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Home , Charlton Heston, Guy Green (filmmaker), Jeanne Crain, Joanna Moore, Orson Welles

The Interracial Romance as Primal Drama: and Diamond Head

• Alan Marcus

Introduction In the late- and early-, a new genre of films explored the theme of the interracial romance. This filmic idiom was a contemporaneous response to a turbulent and questioning period in race relations in America. With advances in civil rights and an increasingly enlightened and more liberal post-war American • Fig. 1: and in Touch of society, the option of interracial dating became a Evil (1958). topical issue. Though still largely taboo at the time between some racial groups, part of the allure of the idea of interracial romance may have so in an attempt to present its core theme – that been the way body colour operates as a marker of our primal instinct for survival. In turn, the for establishing genetic difference. As will be primal drama provides a model for analysing discussed, recent genetic research indicates that forms of human behaviour as perceived at the we use various signifiers to determine mate time of the film’s conception. Primal narratives selection, difference being one of them. In are necessarily reductive to permit the viewer to 1950s–60s America, though, there were social confront issues of survival, sexuality, self-sufficiency, strictures on selecting a mate from another exotic natural environments, and both the appeal ethnic group, particularly between whites and and the threat of the Other. In Touch of Evil, Afro-Americans. Charlton Heston's character (Ramon Miguel ‘Mike’ In this article, I examine the way the new Vargas) is the Other and serves as the object of Hollywood interracial romance operated within racist taunts (Figure 1), whereas in Diamond a broader genre I have referred to elsewhere as Head Heston plays the role of a bigot (Richard ‘primal drama’, and consider its historical context ‘King’ Howland). At a time in America when race and audience appeal.1 The two principal case relations were undergoing a public upheaval, studies used to investigate this theme are Touch studios and filmmakers who wanted to capitalise of Evil (1958), directed for by on such topics did so in ways that were palatable Orson Wells, and Diamond Head (1963), directed to censors and commercially viable with potential for by Guy Green. Both films audiences. As a genre, the interracial romance feature Charlton Heston, one of the leading box had its own benefits for tackling issues associated office actors, who was interviewed in preparation with race relations, allowing the filmmaker to for this article, and whose star persona is a make certain moral and ethical points that in any dominant feature in reappraising the films’ import.2 other genre might be less effective. The genre I term ‘primal drama’ often features Touch of Evil and Diamond Head make for representations of the Other as its subject. It does an intriguing comparison. The former was not

Film Studies • Issue 11 • Winter 2007 • 14 Interracial Romance as Primal Drama in Touch of Evil and Diamond Head • particularly successful upon its release, but has culminating in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I have a come to be lionized as one of the great films dream’ speech. The year 1963 also saw a number in cinema history. Diamond Head, by contrast, of violent acts by opponents to civil rights, was a mainstream studio picture that was including the death of activist Medgar Evers, and commercially popular, but which has the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in subsequently slipped from view and about which Birmingham, Alabama by members little has been written critically. The industry trade that resulted in the deaths of four black magazine, Variety, did not think highly of the film schoolgirls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, when it was released, announcing that ‘beneath Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley. The this alluring veneer lurks a contrived and banal following year, three Freedom Riders, Michael melodrama of bigotry and bloodlines in modern, Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman heterogeneous Hawaii’.3 Both films were were murdered, shortly before the Civil Rights Act adaptations from novels: Touch of Evil from of 1964 outlawed discrimination in voting, public Badge of Evil (1956) by Robert Wade and William accommodations and employment. Miller who together used the penname Whit Marriage between blacks and whites was Masterson, and Diamond Head from a book by not completely unknown prior to the 1960s, the same title written by Peter Gilman and in fact in the 1870s in Fort Mill, South Carolina, published in 1960.4 Quickly brought to the for example, there were 33 mixed race marriages, screen, the novels presented interracial issues in 29 of which the woman was white.6 In the that were transfigured in key ways when adapted main, though, such liaisons were strongly for the cinema. Previously, Hollywood’s discouraged and couples could be ostracized, censorship code specifically disallowed films that killed or punished under the law. Black men featured acts of miscegenation.5 The word who were accused of raping white women ‘miscegenation’, derived from the Latin miscere were severely dealt with, as in the case of Jesse (to mix) and genus (race), became enshrined in Washington, a 17-yeard old retarded farmhand a series of state statutes throughout the U.S. who was castrated, mutilated, burned alive and outlawing interracial liaisons. lynched by a cheering mob. Both the mayor and the chief of police joined in the lynching, which took place in Waco, Texas in 1916. Historical Backdrop to the Interracial Lynching became a primary tool for terrorising Romance the black community and deterring intimate In addition to featuring the same star and themes relations between the races, particularly if of racial prejudice and interracial romance, the initiated by black men. Genital mutilation was two films provide neat historical bookends with a common component of a lynching event, their release dates of 1958 and 1963. With the including cutting off the victim’s penis and rise of the in America and stuffing it in his mouth. Through the , its violent backlash, racial issues were at the ‘lynching postcards’ retained their popularity, forefront of the domestic political scene, marked often featuring the amused perpetrators. by events that included the arrest in 1955 of Rosa Of the 4,733 persons lynched between 1882 Parks for violating city bus segregation laws, and and 1959, 85% were in southern States, with the lynching that same year of 14-year-old events sometimes serving as a form of family Chicagoan Emmett Till for flirting with a white entertainment attended by large crowds in the shop girl in Money, Mississippi. There followed hundreds or thousands. Over 200 bills were the Little Rock Nine’s attempts to enter high submitted to the U.S. Congress to make lynching school aided by National Guard troops in 1957, a federal crime, but all were defeated, and it was the 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina not until June 2005 that the Senate Woolworths’ lunch counter sit-in, and the August formally apologized for its inability to enact a 1963 Civil Rights march on Washington, federal anti-lynching law.

