a movie had met the requirements of the Production Code.7

Aldrich’s efforts to defend his film, not to mention industry standards,

failed to turnKiss Me Deadly into a very profitable movie. In its own small way,

however, the movie served to increase African American representation in

Hollywood. Aldrich and his colleagues employed close to a dozen black actors

and extras and, in the process, helped reinstate Juano Hernandez’s Hollywood

career. The filmmakers also chose to include music by an African American

singer, Nat “King” Cole’s “The Blues from Kiss Me Deadly.” Most importantly,

perhaps, they presented a white protagonist whose best qualities and deepest

emotions appear when he is among black people. Unfortunately, these

contributions did not have any great impact on moviegoers or the movie

industry, for they were overshadowed by the furor overKiss Me Deadly's

eroticism and explosive violence.

In Other Corners . . . James Edwards

Another film noir released in 1955, The Phenix City Story, managed to

incorporate a black character and receive a more positive response than Kiss

Me Deadly. The movie was inspired by actual events in Phenix City, Alabama,

a municipality just across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia,

and Fort Benning. In the 1940s and 1950s, Phenix City was overrun by

organized crime, gambling, and prostitution. By some accounts, these illicit

7 Ibid., 17 Jun. 1955, A1+;NYT, 19 Jun. 1955, X7; Ibid., 14 Jun. 1955, 26.

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activities, at their height, generated as much as $100 million a year. In 1954,

local lawyer and former state senator Albert Patterson became the Democratic

nominee for the office of Attorney General, vowing to use all the powers at his

disposal to fight crime. Before he could take office, however, he was fatally

shot, an event that brought the crime problem in Phenix City to national

attention. By the following year, Albert’s son, John Malcolm Patterson, had

become Attorney General through a special election and had succeeded in

obtaining more than 700 indictments and 150 convictions in Phenix City.

Additionally, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage

of events in Phenix City.8

The incidents surrounding Albert Patterson’s murder generated interest

in Hollywood almost immediately. Two months after the assassination, producer

Samuel Bischoff, who had recently signed a contract with Allied Artists for six

films in three years, decided to make his first project an on-the-spot

dramatization of events in Phenix City and dispatched screenwriter Crane

Wilbur to the scene of the crime. Once there, Wilbur spent a few weeks in the

home of John Malcolm Patterson, interviewing local officials and residents and

drafting a screenplay. After Wilbur returned with a script, Bischoff brought in

writer Daniel Mainwaring for additional revision. By the following year, Bischoff

8 NYT, 21 Aug. 1955, 101; WP, 21 Oct. 1955, 32.

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had acquired a co-producer, David Diamond, chosen a director, Phil Karlson,

and assembled cast and crew in Phenix City.9

While on location, Bischoff and company encountered both

cooperativeness and resistance among local residents. On one hand, the

Attorney General and a citizens’ group, the Russell (County) Betterment

Association, endorsed the production. The crew managed to film interviews with

people connected to the actual events, several residents agreed to appear in

the picture in secondary roles or as extras, and one cast member from

Hollywood, Biff McGuire, managed to accompany the local sheriff on a raid of

nearby gambling dens. On the other hand, Phenix City had many residents on

both sides of the law who wanted the kind of national scrutiny their city was

receiving to end quickly and thus were hostile to the filming ofThe Phenix City

Story. The company consequently encountered signs that read, ‘No

Photography Here!’; faced a temporary injunction against shooting; and even

received death threats. Bischoff, taking these threats seriously, hired armed

drivers to escort members of the cast and crew to and from work. Fortunately,

the company managed to complete production—and celebrate the film’s

premiere in Phenix City—without encountering any serious trouble.10

The Phenix City Story begins with a documentary segment entitled “Eye

Witness Report from Phenix City” in which Clete Roberts, a television news

9 NYT, 14 Sep. 1954, 24; Ibid., 21 Aug. 1955, 24.

10 Ibid.; LAT, 23 Oct. 1955, D2; C D 7, 13 Apr. 1955, B2; CD, 21 May 1955, 18; Ibid., 23 Jul. 1955, 18.

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reporter, describes the problems in Phenix City, recounts the murder of Albert

Patterson, and interviews five people connected with the Phenix City story: Ed

Strickland, a reporter for the Birmingham News who broke the story of Albert

Patterson’s murder; Hugh Britton, a member of the Russell Betterment

Association and an opponent of the criminal syndicate in Phenix City; Hugh

Bentley, another opponent whose home was dynamited by members of the

syndicate; Quinny Kelly, a janitor and sheriff’s deputy; and Albert Patterson’s

widow.

In the dramatized portion of the movie, lawyer John Patterson (Richard

Kiley), who has spent several years prosecuting war criminals in Germany,

brings his wife and two children back to his hometown, Phenix City, Alabama.

The city is as corrupt as ever, but Patterson’s return coincides with the formation

of the Russell Betterment Association, a group of citizens opposed to local vice

lords such as Rhett Tanner (Edward Andrews). On his first night back, John

witnesses Tanner’s thugs ambush two members of the Russell Betterment

Association. Recognizing one of these thugs as Clem Wilson (John Larch),

John bursts into Tanner’s illegal gambling house, The Poppy Club, and

retaliates by beating up Clem. John’s childhood friend, Fred Gage (Biff

McGuire), and a black janitor named Zeke Ward (James Edwards) help him

leave the club before he gets into further trouble. Soon after, John urges his

father, Albert (John Mclntire), a local lawyer and former state senator, to attend

a meeting of the Russell Betterment Association. John suggests that, instead of

engaging in vigilantism, the group might succeed in cleaning up Phenix City by

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helping his father campaign for Attorney General. Albert, however, doubts that

such a plan would work and vows to remain neutral.

When Tanner learns, through an informant, that John and Albert have

attended this meeting, he orders Clem to send the Pattersons a warning. To

this end, Clem kidnaps Zeke’s daughter and later dumps her dead body from a

speeding car onto the Pattersons’ lawn. As Clem and a companion drive away,

they inadvertently hit a boy on a bike. Later that day, when Fred Gage

discovers that the car involved belongs to Clem, Clem kills him. After a raft of

evidence connecting Clem to Fred’s murder fails to result in an indictment,

Albert finally decides to run for Attorney General. During the campaign,

Tanner’s thugs beat and harass Albert’s supporters. On the day of the primary,

they turn away voters and stuff ballot boxes. In spite of these efforts, Albert

carries the rest of the state and wins the nomination for Attorney General.

Afraid of losing his livelihood, Tanner orders his men to kill Albert before

he can take office. Ellie Rhodes (Kathryn Grant), a card dealer at The Poppy

Club, overhears their planning, but she is unable to warn Albert in time. Later

that evening, Tanner’s thugs shoot Albert outside his office, and Ellie, fearing for

her own life, goes into hiding at Zeke’s shack. John soon learns where Ellie is

hiding, and he hurries right over. When he arrives, he discovers that Tanner

and two of his men got there first and killed Ellie. With Zeke’s help, John

defends himself against Tanner’s men. Next, John gets his hands on Tanner

and nearly drowns him in the nearby river, but Zeke intervenes, reminding John

of God’s commandment against murder. Finally, after so many murders

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committed by Tanner’s gang, and in the face of growing public support, John

succeeds in getting the state militia to declare martial law in Phenix City. Soon

after, John takes his father’s place as Attorney General, swearing to continue

the fight against crime.

The Phenix City Story was an independent production with a modest

budget, but, once it went into release, it developed into a financial success.

When the picture opened in New York City on Friday, September 2, it sold

36,000 tickets at Loew’s State theatre over the Labor Day weekend, helping the

State generate a profit 60% greater than during the previous Labor Day

weekend. By the end of October, producers Samuel Bischoff and David

Diamond had each made $1 million off the movie.11

In keeping with the good business The Phenix City Story generated, the

critical response was generally positive. Many reviewers noted that the movie’s

documentary style made it particularly compelling. Crowther, who ranked

among the film’s biggest fans, compared The Phenix City Story toAll the King’s

Men (1949) and On the Waterfront (1954), listed it among his ten favorite films

of 1955, and argued that it had “the sharp documentary quality of some of our

best journalistic films.” Schallert, who was not nearly as effusive in his praise as

Crowther, still reckoned that the movie’s “documented quality” was “bound to

make audiences take it seriously.” Even Coe, who described the introduction by

Clete Roberts as “fatuously emceed,” admitted the fact that the film was shot on

11 NYT, 6 Sep. 1955, 29;WP, 20 Oct. 1955, 32.

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location and included a more or less unknown cast helped give it “an impression

of reality.”12

While critics were generally complimentary toward all of the actors in

the picture, a few singled out James Edwards’s performance. In the black

press, some reviewers were simply happy that Edwards was playing one of

Phenix City’s upstanding citizens rather than a criminal. Elsewhere, others drew

attention not to his role but to his acting. Coe, for instance, considered Edwards

an “outstanding” member of the supporting cast, and a review in theChicago

Tribune, alluding to the kidnapping and murder of Zeke’s daughter, described

him as “effective as a man who paid a bitter price for [his] defiance” of Rhett

Tanner’s gang.13

As this review suggests, critics were more often moved by the murder

of Zeke’s daughter than by Edwards’s performance as Zeke. Reviews in the

Los Angeles Times and New York Times agreed that the tossing of the girl’s

body onto the Patterson’s lawn—while John’s son and daughter are playing

there—was a powerful scene. Scheuer took note of the fact that the victim was

“a Negro girl” and described the appearance of her dead body as “one in a

pounding succession of shocking scenes.” Schallert viewed the scene not

simply as one in a sequence of shocks but also as the most telling example of

the criminals’ ruthlessness. Crowther, however, had mixed feelings about the

tossing of the girl’s body. While regarding the scene as “an evident

12 NYT, 3 Sep. 1955, 9; Ibid., 25 Dec. 1955, X3; LAT, 27 Oct. 1955, A6; WP, 21 Oct. 1955, 32.

13 Ibid.; CDT, 21 Jul. 1955, 08.

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contrivance,” he felt that plot points such as this helped place various “cross

issues into the simplest dramatic terms.”14

Crowther did not specify which “cross-issues” he had in mind, but

certainly one topic that this scene brings up is racism. On the surface, the

murder of Zeke’s daughter is meant as a warning to the Pattersons and all

others who would resist the tyranny of Rhett Tanner’s gang. In a sense,

Tanner’s men assert that black and white children are interchangeable by

pinning a note to the body of Zeke’s daughter that reads, “This will happen to

your kids too.” At the same time, the kidnapping and murder of a black girl by

white men in the South unavoidably takes on the appearance of a racially

motivated crime; indeed, race is what helps them get away with her murder.

