TCM Schedule for Thursday, November 19, 2020 -- TCM Spotlight: Problem Pictures of 1949

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, we're getting a selection of films about British Forces serving Queen (or King!) and country while overseas.

Then in prime time, TCM is looking at problem pictures of 1949. Tell us what you mean, Roger!

Problem Pictures of 1949 - 11/19
By Roger Fristoe
November 8, 2020
During the post-World War II years, Hollywood produced a number of “problem pictures” that included studies of U.S. race relations which were being reevaluated by such circumstances as the war itself and the burgeoning civil rights movement. Nineteen-forty-nine became a seminal year for such movies, with several films that broke new ground in the depiction of African Americans and the prejudices they faced.

TCM presents four of these pictures in a night co-hosted by noted film scholar and expert in Black history, Donald Bogle. Bogle is also an instructor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and at the University of Pennsylvania. Among Bogle’s seven books on the topic are Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in Films; Brown Sugar: Eighty Years of America’s Black Female Superstars; Blacks in American Film and Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia; and Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood.

Two of the TCM films focus on “racial passing,” with Black characters who present themselves as white. In both instances, the films were written and produced by white filmmakers and performed by white actors in the key roles.

Lost Boundaries (1949) is the study of a light-skinned doctor (Mel Ferrer) and his family who, for years, pass for white in a New Hampshire town. The film, directed by Alfred L. Werker, was based on William Lindsay White’s nonfiction story about Dr. Albert C. Johnston and his family, who lived through the same situation in New England in the 1930s and ’40s.

Pinky (1949) tells of a light-skinned young black woman (Jeanne Crain) who has passed as white while training in a Northern city to become a nurse. Upon returning to her Southern hometown, she faces an identity crisis while dealing with two older women – her grandmother (Ethel Waters) and a white neighbor (Ethel Barrymore) who becomes her benefactress. Elia Kazan directed from a screenplay based on the 1946 novel Quality by Cid Ricketts Sumner. The movie became 20th Century-Fox’s second most successful picture of the year, and all three leading actresses were Oscar-nominated: Crain as Best Actress and Waters and Barrymore in the supporting category.

Home of the Brave (1949) takes on both the psychological damages of combat and the destructive forces of racism in its story of a sensitive Black soldier (James Edwards) who suffers from battle fatigue (later known as PTSD). In flashbacks e learn that during the war in the South Pacific, he was sent with four white comrades on a dangerous mission to a Japanese-held island. One of the men (Lloyd Bridges) is an old and loyal friend, but another (Steve Brodie) is a racist whose behavior threatens the integrity of the mission. Mark Robson directs a screenplay based on a play by Arthur Laurents in which the protagonist was Jewish and the problem was anti-Semitism.

Intruder in the Dust (1949) is MGM’s film version of the William Faulkner novel about a Black man (Juano Hernandez) unjustly accused of murder in a Mississippi town and the white adolescent boy (Claude Jarman Jr.) who helps in proving his innocence. Clarence Brown directed a cast that also includes David Brian, Will Geer and Elizabeth Patterson. Brown and Hernandez were nominated as Best Director and Actor by the New York Film Critics Circle awards. In 2001, Donald Bogle wrote that Hernandez’s “performance and extraordinary presence still rank above that of almost any other Black actor to appear in an American movie.”

Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Soldiers Three (1951)
1h 27m | Drama | TV-PG
Three British officers look for adventure in 19th-century India.
Director: Tay Garnett
Cast: Stewart Granger, Walter Pidgeon, David Niven

Robert Newton plays Private Bill Sykes. He memorably played the Charles Dickens villain Bill Sykes in the David Lean adaptation of Oliver Twist (1948). The characters Sykes, Malloy, and Ackroyd are loosely adapted from characters named Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris in the Rudyard Kipling stories.


7:45 AM -- Kim (1951)
1h 53m | Drama | TV-PG
Rudyard Kipling's classic tale of an orphaned boy who helps the British Army against Indian rebels.
Director: Victor Saville
Cast: Errol Flynn, Dean Stockwell, Paul Lukas

MGM originally announced the film in 1938 as a vehicle for Freddie Bartholomew and Robert Taylor, but World War II saw this put on hold. In 1942 it was reactivated to star Mickey Rooney, Conrad Veidt (as Red Lama) and Basil Rathbone. However this was postponed out of fear of offending Indians, and also war-time allies the Soviets. In 1948 the Indian government approved the film and the Cold War meant it was permissible to have Russian villains.