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Interest in the taboo and unjust restrictions that the U.S. Supreme Court declared Virginia’s regarding sexual relations between blacks and anti-miscegenation statute unconstitutional in whites became the subject of the romance novel, the case Loving v. Virginia, thereby ending all Strange Fruit, published by the southern writer legal restriction to marriage based on race in the Lillian Smith in 1944. It generated substantial United States. Classic films that explored themes national interest and controversy, selling 550,000 of racism and integration, such as In the Heat of copies by May 1945. The story, which was based the Night and the landmark Guess Who’s on a song by Billie Holliday about a lynching, Coming to Dinner, both of which starred Sidney revolves around a white man, Tracy Dean, and his Poitier, were not released until 1967. While these love for a black woman, Nonnie Anderson, set in films dealt specifically with white versus black 1920s Maxwell, Georgia. In most southern states, social issues, Touch of Evil and Diamond Head miscegenation laws were passed making it illegal can be seen as early forerunners of the genre. for members of different races to marry. In a In fact, the same year that Diamond Head was 1955 decision of the Supreme Court of Appeals released, Poitier won the Academy Award for of Virginia, a ringing endorsement for the Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field in doctrine of White supremacy concluded that the 1963. Although often confirming racial State’s legitimate purposes were ‘to preserve stereotypes, films of this period were also the racial integrity of its citizens’ and to prevent developing black characters in more nuanced ‘the corruption of blood’ of ‘a mongrel breed of ways.10 The previous year, won the citizens’, and ‘the obliteration of racial pride’.7 Best Actor Academy Award for his performance In June 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred in another film on racial prejudice in To Kill a Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a Mockingbird (1962). Given the sensitivity of the white man, were married in the District of time, it is significant that Touch of Evil and Columbia. Shortly after their wedding the Lovings Diamond Head highlighted issues germane to returned to Virginia and established their marital contemporary black/white relations by setting abode in Caroline County. A grand jury issued an them not in Middle America but in the less indictment charging the Lovings with violating contentious transitory world of a Mexican/ Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages, and in American border town and the distant and 1959 they pleaded guilty to the charge and were exoticized Hawaiian islands. sentenced to one year in jail. judge Touch of Evil and Diamond Head thus followed suspended the sentence on the condition that a progressive trend of exploring racist attitudes the Lovings leave the State and not return to towards people of colour through the vehicle of Virginia together for 25 years. In his judgement the interracial romance. Perhaps surprisingly, he held the view that: both Charlton Heston and director Guy Green remarked that the racial theme in Diamond Head Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, was not their primary motivation, but rather that malay and red, and he placed them on separate the story itself was captivating.11 Notable earlier continents. And but for the interference with his examples of the genre include Duel in the Sun arrangement there would be no cause for such (1942) and The Searchers (1956), which like marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows Diamond Head presented opposition to people of that he did not intend for the races to mix.8 mixed ancestry or ‘half-breeds’. The figure of the At this time, 16 states still prohibited and half-breed gave filmmakers a unique dramatic punished marriages on the basis of racial opportunity to further investigate racial classifications. A Gallup poll in 1958 found that prejudices. In The Searchers when , only four percent of whites approved marriage symbolic upholder of traditional American values between whites and blacks, and that in the south and the patriarchal order, as the character Ethan that figure was reduced to just one percent.9 It Edwards shuns his adopted nephew Martin was not until almost a decade later in June 1967 Pawley because he is one-eighth Cherokee – that