Admittedly, organized crime has corrupted the justice system in Phenix City, but

Tanner’s men are still taking advantage of a segregated system that cheapens

the lives of black people. In Phenix City, as was the case in much of the South

at the time, the authorities treat blacks as inferior to whites. Fred’s death, for

example, prompts an inquest, but no such proceedings take place when the

body of Zeke’s daughter turns up. The only notice authorities seem to give her

death is when a police officer describes the murder in a casually racist manner,

announcing to his partners, “Somebody just threw a dead nigger kid on

Patterson’s lawn.” Clem, who plays a leading role in the murder, also

recognizes the subordinate status of blacks, testifying at the inquest into Fred’s

death, “I got nothing against nigras, long as they behave.” As these words

14 LAT, 23 Oct. 1955, D2; Ibid., 27 Oct. 1955, A6; NYT, 11 Sep. 1955, X1.

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suggest, the murder is not simply a warning to the Pattersons; in a segregated

social order, it cannot help but also be a warning to blacks.

By depicting the murder of Zeke’s daughter, as well as the lack of any

legal response to it, the makers of The Phenix City Story succeeded in

associating racism with corruption. In the film, the only characters who treat

blacks as inferior are criminals or those who have been corrupted by the

criminals. Those who wind up opposing the criminals—such as John, Fred, and

Ellie—treat Zeke as a friend; in fact, after Zeke endangers his own life by

helping John escape The Poppy Club, John declares that he and his father will

help Zeke find a job. As Tanner’s main enforcer, Clem is a criminal who regards

blacks as inferior and seems to have no qualms about killing a black child. Also,

because he commits the murder at Tanner’s behest and on behalf of the entire

syndicate, his actions demonstrate that, as a whole, the criminals of Phenix City

are racists. Similarly, the police officer who casually refers to Zeke’s daughter

as “a dead nigger kid” stands in for all of Phenix City’s authorities, who do not

seem to value her life enough even to hold an inquest. The fact that both the

authorities and the criminals treat her as an inferior should come as no surprise.

The criminal syndicate has paid off the authorities, and, as a result, both groups

have a vested interest in maintaining a corrupt and segregated social order.

In 1955, movies like The Phenix City Story, which associated racism

with moral corruption, were still uncommon in mainstream Hollywood. Even so,

the makers of The Phenix City Story were not attacking racism in a particularly

bold manner. UnlikeNo Way Out (1950) and The Well (1951), which were

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extraordinarily courageous films for 1950,The Phenix City Story never depicts

any overt racial conflict between whites and blacks. Aside from the kidnapping

of Zeke’s daughter, which is meant primarily as a warning to the Pattersons, the

movie contains two scenes of violence between whites and blacks. In one

scene, Zeke trips Clem with his broom, but he does so to help John escape the

Poppy Club. Near the end of the movie, when Zeke fights with Clem and the

other white thug who has broken into his home, he does not kill either of them

out of racial antipathy or even revenge for his daughter’s murder; instead, he

struggles just enough to defend himself, his wife, and John.

Again, unlike No Way Out and The Well, The Phenix City Story does

not bother to examine how a black community, or even a black household, deals

with racial antipathy. The only black characters in the picture are Zeke, his

daughter, and his wife; moreover, his daughter appears only long enough to

become a victim of kidnapping and murder, and his wife shows up only near the

end of the movie. Even worse, the picture gives surprisingly little attention to

Zeke’s problems. After Zeke endangers himself, his family, and his livelihood by

helping John escape the Poppy Club, and after John promises that he and his

father will help Zeke find another job, the picture never indicates whether Zeke

has obtained new employment or even if John attempted to fulfill his promise.

Also, when Tanner’s gang kidnaps and murders Zeke’s daughter, the audience

never sees Zeke and his wife’s immediate reaction; indeed, by the time Zeke

and his wife show up together, both are incredibly, perhaps unbelievably, noble

about it, resisting the urge to revenge themselves for her death. While Zeke and

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his wife seem almost to have reached a point where they are no longer troubled

by their daughter’s death, the makers of The Phenix City Story certainly did not

trouble themselves to examine the kinds of problems blacks face as a

community, as a household, or even as individuals.

The makers of The Phenix City Story were well-intentioned enough to

associate racism with moral corruption, just as movies Thelike Underworld

Story (1950) had previously done. Still, they were not bold enough to achieve

any actual improvement in the representation of African Americans in

Hollywood. Admittedly, they created a powerful scene by having Tanner’s gang

kidnap Zeke’s daughter and toss her dead body on the Pattersons’ lawn, but the

scene is only suggestive of racism when it could have been used to expose, in a

more deliberate fashion, the racism upon which Southern segregation is based.

The filmmakers also succeeded in showing Zeke as united with John, Fred, and

other whites in a common fight against organized crime, but, by giving

surprisingly little attention to the sacrifices this brave black man endures, they

end up treating him less like an equal and more like a sidekick. Months after

The Phenix City Story’s release, in a final example of the filmmakers’ inability to

follow through with good intentions, Bischoff announced that his next project

with Diamond and Wilbur would be a dramatization of the events surrounding

the recent lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till. Bischoff promised to

examine efforts by “politicians and hoodlums to gain control of the White

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Citizens Councils in the South and turn them into terrorist organizations,"15 but

such a movie never came to pass; instead, Bischoff, Diamond, and Wilbur went

their separate ways.

For all of the scenes James Edwards had as Zeke in The Phenix City

Story, the movie was not quite as effective at linking racism and corruption as

one relatively short scene he got the following year inThe Killing. The second

of two noirs that formerLook photographer Stanley Kubrick co-wrote and

directed near the beginning of his Hollywood career, The Killing had a familiar

premise—a race track heist—but a rather unconventional narrative device:

instead of depicting the events before, during, and after the heist in a standard,

linear fashion, the movie relies on third-person narration to tell and retell the

events from several different characters’ vantage points. Midway into the movie,

the narrative begins to follow the actions of Nikki Arcane (Timothy Carey), a

sociopathic gunman whom the robbers have hired to shoot a horse, Red

Lightning, in the seventh race, thus ensuring a distraction from the actual heist.

Nikki attempts to drive his convertible into a parking lot that will give him a

perfect shot as Red Lightning comes around the bend, but he is blocked by a

parking attendant (James Edwards) who gruffly tells him that the lot is closed

and he must park elsewhere. Up to this point, the scene presented Edwards

with a rare opportunity to give an order to a white man.

Nikki tries several approaches before the attendant finally grants him

access. At first, he solicits the attendant’s pity by claiming to be a paraplegic.

15 Ibid., 14 Jun. 1956, 40.

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Figure 9. The Killing (UA, 1956). A black parking lot attendant (James Edwards) stands in the way of hired killer Nikki Arcane (Timothy Carey). This scene not only presented Edwards with a rare opportunity to give an order to a white man but also underscored the self-destructive nature of racism.

The attendant, however, rebuffs his efforts, telling him, “My leg is bum, too. You

don’t see people feeling sorry for me.” Nikki then pretends to commiserate with

the attendant, saying, “I know what you mean, buddy.” When the attendant

begins to warm to him and asks about his injury, Nikki claims he was wounded

in the Battle of the Bulge. Trying a different approach, he proceeds to slip some

money into the attendant’s breast pocket. The attendant is clearly reluctant to

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take the money, but he nevertheless moves a fence out of the way and allows

Nikki to drive into the lot.

Nikki manages to enter the parking lot, but leaving it proves much

harder. The attendant, touched by what he falsely perceives as the color-blind

generosity of a crippled veteran, makes two separate trips to Nikki’s car, both

times attempting to express his gratitude. At the beginning of the second race,

the attendant offers Nikki a racing program and asks if there is anything else he

can do for him. In as pleasant a fashion as he can muster, Nikki declines any

further help, but thanks him for the program. Then, right before the seventh

race, the attendant returns, offering Nikki a horseshoe for good luck. Because

Nikki needs to get out his rifle quickly, he refuses the horseshoe, calls the

attendant a “nigger,” and tells him to “go on about your business.” Surprised by

Nikki’s sudden hostility, the attendant tosses away the horseshoe and leaves.

Moments later, Nikki takes out his rifle, carefully fires one shot, and brings down

Red Lightning; however, as he backs out of the parking lot, he drives over the

horseshoe, and a tire goes flat. When he jumps out of his car, a security guard

shoots him dead.

By use of the word “nigger,” Nikki reveals himself to be a racial bigot.