9:45 AM -- Bhowani Junction (1956)
1h 50m | Drama | TV-PG
An Anglo-Indian beauty falls for a British officer as her country fights for independence.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, Bill Travers

The film's uneven reception was largely due to critical consensus that George Cukor was ill-equipped to capture the epic sweep of the political uprising in India. Indeed, Cukor's body of work was justly celebrated for his incisive female character studies, and, as such, he was seldom called upon to manage crowd scenes or stage action sequences. Not surprisingly, it is Victoria's dramatic arc that compels, whereas the railway sequences of protest and conflict are noticeably lacking in focus and scope.


11:45 AM -- Target Zero (1955)
1h 32m | Drama | TV-PG
International soldiers fight to ignore their differences while holding a hill during the Korean War.
Director: Harmon Jones
Cast: Richard Conte, Peggie Castle, Charles Bronson

Written by James Warner Bellah and Sam Rolfe, a pair of American writers.


1:30 PM -- Sabotage Agent (1943)
1h 50m | Thriller | TV-PG
An undercover agent battles Nazis to save an aviation plant.
Director: Harold S. Bucquet
Cast: Robert Donat, Valerie Hobson, Walter Rilla

The poem that Robert Donat and the others quote is from English poet William Wordsworth:
"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils"


3:30 PM -- Operation Crossbow (1965)
1h 58m | Drama | TV-PG
Allied agents go behind enemy lines to destroy a German missile base.
Director: Michael Anderson
Cast: Sophia Loren, George Peppard, Trevor Howard

As Sophia Loren was blacklisted in Arab countries because of her portrayal of a Jewish woman who survived a concentration camp, in Daniel Mann's Judith (1966), which was shot in Israel, this movie was shown in Beirut, Lebanon with all of the Loren bits removed. The movie poster was changed, and her name removed from the top billing. This movie was shown at the Cinema Strand and the audience never suspected Loren was part of this production.


5:45 PM -- The Sea Wolves (1980)
2h | Drama | TV-PG
A German spy is passing on information about the location of Allied ships in the neutral harbors of Portugal.
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen
Cast: Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, Trevor Howard

As indicated in this movie's story and in the real-life mission, no medals, awards, or commendations were issued by the British Government for the successful raid on Goa. James Leasor's book "Boarding Party" states: "The authorities kept faith with the Light Horse over one particular promise. They would have no credit for what they volunteered to do, and there would be no medals. So closely was this last pledge adhered to, that the men who had willingly risked their lives and careers, at their own expense, to carry out a task which produced unparalleled benefits, were categorically refused the right to wear one of Britain's humbler issue medals of the Second World War, the 1939-45 Star."



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT -- PROBLEM PICTURES OF 1949



8:00 PM -- Lost Boundaries (1949)
1h 39m | Drama | TV-14
A black family tries to build a new life by passing as white.
Director: Alfred L. Werker
Cast: Beatrice Pearson, Mel Ferrer, Susan Douglas

Based on the lives of Albert and Thyra Johnston, who lived in New Hampshire in the 1930s and '40s.


10:00 PM -- Home of the Brave (1949)
1h 28m | Drama
A black G.I. faces racism while fighting for his country in World War II.
Director: Mark Robson
Cast: Douglas Dick, Steve Brodie, Jeff Corey

This was the first Hollywood movie to be officially be permitted to use the word "nigger" after The Emperor Jones (1933). Previously, the Hays Code had forbidden it since 1934.


11:45 PM -- Pinky (1949)
1h 42m | Drama | TV-PG
After passing up North, a young woman leaves her job and fiance in Boston and returns home.
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jeanne Crain, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ethel Barrymore, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ethel Waters

Lena Horne initially campaigned to play the title role in this movie (she was light enough to photograph "white" ), but in the end, the movie studio felt white American audiences would feel more comfortable with a white actress, especially since love scenes with a white actor were involved.


1:45 AM -- Intruder in the Dust (1949)
1h 29m | Drama | TV-G
Only a young boy and an old woman stand between an innocent black man and a lynch mob.
Director: Clarence Brown
Cast: David Brian, Claude Jarman Jr., Juano Hernandez

The film is generally considered as breaking new ground in its depiction of blacks on screen. In 1949 it was certainly highly progressive in the way it portrayed African-Americans.


3:30 AM -- Trial (1955)
1h 45m | Drama | TV-PG
A Mexican boy accused of rape and murder becomes a pawn for Communists and red-baiters.
Director: Mark Robson
Cast: Glenn Ford, Dorothy Mcguire, Arthur Kennedy

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Arthur Kennedy

According to contemporary newspaper articles, the rally scene was shot at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles over three days and used 2,000 extras - 750 of which were students from the nearby University of Southern California.


5:30 AM -- MGM Parade Show #6 (1955)
25m | Documentary | TV-G
Greta Garbo performs in a clip from "Anna Christie".