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a white actress) and a white man. In this way, the film aptly presages audience sympathies a decade later for the appealing Mexican lover, played by a white man in Touch of Evil. Regardless of gender roles and whether the person of colour was in fact played by a white actor, in the –50s the interracial romance presented the potential risk of intimate association, rather than an acceptable societal paradigm. Other films of this period which touched on interracial relationships included Island in the Sun (1957), Kings Go Forth (1958) • Fig. 2: The interracial couple in Pinky (1949). and Night of the Quarter Moon (1959). Some other national cinemas, including France, were more open to exploring black/white relationships, is one-eighth too much. The idea immediately as in Le Blanc et Le Noir (1931) in which a white conjures up the spectre of the Nazis’ racial litmus married woman becomes pregnant by a black test, in which the slightest drop of Jewish blood lover, though the film was not distributed in was sufficient to send an individual to Auschwitz. the U.S.14 Coming so soon after the Nazi era, the poignancy of the film’s message could hardly be lost. In fact, Touch of Evil and Heston’s Star Persona the original screenplay for The Searchers recorded the line as: ‘one-fourth Cherokee’. That was Given his status, John Wayne's decision to play crossed out in the script, and substituted with a role in The Searchers that was against type, the figure ‘one-eighth’ in order to accentuate in which his character as the hero was depicted Ethan's extreme views on racial purity.12 from the outset as a blatant racist, substantially Another early example of the interracial magnified the film's subtext and impact. The role romance was ’s Pinky (1949) released of the star is fundamental in terms of how they by -Fox. The narrative featured function within the film text, and ideologically a light skinned woman, Patricia ‘Pinky’ Johnson the way their presence corresponds to what () who ‘passes’ for white while Richard Dyer refers to as ‘structured polysemy’: training to be a nurse in the north.13 Engaged to namely, ‘the multiplicity of meanings and affects a white doctor () and returning they embody and the attempt so to structure to visit her dark skinned grandmother (Ethel them that some meanings and affects are Waters) in the south, she comes into contact with foregrounded and others are masked or racial prejudice which acts as a catalyst for displaced’.15 bringing her romantic relationship to an end In his autobiography, Charlton Heston records (Figure 2). The film, which starred Ethel his public opposition to racism during the 1960s, Barrymore, was worthy and provocative enough and includes a photograph in the book that to garner an Academy Award nomination for shows him holding a placard, protesting against Jeanne Crain. The suggestion being advanced in racial prejudice.16 He took part in Martin Luther Pinky that it is better to disavow the need for King, Jr.’s 1963 Washington march, and was ‘passing’, and acknowledge the integrity of one’s photographed at the demonstration with Harry racial distinction, even at the price of sacrificing Belafonte and (Figure 3). His desire romance, carried mixed messages. It accepts to transcend traditional racial stereotypes is given racial divisions within American society and the further credence by having appeared as inappropriateness of a black/white liaison, even in a 1946 theatrical production of Romeo and between a woman who looks white (played by Juliet in which half the cast was white and half

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is oppressed because of his Jewish ancestry. He is made a slave and we see him, bare-chested, in chains (Figure 4) – an image reprised in (1968), where again we see him subjugated and bare-chested in chains. Thus, Touch of Evil, which was bracketed by the release of The and Ben Hur, represents an important continuum in Heston’s evolution as a character subjected to racial prejudice. In Touch of Evil, Heston’s Mike Vargas is a law official with the Mexican government, whose honeymoon with his young bride, Susan (Janet Leigh), is interrupted at the outset of the film by a murder. The Texan policeman in charge of the case is Frank Quinlan (), who immediately takes a dislike to Vargas, and sees him as an obstacle in his attempt to frame the suspect, Sanchez (Victor Milan), a Mexican shoe clerk. As an illicit counterpart to the interracial romance between Mike and Susan, Sanchez is a boyfriend of Marcia Linneker (), • Fig. 3: Charlton Heston, and Sidney the white American daughter of the wealthy Poitier, March on Washington, DC, 1963. murdered businessman. From Quinlan’s first sneering remark to Vargas, ‘You don’t look like one of them . . . a Mexican, black. In an interview with the actor published in I mean’, the spectator feels flummoxed. After all, 1974 he reflected on that era, stating that ‘the despite his darkened complexion, this is not a social comment implied in [certain films] was Mexican stereotype, but Charlton Heston, an important to me’.17 Although Heston later all-American hero dressed in a well-cut suit: became known for holding strongly conservative I have Orson to thank for the fact that the part is as political views, as symbolized by his speeches interesting as it was, because it was his idea to make it while President of the National Rifle Association a Mexican detective, recalls Heston. I said, ‘I can’t play (1997–2003), when interviewed by the author a Mexican detective!’ He said, ‘Sure you can! We’ll dye during this period he expressed pride in those your hair black, and put on some dark makeup and of his film roles that advanced the theme of draw a black moustache’ . . . And they did, and it’s racial equality.18 plausible enough I suppose.20 Charlton Heston’s popularity was founded on two benchmark films, The Ten Commandments It is Quinlan, with his bloated form, accentuated (1956) and Ben Hur (1959), for which he by Welles’ liberal use of the wide-angle lens, who received the Academy Award for Best Actor. is positioned as a figure of disgust. In this regard, Heston’s star persona was infused with the aura his representation of the excesses of power of moral figures, such as and Ben Hur, mirrors his role in (1941). The who were prepared to face death rather than spectator's natural sympathy, though, is with compromise their beliefs. As a star, Heston Heston. His star prestige underscores the embodies a social type, an idealized concept inappropriateness of any racist attitude directed of how one should act.19 In both The Ten towards him. ‘Touch of Evil is about the decline Commandments and Ben Hur, Heston’s character and fall of Captain Quinlan’, observes Heston.