His initial kindness was a pretense so that the attendant would allow him to

enter the parking lot and sit there undisturbed; however, when talking to the

attendant means losing his only opportunity to shoot Red Lightning, he treats

the attendant as a racial inferior. Additionally, by ordering the attendant to “go

on about your business,” Nikki attempts to reduce him to the position in which

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Hollywood had often depicted African Americans—as nothing more than

servants. The attendant, however, immediately calls attention to Nikki’s

insinuation by momentarily pretending to be the ignorant servant he is supposed

to be. “Sure, boss,” he says, slurring his words. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

As Nikki’s words and the attendant’s reaction to these words indicate, racial

prejudice is clearly at issue in this scene.

In its own brief and powerful way, this scene crystallizes many of the

elements and themes of other noirs that had dealt with prejudice. Like the

bigoted villains ofCrossfire (1947) and No Way Out, Nikki Arcane is severely

deranged. With his ever-shifting eyes and his practice of speaking through

clenched teeth, Nikki, in terms of sheer mania, ranks with only a select few film

noir villains, such as Ray Biddle inNo Way Out and Tommy Udo inKiss of

Death (1947). Because Nikki is such an aberrant individual, The Killing suffers

from the same flaw that Crossfire and No Way Out do: it treats a real and

commonplace social problem in an extreme and unlikely fashion. To its credit,

though, The Killing shared one ofNo Way Outs more positive qualities by

depicting racism as a self-destructive force. In fact, the end that Nikki meets is

even more severe than the one that Ray and the participants in the riot do. Ray

and the rioters engage in racial violence, which, at its worst, leads to life-

threatening injuries. Nikki, on the other hand, merely makes a few racially

insulting comments, and yet the horseshoe—the very object that the attendant

offers and he rejects—becomes the device that prevents him from leaving the

parking lot and results in his demise. Thus, while The Killing failed to make

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prejudice seem any less abnormal than Crossfire and No Way Out had, it went

further than No Way Out, treating even relatively minor acts of bigotry as

positively suicidal.

The Decline Continues

By the time of The Killing’s release, however, film noir was no longer

the vehicle for improving African American representation that it once was.

Journalists such as Rob Roy noted that urban African American moviegoers’

influence over box-office returns was beginning to outweigh the threat of local

boycotts. Nationwide, African Americans were enjoying greater economic

power at the same time that Hollywood was undergoing an economic

realignment, with the big studio system in decline and the number of

independent production companies rapidly multiplying. Increasing black

economic power, especially in conjunction with the rise of independent

production, meant that Hollywood filmmakers were more likely to take on

projects calculated to appeal to the African American market but still distribute

them as mainstream movies.

Already, in the early 1950s, many movies that were not noirs were

providing opportunities for African American actors and entertainers, including

Bright Victory (1951), Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), The Joe Louis Story

(1953), and Carmen Jones (1954). In the latter part of the decade, this trend

continued withTrial (1955), Ransom! (1956), and St. Louis Blues (1958), and

Sidney Poitier’s career hit new heights with his role opposite Tony Curtis in the

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critically acclaimed The Defiant Ones (1958). By the late 1950s, a new chapter

for African Americans was opening up in Hollywood. Film noir, with its penchant

for urban settings, semi-documentary techniques, and social-realist bent, no

longer had to help improve African American representation because filmmakers

had the creative and economic freedom to make movies with African Americans

expressly in mind.

Also, as the 1950s wore on, film noir was less able to help improve

African American representation because fewer and fewer noirs were being

made. By 1960, film noir’s classic period would be over. The end came for

several reasons other than the blacklisting and political repression of Hollywood

Left; otherwise, film noir would have died off by the mid-1950s. Although a few

noirs were shot in color, the industry-wide decline in black-and-white

cinematography threatened film noir’s signature look. The decline of the classic,

vertically integrated studio system and the major studios’ practice of splitting

their resources into “A” and “B” productions also meant that they were less and

less in the business of backing high-cost dramas with cheap crime thrillers. Film

noir, too, had emerged in the shadow of the Depression and World War II, and

by the late 1950s, the United States had enjoyed years and years of postwar

affluence and faced a new array of social problems. Finally, as an increasing

number of Americans moved to the suburbs, movies about urban crime and

conflict no longer held the same appeal to mainstream audiences.

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Noirs with Jazz

Even as the classic period was coming to an end, a few noirs managed

to contribute to African American representation. Between 1957 and 1959,

three such films—Alexander MacKendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and

Robert Wise’s I Want to Live! (1958) and Odds against Tomorrow (1959)—

contributed, at least in part, by including African American musicians as

characters in the movie, as performers in the non-diegetic score, or both.

The earliest of these movies, Sweet Smell of Success, was the work of

Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions, a company formed by actor Burt Lancaster

and producers Harold Hecht and James Hill. Sweet Smell of Success tells the

story of J.J. Hunsucker (Burt Lancaster), a power-mad Broadway newspaper

columnist allegedly modeled after Walter Winchell, who manipulates publicity

agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) into helping him break up the possible

marriage of his sister, Susan (Susan Harrison), and guitarist Steve Dallas

(Martin Milner). After trying a number of ineffective ploys, Sidney plants

marijuana on Steve, leaving him to be arrested and beaten by another of J.J.’s

hangers-on, a cop named Harry Kello (Emile Meyer). Susan, sensing that her

brother is ultimately behind Steve’s misfortunes, runs away, and J.J. lashes out

in anger by sending Harry to beat up Sidney.

In the original story by Ernest Lehman, Steve is a popular nightclub

singer, but screenwriter Clifford Odets transformed him into member of a racially

integrated jazz group. In the movie, Steve’s bandmates are played by real-life

jazz musicians, members of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. At an early stage in

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the production, black percussionist Chico Hamilton and white cellist provided a

complete score for the movie, but the producers later discarded it and brought in

composer Elmer Bernstein to write the same kind of jazz-inflected score he had

provided for Otto Preminger’s expose on heroin addiction,The Man with the

Golden Arm (1955).16 Even with Bernstein providing the score, the Chico

Hamilton Quintet performed their own brand of authentic jazz in a number of

club scenes.

Though Chico Hamilton is nominally the leader of the group onscreen,

the movie makes Steve seem the real star in the group. Hamilton enjoyed a

brief in which he and his cohorts keep Sidney temporarily at bay while Steve

and Susan share an intimate moment. Even so, the narrative of the film focused

to a greater extent on Steve, who, unlike the other members of the quintet, has

his own talent agent and is a constant target of Falco and Hunsucker’s intrigues.

Just as guitarist Steve overshadows bandleader Chico Hamilton, composer

Elmer Bernstein’s heavily jazz-tinged score is a more prominent element of the

movie than the few scenes featuring actual jazz played by the Chico Hamilton

Quintet.

The fact that Steve is a more prominent character than Chico, or that

Elmer Bernstein’s score overshadowed the performance by the Chico Hamilton

Quintet, does not take away from the real contributionsSweet Smell of Success

made for African Americans. The movie presented a vision of a racially

16 David Butler, Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from “Phantom Lady” to “The Last Seduction”, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 132, 136.

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integrated band at a time when the sight of a musical group with white and black

members was still an anomaly in most Hollywood movies. More importantly,

however, the movie gave Chico Hamilton and his music greater publicity. He

and his music enjoyed a few scenes onscreen, and the appearance resulted in a

record deal. Accompanying Sweet Smell of Success’s release, Decca records

issued a total of five discs with music from the movie, featuring not only the

Bernstein score but also performances by the Chico Hamilton Quintet.17

Unfortunately, critics gave Sweet Smell of Success mixed reviews, and

audience turnout was disappointing. Reviewers often credited the entire cast

with good performances, writers Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets for their

clever, cutting dialogue, and cinematographer James Wong Howe for his

camerawork, much of which was shot along Broadway and its side streets. At

the same time, they complained that the movie did not include enough

sympathetic characters. Many felt that, as a powerful, egomaniacal newspaper

columnist, J.J. Hunsucker was an implausible character, and some pointed out

that his motivations, particularly his desire to break up Susan and Steve’s

romance, went unexplained.18 In addition to the reasons cited by critics,Sweet

Smell of Success was a hard sell for the theatergoing public because its two

leads, Lancaster and Curtis, were playing against type. Lancaster, a former

circus acrobat, had gained fame for tough, physical roles, but here he played a

17 CD, 3 Aug. 1957, 18.

18 CDT, 16 Aug. 1957, 15;LAT, 23 Jun. 1957, E1+; Ibid., 3 Jul. 1957, 14; Ibid., 4 Jul. 1957, C7; NYT, 28 Jun. 1957, 24; Ibid., 30 Jun. 1957, 73; l/VP, 5 Jul. 1957, B8.

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bespectacled, buzzard-like intellectual. Curtis, who had previously played the

happy-go-lucky leading man in a number of forgettable pictures, stretched

himself considerably by playing Hunsucker’s slimy sycophant. Not surprisingly,

Hecht-Hill-Lancaster failed to recoup some $400,000.19 Elmer Bernstein’s

innovative, jazz-tinged score thus received little attention; also, the Chico

Hamilton Quintet did not receive as much publicity as it could have, nor did

many moviegoers manage to see this racially integrated band onscreen.