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• Fig. 4: Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956).

‘My part is a kind of witness to this’.21 The Vargas spends much of the film with his Latin suggestion that Mike and Susan’s sexual machismo constrained within a three-piece suit relationship is injudicious is denoted three and an uncertain manner – ill at ease in minutes into the film when the couple have just negotiating interracial relations with his crossed over to the American side of the border. newlywed and her society’s overbearing Their kiss is immediately interrupted by an hegemony. Yet, his white bride quickly looses her explosion, a metaphorical retort signalling clothing, her breasts projecting against a tight society's indignation. The bomb was placed by a sweater under the scrutiny of an alien flashlight. Mexican, as we ultimately learn, in Linneker's car, Removing her top in front of an open window, ending his illicit relationship with a stripper. she exposes herself to the scopophilic gaze of the Vargas’ response: ‘This could be bad for us’, can inappropriate Mexican Other: Pancho, his leather- be variously interpreted, indicating the friction jacketed Mexican gang members, and Uncle Joe between white America and people of colour in Grandi. The film is suggestive in its sexual the late-1950s.22 overtones, but refrains from being explicit. The In this tangled eroticized racial web, the film director explained: ‘I do not like to show sex on positions Susan as the sexual aggressor and Mike the screen crudely. Not because of morality or as the distracted husband. The only time we hear Puritanism; my objection is of a purely aesthetic him called by his Mexican forename, Miguel, is order.’23 when she uses it in the heat of passion; thus As Terry Comito observes, Janet Leigh and encouraging the spectator to see him in the Charlton Heston ‘seem out of place in such a stereotype of the desirous Latin lover, despite his terrain’.24 They constantly appear in a state of physical awkwardness. Rather than legitimize the discomfort, as if the border between their two relationship, Susan’s advances serve to countries provides a liminal space in which foreshadow her ultimate vulnerability, when she neither can establish a comfort zone or secure later becomes the victim of drug usage and their authority. The backdrop is one of implied gang rape by a group of Mexican youths. destabilization, whether attempting to cross

Film Studies • Issue 11 • Winter 2007 • 19 • Interracial Romance as Primal Drama in Touch of Evil and Diamond Head the border, as they do at the outset of the film, (), and then after he is killed, falls in or in close proximity on either side of it. The love with his half-brother Dean (). urban and rural settings are hostile, making them As if to underline the hypocrisy behind his own emblematic of society’s dismay at their new and narrow-minded views, Howland has a Chinese- sexualized union. Ultimately, these factors Hawaiian mistress, Lei Villanueva, (France Nuyen), encourage the couple’s estrangement. In whom he sleeps with but refuses to marry. After working against his traditionally over-confident Lei becomes pregnant, King encourages her to persona, Heston felt that he ‘probably learned have an rather than risk a mixed race more about acting in that film from Welles than offspring inheriting his estate. When she dies I have in any one film from any director, which giving birth to King’s illegitimate child, he rejects is not necessarily to say that I gave my best not only the baby but also his sister and her performance in it, because I don’t think I did, Hawaiian lover. Following a torturous searching but just about acting overall’.25 of his conscience, King decides in the closing minutes of the film that a humanistic approach to his blood kin is more important than Diamond Head and the New Border upholding his stance on racial purity. His actions When Columbia Pictures released Diamond Head, mirror those of John Wayne’s character, Ethan it was publicized as ‘The Giant Story of Modern Edwards, at the end of The Searchers, who Hawaii' (Figure 5). The poster shows King with a rescues rather than kills his niece Debbie, who whip, as he attacks a native Hawaiian, echoing has been raised as a Native American. the whipping of plantation slaves in the south, Charlton Heston’s Howland is a strong and and of Afro-Americans in later years by the Ku decisive man in his prime, who is being Klux Klan. The word ‘modern’ in the headline headhunted by the politicians to become one of refers to the fact that Hawaii became the Hawaii’s first senators. A synopsis of the film country’s fiftieth state in 1959, the year in which prepared by Columbia Studios’ publicity the film is set, and as such represented a new department gives a colourful impression of border territory. As with the locale for Touch of Howland’s exaggerated reputation: Evil, this narrative exists on the periphery of The striding figure, the sure voice, and the hard money America’s mainland – a transitional place where of Richard ‘King’ Howland (Charlton Heston) dominates unseemly unisons might take place without the fertile island of Kauai. . . . The big ‘H’ is on the necessarily achieving society’s blessing. Set on the imposing gate of Manoalani, the plantation estate. . . . beautiful island of Kauai, the narrative offers a It stands for power. For both benefactor and bastard. subtextual examination of contemporary Howland is Emperor of Kauai.26 American race relations. Diamond Head was directed by an outsider, Guy Green, as his first Despite the feudal overtones and the image film in America, having won an Academy Award of a virile ruler occupying a fecund environment, at the age of 33 as director of photography on Heston’s figure is out of step with the modern ’s Great Expectations (1946). The world. His character has obvious similarities to British also Lean’s other the patriarch in Duel in the Sun, Senator Dickens classic, Oliver Twist (1948). McCanles (), whose intolerance Charlton Heston’s Howland is the proud scion of Pearl Chavez (), a young woman of a blue blood family who has extensive of Mexican/Indian descent, is encrypted in the plantations, cattle and shipping interests in wheelchair that embodies the twisted Hawaii. His position as the symbolic patriarch is perspectives that cripple his worldview. underlined by the nickname ‘King’, used by his Howland’s assumed moral authority and role as sister Sloan () and others. Sloan upholder of the status quo is signified by the defies King’s objections to her engagement to a white Cadillac he drives and the white stallion he young Hawaiian man (Figure 6), Paul Kahana rides. When Howland faces the severity of the

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• Fig. 5: Diamond Head (1963) publicity poster. racial views that separate him from his only close and outdated views he holds. His final act of relatives, his son and his sister, he embarks upon redemption is to drive his convertible, with a frenetic ride on his stallion. The white horse an empty bassinette in the back seat held by becomes lathered in sweat and covered in dirt, a sympathetic Chinese butler, in search of his as does Howland, sullied with the distasteful mixed-race son, his sister and her mixed-race

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• Fig. 6: Diamond Head (1963) poster insert.

fiancée – a bold new paradigm for the multi- self-styled advocate for change, following cultural American nuclear family of the future. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Gandheisque model of The representation of the three principal non-violence, positioned in marked contrast Hawaiians in the film, Paul and Dean Kahana to Howland’s fierce demeanour. Despite his and their mother is telling. The actor selected for high standing as a wealthy white rancher, King the role of Paul was James Darren, a singer and represents a backward and rural past – until he performer popular with teenage audiences, demonstrates an ability to change. ensuring that his character would attract sympathy and throw doubt on the racism he is Adapting the Novels subjected to. George Chakiris, fresh from winning an Academy Award for his role as Bernardo in While Touch of Evil bears many similarities to West Side Story (1961), was cast as Dean, a the novel on which it is based, the two differ in ‘hapa-haole’, half-white and half-native Hawaiian salient ways that highlight the degree to which – a character who operates across racial Welles decided to foreground the racial theme. In boundaries like Martin Pawley in The Searchers. the novel, the bomb explodes in the victim’s San In a confrontation with Dean 22 minutes into the Diego beach house, rather than at the Mexican film near the beginning of Act II, Howland border. As a place and space, the border provides remarks: ‘Let’s take a look at you. A hapa-haole. Welles with greater opportunity to explore racial Two people jumping around inside the same skin. intersections. The hero of the novel is not the It’s so crowded in there you can’t sit, stand or Mexican Mike Vargas, but Mitch Holt, an Anglo- lie down.’ Saxon married to a Mexican named Connie. As The Hawaiian brothers are depicted not as John Stubbs notes, ‘American prejudice against beach boys, but as college educated and Mexicans, crucial in the movie, is not a major cosmopolitan. Dean is a doctor – another device issue in the novel.’27 However, towards the end used to legitimate the worthiness of Sidney of the novel when Connie is being implicated in Poitier’s character, Dr. Prentice, as a suitor for drug usage, Mitch Holt warns the district attorney Joanna Drayton in Guess Who’s Coming to that: ‘On top of everything else, she’s of Mexican Dinner. Dean Kahana rises in his role as a descent. You can make a lot out of that because,