In the following year, a second film noir—I Want to Live!—used jazz to

even greater effect. Produced by Walter Wanger and directed by Robert Wise, I

Want to Live! purported to be the true story of Barbara Graham, a prostitute and

drug addict who, after being dubbed “Bloody Babs" by the press, was convicted

of beating a woman to death during a robbery attempt in Burbank, California,

and died in the gas chamber at San Quentin in 1955. Though the Los Angeles

Police Department and other authorities condemned the film for suggesting that

a woman was sentenced to death for a crime she did not commit, critics

applauded it because it honestly depicted the tawdriness of Graham’s short life

and still managed to offer a powerful indictment of capital punishment.20 The

movie received several Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and

Best Director, and Susan Hayward, who played Graham, won the Oscar for Best

Actress.

19/VY7, 16 Dec. 1957, 34.

20 LAT, 16 Nov. 1958, C1+; Ibid., 27 Nov. 1958, C17; Ibid., 16 Dec. 1958, B10;NYT, 19 Nov. 1958,45; IMP, 11 Feb. 1959, D5; Butler, 116, 121.

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Along with the film’s many accolades, critics were wowed by its use of

jazz. Indeed, the real Barbara Graham was an avid music lover, and her tastes

extended from classic music to contemporary jazz. In order to provide an

appropriate soundtrack for Graham’s story, Wanger tapped Johnny Mandel, a

white jazz arranger, trombonist, and former member of Count Basie’s band.

Ultimately, the music Mandel wrote was one of Hollywood’s earliest examples of

an authentic jazz score. As a composer, Mandel received praise for

demonstrating that jazz could fit almost any movie moment. Mandel himself

emphasized that “jazz is adaptable to far broader usage in motion pictures that it

has had in the past. . . . I don’t believe that there is any human emotion that

cannot be portrayed with a jazz framework, and that was my premise when I

wrote the score.”21 Critics like John S. Wilson concurred. Wilson, in fact, felt

that the score worked best in scenes where jazz would not normally be

expected:

There are some segments in which the use of a jazz background might be expected (a wild party, for instance, and the jarring intensity as a group of cornered hoodlums surrender to the police). But Mr. Mandel’s perceptive use of jazz terminology is most revealing in the somber prison sequences that make up the latter part of the film. Here, in an atmosphere far removed from the usual use of jazz as a characterizing music, he suggests the scope of emotion and setting that can be attained when jazz musicians play material written by a composer who is also a jazz musician.22

Mandel conducted an orchestra for parts of the score and, for others,

provided a small group with arrangements. The latter group consisted of seven

21 CD, 29 Nov. 1958, 18.

22 NYT, 4 Jan. 1959, X24.

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contemporary jazz musicians: Gerry Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Bud Shank,

alto saxophone; Art Farmer, trumpet; Frank Rosolino, trombone; Pete Jolly,

piano; Red Mitchell, bass; and Shelly Manne, drums. Except for Art Farmer,

who was black, all of these musicians were white. In several ways, the small

group’s performance stood out from the orchestral portions of Mandel’s score.

Unlike the orchestra, members of the small group perform, albeit briefly,

onscreen, in a scene at a San Francisco bistro. Also, while the orchestral

portions permeate the movie, the group’s music is generally tied to a particular

scene, whether coming from the musicians in person, a radio, or a record

player. United Artists further distinguished the small group from the orchestra

by issuing the music fromI Want to Live! on two separate records:Gerry

Mulligan’s Jazz Combo and Johnny Mandel’s Great Jazz Score.23

Reviewers perceived significant differences between the music

represented on these two discs. John S. Wilson pointed out that, unlike the

orchestra, Mulligan’s group had the freedom to play music that could stand apart

from whatever was happening onscreen. According to Wally George, this

quality was precisely what made Gerry Mulligan’s Jazz Combo a better jazz

record thanJohnny Mandel’s Great Jazz Score.24 Regardless of how others felt

about the various musical arrangements inI Want to Live!, most reviewers failed

to note that a black musician performed in the small group and appeared

(briefly) in the movie. Instead of describing the entire soundtrack as a racially

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.; LAT, 11 Jul. 1959, K37.

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integrated, collective effort, they tended to focus on the creative choices of

Mandel and Mulligan, the two best-known white musicians involved. Of course,

the lack of recognition Art Farmer received is not surprising since his presence

among so many white musicians amounted to a token form of integration. As

the critical acclaim and box office returns indicated, Mandel’s score forI Want to

Live! had championed the use of jazz in movies more effectively than

Bernstein’s score forSweet Smell of Success] nevertheless, as an example of

racial integration in the arts, the Chico Hamilton Quintet surpassed Gerry

Mulligan’s combo.

FromShowboat (1936) throughCabin in the Sky (1943) to Carmen

Jones, blacks in Hollywood musicals had had little control over the material they

performed, as white composers wrote both music and lyrics. Aside from the

occasional comedy, in which Duke Ellington and his orchestra played an original

composition or Louis Armstrong displayed his special genius for making other

people’s material his own, film noir provided one of the few outlets among

mainstream, full-length features for black musicians to perform their own music

onscreen. In this sense, Chico Hamilton’s music and Art Farmer’s contribution

to a score in which Mandel deliberately gave him an opportunity to improvise

were the latest in a stream of similar performances that included J.C. Heard in /

Walk Alone (1948), Illinois Jacquet inD.O.A. (1950), and Louis Armstrong in

The Strip (1951). Hence, even as fewer such movies were being made, film noir

offered some of the best vehicles for black musicians onscreen.

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Playing the Odds

Even with the release of Sweet Smell of Success and I Want to Live!,

one opportunity that eluded black musicians, at least in American movies, was

the ability to compose a soundtrack. That all changed in 1959 with the release

of two films:Anatomy of a Murder, a cynical courtroom drama with a score

written and performed by Duke Ellington, andOdds against Tomorrow, one of

the very last noirs, with music by John Lewis, a pianist and founding member of

the Modern Jazz Quartet. In fact, as one of the very last noirs of the classic

period, Odds against Tomorrow stand as classic film noir’s ultimate contribution

to the representation of African Americans, both onscreen and behind the

camera, a final expression of the kind of leftist politics that had undergone its

worst repression earlier in the decade. In addition to John Lewis’s work on the

soundtrack,Odds against Tomorrow featured Harry Belafonte as producer and

star, and credited African American author John O. Killens as the screenwriter.

Odds against Tomorrow, of course, came several years after Harry

Belafonte had established himself as a movie actor. Belafonte in fact came to

think of James Edwards and Sidney Poitier as his counterparts, as all three

were “young, leading-man types” who, starting in the late 1940s and early

1950s, helped bring “issues of race” into mainstream Hollywood.25 Belafonte

had acted in the ANT, but his cinematic career began only after he left the stage

and gained notice as a folk singer. His first film, Bright Road (1953), was a

rather inauspicious beginning: the picture did poorly at the box office, and the

25 Harry Belafonte, telephone interview by author, 14 Apr. 2006.

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school principal he played was secondary to the plot, doing little more than

offering advice and singing duets with Dorothy Dandridge. Carmen Jones

(1954), in which he had his first starring role, also did poorly at the box office,

primarily because it was an all-black musical in an era in which audiences no

longer cared for such pictures. Belafonte’s next picture was Island in the Sun

(1957), an incredibly popular drama about interracial romance in the West Indies

that was nevertheless hamstrung by Fox’s reluctance and ultimate refusal to

show mixed couples kissing, as well as its omission of current Caribbean

political struggles by setting the story on a fictional island. After three films,

Belafonte was a star of sorts, but he had had the misfortune of associating with

two box-office misses and one big hit that Fox had shorn of all its potential

political import.26

Belafonte would soon start a new stage in his career by becoming an

independent producer, but his first foray into movie production was a

disappointing experience. For the sci-fi The World, The Flesh and the Devil

(1959), Belafonte started his own company, HarBel Productions, and partnered

with MGM in a one-time production and distribution deal.27 Based on M.P.

Shiel’s novel The Purple Cloud, The World, The Flesh and the Devil promised to

critique both the nuclear arms race and American racism, as it dealt with how

the only three people left in Manhattan—a black man, a white man, and a white

woman— relate to each other in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately,

26 Cripps, Making Movies, 262-65.

27 CD, 18 Oct. 1958, 19.

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Belafonte was not yet an independent producer and thus did not have final say

over the script. By the time the project was completed, he did not even receive

a screen credit as co-producer, and writer and director Ranald MacDougall had

significantly downplayed the racial angle, merely flirting with the notion of

interracial romance before bringing the white man and woman together.

Belafonte, crushed by movie’s failure to live up to its potential, later described

his involvement with it as “one of the worst experiences in my life.”28

As a one-time deal, The World, The Flesh and the Devil might have

been Belafonte’s only stint as a movie producer; fortunately, a confluence of

events enabled him to go to work as an independent. First off, he needed a

story that was sufficiently compelling—and he found it in William P. McGivern’s

1957 novel, Odds against Tomorrow, about a bank robbery that goes horribly

awry, largely because two of the crooks—one white and the other black—cannot

control their hatred of one another. Belafonte, who saw in the story a profound

musing about racism’s mutually destructive nature, paid $25,000 for rights to the

novel. Still, to get it made under his own HarBel Productions, he needed to find

whites in Hollywood who were willing “to take a film under the banner of a black

company.” Almost immediately, he succeeded in interesting director Robert

Wise in the project. Wise—especially after his success with I Want to Live!—

had developed a sterling reputation in Hollywood, and his involvement,

according to Belafonte, “legitimized” HarBel Productions. Wise lent his name to

Belafonte’s picture not only as the director but also in the form of a producer

28 Cripps, Making Movies, 265-66.

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credit, and shortly thereafter Belafonte signed a contract with United Artists for

six films in six years.29

Belafonte’s work for Fox and MGM left him with a sense of where most

movies wrong. In his mind, the big studios and the exorbitant expenses with

which they dealt stood in the way of making socially significant films. They had

created a “maniacal monster,” and each movie they made incurred such high

costs that, to make a profit, it required “a script that offends nobody.” At a time

when a movie could easily cost ten or fifteen million dollars, Belafonte

determined never to work with a budget that large. (True to his word, Odds

against Tomorrow only cost HarBel Productions a modest $1.2 million.) As he

looked forward to fulfilling his six-film contract, he told an interviewer, “Artists

should form cooperative ventures. The studios are getting too much money.