22 • Film Studies • Issue 11 • Winter 2007 Interracial Romance as Primal Drama in Touch of Evil and Diamond Head • as every American jury knows, it's the foreign-born these people, to go out with them is another matter. that cause all our crime and vice’.28 His comment You of all people. Be friendly with them, Sloan. echoes long-standing nativistic perspectives. But don’t – well, never get too close.32 Welles also transformed the shoe clerk engaged to Linneker's daughter into a Mexican. In the film, this line is given to King’s sister, Laura, The switch allows Welles’ character to frame an who retains her contemptuousness of Hawaiians individual of minority background with the crime, throughout the story: ‘At least Paul has always thereby playing to the scapegoat fear, while known his place. . . . Now, it’s one thing to be Vargas, of the same ethnic origin, is able to assist with these people, if you must . . . ’ The his countryman by uncovering the crime, and rhetoric of both Laura and King correspond to exposing Quinlan to investigation. Despite his rigid, stereotyped views of the Other and a fear brutal tactics, Quinlan’s hunch proves to be right. of miscegenation. Welles also changes the ethnicity of the novel's As a contemporary drama set in Hawaii around gangster family, the Buccios, from Italians to the the time of the book's publication in 1960, it Mexican Grandis. Welles has refigured the locale would have been out of keeping for a Hawaiian- and the racial roles in order to maximize the born white man to refer to a native Hawaiian as dramatic opportunities for interracial conflict. being ‘black’. It is more likely that the author is By altering the focus from Mitch as the central using the premise of racial conflict to reflect character in the book to Quinlan in the film mainland black/white relations. What makes it version, Welles assures that the perpetrator of doubly unusual in this context is that during the racial prejudice occupies centre stage. ‘He totally civil rights era there were few such public re-wrote the script in about seventeen days, tensions between Hawaii’s multi-cultural (white, which I knew he would,’ recalled Charlton Chinese, Japanese, Philippino and native Heston following his agreement to do the picture Hawaiian) communities. The author makes if the studio appointed Welles as director.29 reference to this point later in the book, perhaps Peter Gilman’s novel differs in various ways in an effort to emphasize Howland’s bigotry. from the film adaptation of Diamond Head, but A visitor to the islands observes: ‘Perhaps, she the main characters and essential themes of thought, this land in the middle of the vast sea cultural difference, interracial romance and social was a real racial paradise. Or as close to one as acceptance are transferred to the screen version. could be fashioned. There were thirty different In its review of the film, the LA Times noted racial groups in the Territory, and never a race that such ‘cattle-baron-dynasty affairs . . . usually riot.’33 However, in an exchange in the novel take place close to the Mexican border, between King and Dean, King underlines his so that racial conflicts can be added to all the objections to interracial couplings: ‘If these – others’.30 Although both Charlton Heston and these mixed marriages are more Guy Green were drawn to the screenplay, written accepted nowadays, it doesn’t make them more by Marguerite Roberts, neither had read the correct. It’s just a sign of our decaying standards novel.31 Gilman is forthright in his descriptions of and ideals. A lessening of human dignity for both King Howland's racial attitudes (he is called Aaron races involved.’34 Howland in the novel) and associates being Hawaii, where mixed marriages were native Hawaiian with blackness. When Sloan first commonplace, provides the artificial setting for mentions that she is going out on a date with a verbal exchange that was more indicative of Paul Kahana, Howland’s response is: debates relating to racial attitudes in mainland America. This approach is germane to the film I’ve got nothing against him. Except that he’s not for and the book, rather than a subtext imposed by you. Why? I mean, how do you seem so sure? Why? the filmmakers. Howland’s position as a Goddamn it, Sloan, he’s black, that’s why, Aaron said segregationist is given further elaboration when irritably. It’s one thing being friendly and cordial with he says to Paul Kahana: ‘Don’t you tell me what

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• Fig. 7: Dream sequence in Diamond Head (1963). to do, you lousy nigger! . . . Look, boy, maybe my find least and most appealing, demonstrate bird brained sister turned out a nigger-lover, but that females prefer MHC-dissimilar over MHC- that doesn’t mean the whole Howland family can similar males, resulting in greater offspring be pushed around and degraded!’35 He goes on heterozygosity and viability. This outcome to call Paul a ‘Gook bastard!’36 This rhetoric in signifies the potential fitness benefits of the book is substantially toned down in the film, preferences based on those qualities. Since infant and the direct association with Afro-Americans health is critical for evolutionary success, our made more discrete. conscious desire and our apparent latent ability to assist mate selection by opting for difference goes to the heart of this article in regard to the The Interracial Romance and Its Genetic role it reflects in filmic representations of Appeal interracial romance. Our flexibility in mate A rationale for the considerable public interest selection is traditionally mediated by familial stimulated by the interracial romance genre may pressures and expectations, which are themselves be found in recent genetic research on mate presaged by social and cultural boundaries. selection. In studies conducted with mice and Taboos against forging intimate relationships in humans, researchers have established a America between whites and blacks, particularly connection between odour preferences and MHC in the 1950s–60s, as discussed above, acted as (major histocompatibility complex) genes – which both a restriction and potential attraction. encode the proteins that make up a vital part of Skin colour provides an instant and visible our immune system.37 These indicate that our marker for ancestral geographical difference, and natural instinct is to seek out mates who offer a hence potential favourability for MHC-dissimilar greater degree of genetic difference. This way of mate selection. The interracial romance as primal assisting sexual selection by using scent to drama therefore responds to our genetic survival distinguish between individuals with similar or instincts. Diamond Head presents a clear dissimilar genotypes, abets humans and other illustration of this point, when in the film King animals to avoid inbreeding and minimize the appears to have incestuous desires for his sister risk of copying mutations that could result in Sloan. In a dream sequence while the two are birth defects and greater susceptibility to disease. bathing, she imagines him as her lover – a Studies in which participants identify body cultural taboo that corresponds to a deleterious odour on T-shirts worn by the opposite sex they genetic outcome (Figure 7). Even the trade

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speaks her mind but ‘knows her place’) is an indicator of racial roles linked to the country’s slave past, and a comment on received views on racial typecasting and traditional employment prospects. It is not until Katherine Hepburn’s character (Christina Drayton) agrees to the suitability of the match, and ’s character (Matt Drayton) carefully works through the pros and cons in a public forum and bestows his secular blessing, sanctified by his priest friend’s approval (Monsignor Ryan), that the interracial union is allowed to proceed. The Academy Award Katherine Hepburn received for her performance as the understanding and supportive parent in the film was, in part, tacit approval of Hollywood’s desire to embrace a new open-mindedness. • Fig. 8: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). The crux of this integrationist drama performed a bridge to white society’s long-standing fear of black penetration of the white woman. Maid Tillie (Isabelle Sanford) observes, ‘Civil Rights is one journal ’s review thing, but this here is another!’ Hepburn and at the time mentioned the film’s implied incest Tracy’s careful reasoning is too early historically subtext.38 The supposition is advanced that for either Touch of Evil or Diamond Head, where such is his desire to retain a ‘pure’ bloodline, even attractive and professionally talented members that failing to find an appropriate white suitor, of other races (relying on heavy make-up in he imagines a sexual union with his sister, rather Heston’s case) who are not actually black are still than permit her to cross the colour bar. Thus the castigated. Fear of black penetration is made film implicitly balances two genetic alternatives, explicit in Heston’s speech in Diamond Head: allowing the audience to evaluate the merits These islands are the showcase of the United States. of each. The place where we prove to all the races of the world Successful liaisons rely on more than ‘good that all men are equal in all things. This is where we (genetically enhancing) chemistry’, but are also open all doors to all people [but]. . . Not the door to my determined by sufficient shared values, cultural sister’s bedroom. commonalities and social acceptance. By the time the Civil Rights movement had led to a more Although Diamond Head is a forerunner of liberal social climate and greater racial sensitivity black/white interracial romances (a.k.a. Guess in American society, the 1967 film, Guess Who’s Who’s Coming to the Luau), it and Touch of Evil Coming to Dinner, was able to conclude with a result in characters being subjected to violence or successful liaison between a black man and a death. The travails suffered by the main white woman (Figure 8). But, it only occurs characters and the hostility they endure because Sidney Poitier’s character is highly corresponds to the violent racial conflict educated, charismatic and exceptionally American society was experiencing at the time. In accomplished professionally; and his lover’s 1965, for example, a white woman, Viola Liuzzo, family are liberal and affluent, living in that most was shot dead for sitting in the front seat of a car liberal of American cities – San Francisco. The fact with a black man in Selma, Alabama; and in that they have a black maid (Tillie Binks, who 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., who received the