More than they deserve.”30

Odds against Tomorrow represented cooperation at its finest. At every

level and stage of the production, Belafonte managed to associate with people

whose political sensibilities were similar to his own. He paid $10,000 for the

script,31 most of which went to blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polonsky (even

though African American author John O. Killens served as his front). Belafonte

felt that Polonksy had a special genius for structuring scripts, and he was glad to

pay the man “the full measure of his worth.” He also informed the studio

29 Cripps, Making Movies, 266; NYT, 26 Jul. 1959, X5; Belafonte;LAT, 26 Nov. 1958, 15;NYT, 26 Nov. 1958, 26.

30 NYT, 26 Jul. 1959, X5.

31 Ibid.

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executives, cast, and crew that he had hired Polonsky and in every case found

allies who were just as “compelled to undermine the blacklist” and determined to

make a movie with social merit as he was. Not least of Belafonte’s allies were

actress Shelley Winters and actors Robert Ryan and Ed Begley, all of whom

demonstrated their commitment to the project by forgoing their usual salaries for

a percentage of the profits. Finally, as if to signal their desire to challenge

Hollywood’s racial and political conventions, Belafonte and companyOdds shot

against Tomorrow in New York, both at Bronx’s Gold Medal Studio and upstate

in the town of Hudson.32

Belafonte felt that, in his generation, the advent of the blacklist had

forced people in the arts either to placate or resist a system of political

repression. In his experience, the same “deeply rooted logic” governed

McCarthyism and racism, and the same movie artists and technicians who

resented the blacklist were usually sympathetic to civil rights issues. Belafonte

found such people in greater supply in New York than in California; in fact, most

ofOdds against Tomorrow’s cast and crew members worked mainly in New

York.33 Still, on this project, even the Hollywood veterans had decidedly left-

leaning sentiments. Few held these sentiments higher than Polonsky, a man

who had signaled his commitment to interracial brotherhood with his script for

Body and Soul and to leftist politics by refusing to name names. Among the

32 Belafonte; NY, 26 Jul. 1959, X5; Ibid., 1 Mar. 1959, X7.

33 Belafonte. On the New York pedigree of many of Odds against Tomorrow’s minor players, see NYT, 21 Feb. 1959, 25; Ibid., 1 Mar. 1959, X7.

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cast, Delores Calvin of the Chicago Defender regarded Shelley Winters and

Robert Ryan in particular as “known fighters for good roles for Negro players.”34

Ryan, of course, had demonstrated his opposition to prejudice and, at least in

his own mind, narrowly averted the blacklist by his involvement Crossfire.in He

had also worked with Wise onThe Set-Up, which provided James Edwards with

a small but meaningful role. For film noir stalwarts like Ryan, Wise, and

Polonsky, and nearly everyone else in Belafonte’s company,Odds against

Tomorrow would prove to be their most inventive and insightful cinematic work

on behalf of racial and political tolerance.

As an independent African American producer, Harry Belafonte was in

the almost unparalleled position of being able to hire other African Americans for

film work. He hired nearly a dozen blacks for roles that included a wife and

mother, a daughter, PTA members, employees at a jazz joint, an elevator

attendant, and a drugstore waiter. He gave actress Cicely Tyson one of her first

film roles, as a bartender, and he had members of the Modern Jazz Quartet

accompany him in a scene where his character sings and plays a vibraphone.

Also, with Belafonte at the helm, Odds against Tomorrow gave author John O.

Killens his first screenwriting credit (in exchange for covering for Polonsky), and

it became the first American movie to feature a score composed by pianist John

Lewis. The amount of creative control that Belafonte enjoyed during this project,

particularly in terms of his ability to employ members of his own race in front of

and behind the camera, served as a model to which other blacks could aspire.

34 CD, 28 Mar. 1959, 18.

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It also anticipated the kind of productive and directorial powers that, from the

1960s on, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Melvin van Peebles, Gordon Parks, Spike

Lee, John Singleton, and others would manage to attain within mainstream

moviemaking.

As producer, Belafonte was also heavily involved in the promotion of

Odds against Tomorrow. Shortly before and after its October 13 premiere at

Chicago’s Woods theatre, Belafonte did much to generate interest in the movie.

In March, he issued a letter to the press in which he announced that Odds

against Tomorrow would help open a new chapter in filmmaking by portraying

“the Negro as he really is and not as one side of a black-and-white sociological

argument where brotherhood always wins in the end.” He also stated it would

“show the Negro in conflicts that stem from the general human condition and not

solely from race.” Three days before the premiere, Belafonte arrived in Chicago

for a number of promotional events, including a visit to Wendell Phillips High

School and an appearance on a local TV show. On October 13, he headed a

twenty-car parade through the Loop to Lake Meadows shopping center, where

he appeared before a crowd of 7,000 with Mayor Richard Daley and Olympic

runner Jesse Owens. The next day, he met and was photographed with all the

participants in a beauty contest for black women that United Artists organized in

conjunction with the release ofOdds against Tomorrow. Weeks before the

movie’s November 11 premier in the District of Columbia, he appeared on

another local TV spot, claiming that the opportunities available for young black

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actors had grown significantly over the last ten years.35 With many of these

pronouncements and public appearances, Belafonte seemed to have primarily

an African American audience in mind.

These promotional efforts succeeded in generating much advance

interest in the picture. Months before its release, Delores Calvin of the Chicago

Defender hoped that Belafonte’s status as a producer would help lead to movies

that featured black actors but did not solely emphasize racial differences.

Members of the black press also speculated (incorrectly, it turns out) thatOdds

against Tomorrow would depict an interracial romance, just asIsland in the Sun

and The World, the Flesh and the Devil had done. Interest in the picture,

however, extended well beyond the black press. As early as March 1959,

Richard W. Nason of theNew York Times glowingly described Belafonte’s work

onOdds against Tomorrow, and the distribution deal with UA that went with it,

as “unprecedented in the Negro’s fight for recognition, both as a performing

artist and as a vital cultural image in American films.” In September, at a

Chicago preview, an audience of radio, television, and press representatives

expressed their enthusiastic approval, and many predicted that Odds against

Tomorrow would do even more business at the box office thanThe World, The

Flesh and the Devil. Also, more than a week before the Chicago premiere,

journalist Murray Schumach drew attention to Robert Wise’s highly unorthodox

decision to shoot and editOdds against Tomorrow without using any fades or

35 NYT, 15 Mar. 1959, X7; LAT, 23 Mar. 1959, C11; CD, 10 Oct. 1959, 9; Ibid., 24 Oct. 1959, 7; Ibid., 14 Nov. 1959, 18; WP, 22 Oct. 1959, C25.

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dissolves.36 Hence, by the time Odds against Tomorrow reached theatres, it

had received a great deal of publicity, much of which stressed its

groundbreaking nature.

In Odds against Tomorrow, an ex-cop named Dave Burke (Ed Begley)

asks two men to join him in his plan to rob a bank in a small town in New York.

One, Earle Slater (Robert Ryan), is an aging, bigoted ex-convict from Texas.

The other, Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), is a black jazz musician and singer.

Ingram’s race is essential because the plan will only work if someone can pose

as the black waiter who delivers coffee to the bank’s night staff. Slater and

Ingram are both terribly embittered and only agree to the plan reluctantly. Slater

joins Burke because he is unemployed and can hardly stand taking money from

his girlfriend, Lorry (Shelley Winters), and Ingram goes along because a

gangster named Bacco (Will Kuluva) has threatened to harm Ingram’s ex-wife,

Ruth (Mae Barnes), and daughter Edie (Lois Thorne) if he does not repay his

gambling debts. From the outset, racial tension erupts between Ingram and

Slater. When the three would-be robbers arrive in the town where the bank is

located, Ingram and Slater almost come to blows. Temporarily putting aside

their differences, the two men carry out their parts of the robbery, but the plan

goes awry. A policeman shoots Burke, who carries the only key to the robbers’

getaway car. Ingram and Slater’s frustration quickly turns to mutual hatred, and

the two engage in a deadly shootout on top of an oil storage tank. The tank, of

36 CD, 28 Mar. 1959, 18; Ibid., 11 Apr. 1959, 18; Ibid., 30 May 1959, 19;NYT, 15 Mar. 1959, X7; CD, 12 Sep. 1959, 20; NYT, 5 Oct. 1959, 26.

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Figure 10. Odds against Tomorrow (UA, 1959). From the left, gambler Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte)—shaking off ex-cop Dave Burke (Ed Begley)’s attempt to intercede—nearly comes to blows with bigoted ex-con Earle Slater (Robert Ryan). Produced by Harry Belafonte, this allegorical tale of a bungled robbery attempt represented the culmination of efforts by the creators of film noir to examine racism and to expand opportunities for African Americans in the entertainment industry.

course, explodes, killing them. The next day, an ambulance attendant (Maro

May) looks at the two corpses and asks, “Which is which?” The police chief

(Allen Nourse) replies, “Take your pick.”

Odds against Tomorrow was not quite as groundbreaking as publicity

suggested. In visual style and plot, it did not have the freshness of earlier noirs.

Indeed, by the end of the 1950s, black-and-white movies were fast losing

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ground to ones shot in color. One reviewer alluded to black and white’s

outmoded status when he wrote thatOdds against Tomorrow “champions the

cause of black-and-white film all over again,” while another simply described the

picture’s “old fashioned black and white.”37 Odds against Tomorrow also

liberally borrowed plot elements from its precursors. Much likeAsphalt Jungle

(1950) and all the other caper movies it influenced, the picture followed a group

of criminals who organize, plan, and ultimately fail to pull off a robbery. One

scene, in which a teenage girl pops a balloon Ingram is holding for his daughter

recalled psychotic killer Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker)’s popping a boy’s

balloon in Alfred Hitchcock’sStrangers on a Train. The movie’s final sequence

also harked back two other noirs. Ingram’s chasing and shooting at Slater as

they run to the top of the storage tanks resembled a scene from Samuel Fuller’s

House of Bamboo (1955) in which good guy Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack)

chases gangster Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan) to the top of a tilt-a-whirl.

Ingram and Slater’s gunplay atop the tank also recalled the end of Raoul

Walsh’s White Heat, in which gangster Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), trapped

by police atop a gas tank, deliriously fires off his pistol and goes up in a huge

explosion. (Philip K. Scheuer may have had these last two movies in mind

when he wrote that Odds against Tomorrow had “a too-familiar stalking

climax.”)38 Given its many commonalities with earlier noirs, as well as

increasing color movie production,Odds against Tomorrow signaled that film

37 LAT, 1 Nov. 1959, F1;CDT, 14 Oct. 1959, B4.

38 M f, 1 Nov. 1959, F1.

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noir had developed conventions of its own and that the end of its heyday was at

hand.

However derivative it may have been, Odds against Tomorrow still had

a number of outstanding qualities. For instance, even though some reviews

alluded to the diminishing relevance of black-and-white films, several critics

lauded cinematographer John Brun’s atmospheric camera work, which created

neither the sleek, high-contrast look nor the flat, semi-documentary quality of

earlier noirs but rather a subtle, almost poetic style that captured such details as

mist in the morning air and a discarded doll lying along a river bank. Even more

important, Odds against Tomorrow represented a deeper cinematic exploration

of racial matters than any previous film noir—evenNo Way Out. From a

thematic standpoint, the ending alone—which Wise and Belafonte demanded,

despite Polonsky’s desire for a more “simple death”39—was particularly

insightful. The fact that Ingram and Slater’s mutual antipathy sabotages the

robbery attempt, erupts into violence, and results in their deaths, implied, as No

Way Out had, that racism poses a danger to both blacks and whites; at the

same time, the ambulance attendant’s inability to tell Ingram and Slater apart in

death hinted that race was essentially an illusion. Implicitly, the finale of Odds

against Tomorrow advanced an incredibly unusual idea for any movie of its time:

that race was a social construct and, when divorced from the social relations of

living people, meaningless.

39 Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 184; Cripps,Making Movies, 268.

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Beyond exposing race for the great lie that it is, Belafonte wanted his

film to explore universally human themes rather that make sociological

assertions about race. He believed that audiences had already seen enough

movies where black characters were “thrown in for a racial thesis” and thought

that Odds against Tomorrow offered them something different because his

character appears for pragmatic reasons—specifically, because Burke need a

black man to help carry out his plan. Alluding to the kind of roles Sidney Poiter

played at the time, Belafonte also felt it was significant that Ingram was “no

stereotype of sweetness and light.” Just as important, Slater’s hatred of Ingram

was “not merely a racial antagonism” but a symptom of his bitterness and the

fact that he more or less “hates everybody.”40 Obviously, Ingram and Slater

play out opposite sides of a racial conflict, but Belafonte saw to it that issues of

race did not overshadow both characters’ underlying humanity.

As a protagonist, Ingram is hardly the black paragon that Luther Brooks

is in No Way Out. Ingram, in fact, has many disreputable qualities. He eschews

modest middle-class values, dismissing his ex-wife’s fellow PTA members as

her “ofay friends” and instead preferring sharp clothes, fast cars, good-looking

women, and easy money. Because of his love of easy money, he has acquired

excessive gambling debts: he owes $7,000 to the gangster Bacco and another

$1,000 to the manager of the jazz joint where he works. These debts make it

difficult for Ingram to make alimony payments to his ex-wife, Ruth, whom he

petulantly describes as “worse than Bacco.” In the face of his debts, and his

40 NYT, 15 Mar. 1959, X7.

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inability to keep his family together, he blames white people for his troubles.

“It’s their world,” he tells Ruth, “and we’re just living in it.” At the same time,

Ingram has a few redeeming qualities: he acts kindly toward children, he

regularly spends time with Edie, and his ultimate decision to join Burke and

Slater come more from a desire to protect Edie and Ruth from Bacco than out of

concern for his own life. In contrast to the makersNo of Way Out, who had

presented Luther Brooks as unusually, and almost unrealistically, upstanding,

Belafonte and company succeeded in integrating a black protagonist well within

the established conventions of film noir; like so many other film noir criminals

and detectives, Johnny Ingram was an antihero, a deeply flawed but

nevertheless sympathetic character who almost inescapably encounters danger

and violence.

Correspondingly, the white bigot Earle Slater is not nearly as extreme

as Crossfire’s Montgomery orNo Way Outs Ray Biddle. With Montgomery and

Biddle, prejudice reaches psychotic proportions, as both characters abuse and

even kill a man not for anything he does but rather for who he is. Slater, in

contrast, has an understandable, almost ordinary, sense of insecurity, and

bigotry is simply one way of coping with his troubles. As an aging ex-convict, he

is virtually unemployable. His advanced age and his inability to support his

girlfriend make him terribly anxious about his potency as a man. In addition to

beating up a young soldier in a bar and having an affair with a woman who lives

upstairs, Slater attempts to reassert his sense of potency by treating blacks as

inferior. He addresses a black girl as “little pickaninny,” refuses to engage in

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small talk with a black elevator attendant, and calls Ingram “just another black

spot on Main Street.” Slater’s antipathy toward blacks is not so irrational or

excessive that he actively seeks confrontation with them; in fact, he initially

declines to participate in the robbery because he cannot “trust my own self on a

deal like this with a colored boy.” AsOdds against Tomorrow suggests, Slater is

a man whose prejudices help him cope with his anxieties, but who also tries not

to let his prejudices get out of hand. These qualities make him far more

reasonable than Crossfire’s Montgomery andNo Way Out’s Ray Biddle and

certainly more sympathetic.

Odds against Tomorrow received generally complimentary reviews, and

many of these reviews highlighted the fine acting of the picture’s two leading

actors, Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan. Many critics felt that Belafonte had

delivered a particularly solid performance. Crowther described his acting as

“firm and sure,” and Philip T. Hartung noted that Belafonte invested Johnny

Ingram with “a sense of dignity and a feeling of being driven beyond his

strength.” Only months after the film’s release, Arnold Shaw, author of an

unauthorized biography of Belafonte, floridly described his subject as “defiant,

unyielding and attractively hostile” in Odds against Tomorrow. Belafonte, who

had lacked confidence throughout much of his earlier film work, agreed with

these critics and felt that Odds against Tomorrow featured some of his finest

acting up to that point. He credited the quality of his performance not only to the

guidance of Robert Wise but also to his ability to believe in the importance of the

overall project. Indeed, as Belafonte later explained, he and his associates

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worried that movies were too often “deprived of content.” WorkingOdds on

against Tomorrow, however, enabled them to make a picture “that said

something about something.”41 WithOdds against Tomorrow, Belafonte’s ability

to believe in and even control the material enhanced his sense of comfort as an

actor, and clearly reviewers took notice.

To some extent, Ryan’s fine performance also contributed to

Belafonte’s success. Crowther, who feared that Belafonte and Ryan’s onscreen

antagonism did little to improve race relations, nevertheless felt that Ryan’s

convincing portrayal of a “hateful bigot” helped make Belafonte’s character more

sympathetic than he otherwise would be. Many critics, in fact, were impressed

by Ryan’s ability to play such a character. One review stated that he “makes the

flesh crawl as a fanatical bigot,” and another called him “a menace who can look

bullets, and smile sulphuric acid.” Ryan, of course, had previously received

acclaim for playing the similarly hateful Montgomery, and this fact was not lost

on Crowther, who wrote, “Ryan is brilliant, cold and rasping, as a drifter from the

South whose hatreds are ingrained and vicious, recalling the anti-Semitic killer

he played in the melodramatic Crossfire a dozen years ago.”42

Despite the general similarity between Montgomery and Slater, and the

menacing qualities that he brought to both roles, Ryan invested Slater with more

commonplace forms of prejudice, thereby delivering a more nuanced

41 NYT, 16 Oct. 1959, 27; Jarlett, 239; NYT, 10 Apr. 1960, BR30; Ibid., 13 Dec. 1959, SM35+; Belafonte.

42 NYT, 16 Oct. 1959, 27; Jarlett, 239.

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performance than he had all those years ago in Crossfire. Richard L. Coe, for

one, noticed this difference and maintained thatOdds against Tomorrow

featured “Ryan’s finest work, a subtle union of sensitivity and coarseness.” It is

ironic, and also a testament to Ryan’s skill as an actor, that such an insightful

impersonation of a violent bigot came from a man who in actuality valued

pacifism and liberal-mindedness so highly that, right after an SDG screening of

Odds against Tomorrow, he appeared before black and foreign press

representatives to discuss “the problems of an actor like myself portraying the

kind of character that in real life he finds totally despicable.”43

Besides depicting racial prejudice in more commonplace and

understandable terms than any other film noir, and garnering good reviews for

Belafonte and Ryan,Odds against Tomorrow helped several of its black cast

and crew members gain publicity. Killens, of course, received credit for writing

the script (even though he was fronting for Polonsky), and a review Timein drew

attention to his race, calling him “an able Negro scriptwriter.” As for John Lewis

and the Modern Jazz Quartet, United Artists buoyed interest in their music by

issuing two records:John Lewis’s Sound Track from Odds against Tomorrow

and the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Music from Odds against Tomorrow. Although

jazz critics felt that the latter made a better record, William Leonard considered

the score “haunting,” and Tony Gieske favored Lewis’s prepared approach over

Miles Davis’s improvised score for French director Louis Malle’sAscenseur pour

I’echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows). Among the cast members, Carmen de