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Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, was assassinated in 14 T. Cripps, Slow Fade to Black (Oxford, Oxford Memphis, Tennessee the year after Guess Who’s University Press, 1977), p. 212. 15 R. Dyer, Stars (London, , 1998), Coming to Dinner was released. In Touch of Evil p. 3. the white lover is attacked, and in Diamond Head 16 C. Heston, In the Arena (, Simon and the Hawaiian fiancée is stabbed to death. Both Schuster, 1995). films are examples of primal dramas, signposting 17 C. Heston, ‘I Like to Think of Myself as a our on-going obsession with cultural and ethnic Professional’, Film Heritage, 10:1 (1974), 2, 4. 18 Heston, Interview (1998). difference, theories of racial superiority, and a 19 O. Klapp, Heroes, Villains and Fools (Englewood desire to imagine the Other's landscape as an Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 11. exotic site to be controlled. The role of the star 20 C. Heston, ‘Heston on Welles, an Interview by James within a primal drama serves to accentuate these Delson’, Take One, 3:6 (1971), 7. 21 . areas of interest and conflict, while steering the Ibid 22 W. Bywater, ‘The Visual Pleasure of Patriarchal spectator towards a particular moral judgment. Cinema’, Film Criticism, XIV:3 (1990), 31. Despite the tentative advances made in Guess 23 A. Sarris, Interviews With Film Directors (New York, Who’s Coming to Dinner, 40 years later there Bobbs-Merrill, 1997), p. 462. remains a dearth of mainstream Hollywood films 24 T. Comito (ed.), Touch of Evil (New Brunswick, 39 Rutgers Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 18–19. that present black/white sexual relationships. In 25 Heston, ‘I Like to Think of Myself as a Professional’, films such as The Pelican Brief (1993), Courage 23. Under Fire (1996), I, (2004) and Inside 26 J. C. Flinn, Studio Director of Publicity and Man (2005), the black and white leads are not Advertising, ‘Synopsis, Diamond Head’ (Hollywood, Columbia Studios, n.d.), Margaret Herrick Library, permitted to go further than assisting each other. Motion Picture Academy. While interracial liaisons are commonplace in film 27 J. C. Stubbs, ‘The Evolution of Orson Welles's Touch narratives, Hollywood’s social restrictions on of Evil from Novel to Film’, Cinema Journal (Winter black/white romances continue to be the rule. 1985), 176. Some borders are hard to cross, irrespective of 28 Masterson, Badge of Evil, p. 189. 29 Heston, ‘Heston on Welles’, 7. instinctual genetic desire. 30 P. Scheuer, ‘Dynasty in Hawaii Finds Going Rough’, L. A. Times (15 Feb 1963). Notes 31 Heston, Interview (1998); Green, Interview (1998). 32 Gilman, Diamond Head, p. 85. 1 A. Marcus, ‘Nanook of the North as Primal Drama’, 33 Ibid., p. 145. Visual Anthropology, 19: 3–4 (2006), 201–22. 34 Ibid., p. 33. 2 C. Heston, Interview with Author, Beverly Hills, CA 35 Ibid., p. 178. (14 Sept 1998). 36 Ibid., p. 179. 3 Variety, ‘Diamond Head review’ (26 Dec 1962). 37 See C. Wedekind and D. Penn, ‘MHC genes, body 4 W. Masterson, Badge of Evil (New York, Dodd Mead, odours, and odour preferences’, Nephrology Dialysis 1956); P. Gilman, Diamond Head (New York, Transplant, 15 (2000), 1269–71; M. Milinski and Coward-McCann, 1960). C. Wedekind, ‘Evidence for MHC–correlated perfume 5 R. Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies (New York, Vintage preferences in humans’, Behavioral Ecology, 12:2 Books, 2003), p. 95. (2001), 140–49; R. S. Craig and L. Morris Gosling, 6 Ibid., p. 71. ‘Genetic similarity and quality interact in mate choice 7 U.S. Supreme Court, Loving v. Commonwealth of decisions by female mice’, Nature Genetics, 35:1 Virginia, 388 U.S. I (1967). (2003), 103–6; P. S. Santos et al, ‘New evidence that 8 Ibid. the MHC influences odor perception in humans: 9 Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies, p. 88. a study with 58 Southern Brazilian students’, 10 D. Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Hormones and Behavior, 47:4 (2005), 384–88. Bucks (Oxford, Roundhouse, 1994). 38 J. Powers, ‘Diamond Head has Potent Ingredients, 11 Heston, Interview (1998); G. Green, Interview with Name Values’, The Hollywood Reporter, CLXXIII:22 Author, Beverly Hills, CA (10 Apr 1998). (26 Sept 1962), 3. 12 F. Nugent, The Searchers Draft Screenplay (1955), 39 S. Cole, ‘The Skin Game: Why can’t Denzel Margaret Herrick Library, Motion Picture Academy. Washington score with white women on screen’, 13 For a history of ‘racial passing’ see Kennedy, http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/skingame.html Interracial Intimacies, pp. 281–366. (28 March 2006).

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