43 WP, 12 Nov. 1959, B9;LAT, 1 Oct. 1959, B13.

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Lavallade, who played Kittie, Ingram’s love interest, received notice for being

one of the actual New Yorkers who appears in the film, for being a dancer who

at one time traveled with Lester Horton company, and for having a bit part in

Carmen Jones. More impressively, Richard L. Coe praised actress Kim

Hamilton for her “warm playing of [lngram]’s ex-wife, concerned more for their

daughter than herself.”44 As these examples indicate, the attention that Odds

against Tomorrow received was not limited simply to the film’s two biggest stars.

As Thomas Cripps argues, making Odds against Tomorrow was a

rewarding experience for everyone involved. United Artists, for instance,

released a quality film of social significance, recouped its investment, and

eventually made a small profit.45 The picture provided its cast and crew with

meaningful work, and no one needed such work more than the blacklisted

Polonsky. Its black cast members gained exposure while contributing to a

cinematic exploration of racial themes that was almost ahead of its time. Author

Killens and composer Lewis also received their first credit in connection with an

American film, and in neither case would it be the last. Finally, as an

independent producer, Belafonte succeeded in bringing a black man’s

perspective to the overall content of a mainstream American movie. In his own

estimation, he had established himself as an artist and entrepreneur in a

business where previously “only whites sat at the helm” and in so doing had “set

44 Jarlett, 239; CDT, 11 Oct. 1959, 113; NYT, 20 Dec. 1959, X15; CDT, 14 Oct. 1959, B4; I A/P, 3 Jan. 1960, H12; NYT, 21 Feb. 1959, 25; LAT, 24 Feb. 1959, 25; WP, 12 Nov. 1959, B9.

45 Cripps, Making Movies, 267.

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a new paradigm” for the industry. In fact, with the experience of producing Odds

against Tomorrow still fresh in mind, Belafonte had enough power as a

filmmaker and enough certainty to declare that “the public is always going to see

me in films with social consciousness.”46

As fate would have it, Belafonte would not produce another film for

more than ten years. Within months ofOdds against Tomorrow’s release, he

mothballed HarBel Productions and opted out of his deal with United Artists.

This decision did not mean any great expense to his artistic career or to his

sense of social responsibility. At the time, Belafonte’s prodigious success as a

musical entertainer dwarfed all of his achievements in film, including his work on

Odds against Tomorrow. By 1960, he had succeeded in recording the first LP to

sell more than one million copies, was hosting at least one televised special a

year, and had become the highest paid African American ever, with his

recording contract and Las Vegas performances alone guaranteeing him more

than $200,000 a year47 At the same time, Belafonte’s interest in filmmaking

was giving way to his growing involvement in the civil rights and antinuclear

movements. In the early 1960s, he chaired the cultural division of the National

Committee to Defend Martin Luther King, funded the Freedom Rides, and

participated in the March on the Washington; he also lent his support to the

National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE) and helped lead five

thousand people on an antinuclear march from Madison Square Gardens to

46 Belafonte; WP, 23 Jul. 1961, G2.

47 NYT, 13 Dec. 1959, SM35; CD, 3 Sep. 1960, 18

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United Nations headquarters. Belafonte did not plan to set aside moviemaking

for long, but, in the years that followed, his singing was more profitable than

producing, and no movie promised to make as great a political impact as his

participation in the civil rights movement.48

Belafonte was by no means the only celebrity devoting time and money

to social causes; in fact, by the early 1960s, the entertainment industry was

showing definite signs of recovery from the Red Scare, as many people in show

business visibly supported social causes in a way that had not been seen since

the HUAC hearings. Belafonte’s co-star, Robert Ryan, was instrumental in this

recovery. Throughout the 1950s, he unflaggingly supported the American Civil

Liberties Union, American Friends’ Service Committee, and United World

Federalists, and in September of 1959 he and Steve Allen became co-chairs of

SANE’s Hollywood chapter. When the two men kicked off the group by inviting

nearly 200 guests to a banquet at the Beverly Hills Hotel, they succeed in

producing Hollywood’s largest event on behalf of a social cause in years. In the

months that followed, Ryan, Allen, and Belafonte represented SANE at

preliminary hearings for the Democratic national platform, and Ryan and Shelley

Winters joined Belafonte as members of the Committee to Defend Martin Luther

King’s cultural division 49

48 Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970 (Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 1997), 246; Belafonte.

49 Jarlett, 31, 63, 106, 108; CD, 9 Apr. 1960.

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Noir and the 1960s

Just as the classic period of film noir was ending, Hollywood quietly

discontinued the practice of blacklisting, and left-leaning members of the

entertainment industry expressed their support of social causes— not the least of

which were civil rights and nuclear disarmament—with renewed vigor.

Throughout the 1960s, African Americans continued to achieve advances in

motion pictures, but even greater opportunities became available in television

programming. Television, after all, was the medium by which news coverage

forced the civil rights movement, in all its graphic detail, into the consciousness

of American and international audiences. In a decade when televised news

frequently broadcasted actual images of social and civil unrest, it would have

been a glaring discrepancy indeed if television executives had not

supplemented this coverage with documentary programming and socially

relevant dramas and comedies, many of which highlighted the lives and

experiences of African Americans. Because they did, the final years of the

1960s became, according to J. Fred MacDonald, a “Golden Age” for African

Americans in television.50

Not coincidentally, as the noir style receded from the extra-wide movie

screens of the late 1950s, it reemerged, in a somewhat muted form, in several

of the black-and-white television series of the early 1960s, particularly in

detective shows like Naked City and Peter Gunn and in certain episodes ofThe

50 J. Fred MacDonald, Blacks and White TV: Afro-Americans in Television since 1948 (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983), 107.

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Twilight Zone.5^ While Diahann Carroll, James Edwards, Juano Hernandez,

Cicely Tyson, and other black actors occasionally appeared on individual

episodes,52 the creators of “TV noir” did not expand the opportunities for African

Americans in television in quite the same way that the creators of film noir did

for African Americans in motion pictures.

In its heyday, film noir had depicted interracial brotherhood and violent

racial conflicts. Although, at first, it tended to associate blackness with

corruption and contamination, it ultimately initiated the motion picture careers of

James Edwards and Sidney Poitier, helped at least two black authors and one

black composer receive screen credits, and enabled Harry Belafonte to work as

an independent producer. In the 1960s, with film noir virtually absent from

American theatres, Belafonte having setting aside movie work, and the struggle

for African Americans’ civil rights occurring with renewed urgency in the real

world, mainstream cinematic explorations of racial themes often paled in

comparison to similar explorations on television. It thus fell upon a succession

of rising African American producers and directors—including Sidney Poitier, Bill

Cosby, Gordon Parks, and Melvin van Peebles—to follow in Belafonte’s

footsteps and help reinvigorate American moviemaking. In the meantime, the

motion picture industry’s relative stasis on racial matters served as a final

indication of the beneficial effects film noir had when it graced the silver screen:

51 For a brief history of the noir style in television, see James Ursini, “Angst at Sixty Fields per Second,” in Silver and Ursini, eds., Film Noir Reader, 275-87.

52 MacDonald, 76.

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in many cases, the creators of film noir had helped improve the representation

of African Americans in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera.

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NOIRS IN WHICH AFRICAN AMERICANS

APPEAR (BY YEAR)

1941 (5 films) Blues in the Night, dir. Anatole Litvak City for Conquest, dir. Anatole Litvak High Sierra, dir. Raoul Walsh I Wake Up Screaming, dir. H. Bruce Humberstone The Maltese Falcon, dir. John Huston

1942 (2) The Glass Key, dir. Stuart Heisler This Gun for Hire, dir. Frank Tuttle

1943 (1) Shadow of a Doubt, dir. Alfred Hitchcock

1944 (3) Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder Experiment Perilous, dir. Jacques Tourneur Phantom Lady, dir. Robert Siodmak

1945 (7) Fallen Angel, dir. Otto Preminger The House on 92nd Street, dir. Henry Hathaway Johnny Angel, dir. Edwin L. Marin Lady on a Train, dir. Charles David Mildred Pierce, dir. Michael Curtiz Scarlet Street, dir. Fritz Lang Strange Illusion, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer

1946 (10) The Chase, dir. Arthur Ripley Crack-Up, dir. Irving Reis The Dark Corner, dir. Henry Hathaway Decoy, dir. Jack Bernhard The Killers, dir. Robert Siodmak 172

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The Locket, dir. John Brahm Nobody Lives Forever, dir. Jean Negulesco The Postman Always Rings Twice, dir. Tay Garnett Tomorrow Is Forever, dir. Irving Pichel Undercurrent, dir. Vincente Minnelli

1947 (11) Body and Soul, dir. Robert Rossen Born to Kill, dir. Robert Wise Brute Force, dir. Jules Dassin Dead Reckoning, dir. John Cromwell Kiss of Death, dir. Henry Hathaway The Long Night, dir. Anatole Litvak Out of the Past, dir. Jacques Tourneur Shoot to Kill, dir. William Berke They Won’t Believe Me, dir. Irving Pichel The Unfaithful, dir. Vincent Sherman Unsuspected, dir. Michael Curtiz

1948 (16) Berlin Express, dir. Jacques Tourneur The Big Clock, dir. John Farrow Canon City, dir. Crane Wilbur Force of Evil, dir. Abraham Polonsky I Walk Alone, dir. Byron Haskin I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes, dir. William Nigh Inner Sanctum, dir. Lew Landers The Lady from Shanghai, dir. Orson Welles Larceny, dir. George Sherman Open Secret, dir. John Reinhardt Race Street, dir. Edwin L. Marin Ruthless, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer Secret beyond the Door, dir. Fritz Lang Sorry, Wrong Number, dir. Anatole Litvak The Street with No Name, dir. William Kieghley They Live by Night, dir. Nicholas Ray

1949 (15) The Accused, dir. William Dieterle Champion, dir. Mark Robson Chicago Deadline, dir. Lewis Allen The Crooked Way, dir. Robert Florey The File on Thelma Jordon, dir. Robert Siodmak Flamingo Road, dir. Michael Curtiz House of Strangers, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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Impact, dir. Arthur Lubin Knock on Any Door, dir. Nicholas Ray Moonrise, dir. Frank Borzage The Reckless Moment, dir. Max Ophuls Scene of the Crime, dir. Roy Rowland The Set-Up, dir. Robert Wise Too Late for Tears, dir. Byron Haskin Whirlpool, dir. Otto Preminger

1950 (15) Backfire, dir. Vincent Sherman Born to Be Bad, dir. Nicholas Ray The Breaking Point, dir. Michael Curtiz Destination Murder, dir. Edward L. Cahn DOA, dir. Rudolph Mate Gun Crazy, dir. Joseph H. Lewis In a Lonely Place, dir. Nicholas Ray The Killer That Stalked New York, dir. Earl McEvoy Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, dir. Gordon Douglas A Lady without Passport, dir. Joseph H. Lewis No Way Out, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz 711 Ocean Drive, dir. Joseph M. Newman The Underworld Story, dir. Cy Endfield Walk Softly, Stranger, dir. Robert Stevenson Where Danger Lives, dir. John Farrow

1951 (11) Cry Danger, dir. Robert Parrish Detective Story, dir. William Wyler Fourteen Hours, dir. Henry Hathaway His Kind of Woman, dir. John Farrow House on Telegraph Hill, dir. Robert Wise I Was a Communist for the FBI, dir. Gordon Douglas Lightning Strikes Twice, dir. King Vidor The Second Woman, dir. James V. Kern Strangers on a Train, dir. Alfred Hitchcock The Strip, dir. Leslie Kardos The Well, dir. Russell Rouse

1952 (7) Affair in Trinidad, dir. Vincent Sherman The Las Vegas Story, dir. Robert Stevenson Night without Sleep, dir. Roy Ward Baker The Narrow Margin, dir. Richard Fleischer Ruby Gentry, dir. King Vidor

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The Sellout, dir. Gerald Mayer Sudden Fear, dir. David Miller

1953 (6) Angel Face, dir. Otto Preminger The Blue Gardenia, dir. Fritz Lang City that Never Sleeps, dir. John H. Auer The Glass Wall, dir. Maxwell Shane Pickup on South Street, dir. Samuel Fuller Vicki, dir. Harry Horner

1954 (6) Crime Wave, dir. Andre de Toth Female Jungle, dir. Bruno VeSota Human Desire, dir. Fritz Lang Shield for Murder, dirs. Edmond O’Brien and Howard W. Koch Suddenly, dir. Lewis Allen Witness to Murder, dir. Roy Rowland

1955 (8) The Big Knife, dir. Robert Aldrich House of Bamboo, dir. Samuel Fuller Killer’s Kiss, dir. Stanley Kubrick Kiss Me Deadly, dir. Robert Aldrich Murder Is My Beat, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer The Phenix City Story, dir. Phil Karlson Queen Bee, dir. Ranald MacDougall Women’s Prison, dir. Lewis Seiler

1956 (4) The Harder They Fall, dir. Mark Robson The Killing, dir. Stanley Kubrick A Kiss before Dying, dir. Gerd Oswald Nightmare, dir. Maxwell Shane

1957 (4) House of Numbers, dir. Russell Rouse My Gun Is Quick, dir. Phil Victory Nightfall, dir. Jacques Tourneur Sweet Smell of Success, dir. Alexander MacKendrick

1958 (3) I Want to Live!, dir. Robert Wise Murder by Contract, dir. Irving Lerner Party Girl, dir. Nicholas Ray

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1959 (1) Odds against Tomorrow, dir. Robert Wise

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Author’s Interview

Belafonte, Harry. Telephone interview by author. 14 Apr. 2006.

Books, Articles, and Short Stories

Agee, James. Agee on Film. London: Peter Owen, 1963.

Bernstein, Matthew. “A Tale of Three Cities: The Banning of Scarlet Street." Cinema Journal 35, no. 1 (1995): 27-25.

Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

Bodnar, John.Blue-Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy, and Working People in American Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New expanded ed. New York: Continuum, 1989.

Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton.A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941-1953. Translated by Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002.

Buhle, Paul, and Dave Wagner. A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

______. Blacklisted: The Film Lover’s Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Butler, David. Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from “Phantom Lady” to “The Last Seduction.” Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.

177

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Cain, James M. Double Indemnity. New York: Knopf, 1936. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

______. Mildred Pierce. New York: Knopf, 1941. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Ceplair, Larry, and Steven Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1980.

Chandler, Raymond. Farewell, My Lovely. New York: Knopf, 1940. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir: A Reader. New York: Verso, 1993.

Cripps, Thomas. Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

______. Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1940-1942. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Custen, George F. Twentieth Century’s Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood. New York: BasicBooks, 1997.

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Verso, 1990; New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1992.

Davis, Ossie, and Ruby Dee. With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. New York: William Morrow, 1998.

Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. New York: Verso, 1998.

Dimendberg, Edward. Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Goudsouzian, Aram.Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Glass Key. New York: Knopf, 1931. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

______. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Knopf, 1930. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179

Hemingway, Ernest. “The Killers.” In The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Scribner Paperback Fiction ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

______. To Have and Have Not. Scribner Paperback Fiction ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Henriksen, Margot A. Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Hirsch, Foster. The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. New York: Da Capo, 1983.

______. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999.

Jarlett, Franklin. Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990.

Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. Women in Film Noir. New ed. London: British Film Institute, 1998.

Keaney, Michael F. Film Noir: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003.

Lott, Eric. “The Whiteness of Film Noir.”American Literary History 9, no. 3 (1997): 542-66.

Lyons, Arthur.Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir. USA: Da Capo, 2000.

MacDonald, J. Fred. Blacks and White TV: Afro-Americans in Television since 1948. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983.

McGilligan, Patrick, and Paul Buhle. Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997.

McGrath, Patrick J. John Garfield: The Illustrated Career in Films and on Stage. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993.

Murphet, Julian. “Film Noir and the Racial Unconscious.”Screen 39, no. 1 (1998): 22-35.

Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180

Navasky, Victor S. Naming Names. New York: Viking, 1980.

Nott, Robert. He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield. New York: Limelight Editions, 2003.

Oliver, Kelly, and Benigno Trigo. Noir Anxiety. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Palmer, Barton R., ed. Perspectives on Film Noir. New York: G.K. Hall/Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1996.

Poitier, Sidney. This Life. New York: Knopf, 1980.

Porfirio, Robert, Alain Silver, and James Ursini, eds.Film Noir Reader 3. New York: Limelight Editions, 2002.

Rabinowitz, Paula.Black & White & Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Selby, Spencer. Dark City: The Film Noir. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1984.

Sikov, Ed. On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder. New York: Hyperion, 1998.

Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward, eds. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. 3rd ed. Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1980.

Silver, Alain, and James Ursini, eds. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996.

______. Film Noir Reader 2. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999.

______. Film Noir Reader 4. New York: Limelight Editions, 2004.

Smith, Mona Z. Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee. New York: Faber & Faber, 2004.

Spicer, Andrew. Film Noir. New York: Longman/Pearson Education, 2002.

Telotte, J. P. Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Watts, Jill. Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

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Wittner, Lawrence S. Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970. Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 1997.

Newspapers

Chicago Daily Tribune, 1947-59.

Chicago Defender, 1942-63.

Los Angeles Times, 1945-59.

New York Times, 1945-73.

Washington Post, 1947-61.

Online Resources

Internet Broadway Database. Http://www.ibdb.com.

Internet Movie Database. Http://www.imdb.com.

Videorecordings

For the sake of space, the following entries include only documentaries and recorded interviews. Many of the feature-length films that are most crucial to the argument of this paper appear in the Appendix.

BFI TV. A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies. Produced by Florence Dauman. Directed and Written by Martin Scorsese and Michael Henry Wilson. 226 min. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 1995. DVD.

Encore Media Group. Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist. Produced by William Miles. Directed and Written by Alexandra M. Isles. 60 min. Unapix Home Entertainment, 1999. Videocassette.

Indiana University and Television Services. An Interview with Clarence Muse. Produced and directed by John Winninger. 60 min. Indiana University Audio-Visual Center, 1982. Videocassette.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.