Mixed Race Studies

October 29, 1949

Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers
2016-10-29

Matthew F. Delmont, Professor of History
Arizona State University

On October 29, 1949, the Chicago Defender published Walter White’s review of Elia Kazan’s film Pinky. The film, a drama about racial passing starring Jeanne Crain and Ethel Waters, was the top-grossing film of 1949. White, who led the NAACP from 1931 until his death 1955, wrote, “I have never in all my life wanted so much to like a moving picture as much as I did ‘Pinky.’ As I bought tickets at the Rivoli Theatre in New York I hoped fervently that the praise of most of the New York critics and friends of mine, both colored and white, would be justified…Unhappily for me, I have to say that, as far as my judgement is concerned, [producer Darryl] Zanuck has failed. Some new ground have been broken but they are mere scratches in the vast field of human relationships the picture sought to plow. Southern white police brutality and lechery are vividly and courageously exposed. But one would never know, unless he had other sources of information, that Negroes, even in the most backward areas of Mississippi are not resigned to their ‘place’ and are not only working but making progress against the kind of conditions portrayed in ‘Pinky.'” This review of this film about racial passing is particularly interesting because Walter White was very light skinned, and sometimes passed as white while working as a civil rights investigator in the South…

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Not under my roof: Interracial relationships and black image in post-World War II film

Northern Illinois University
2015
56 pages
Publication Number: 10008811
ProQuest document ID: 1765648575
ISBN: 9781339455150

Andre Berchiolly

This thesis examines the historical implications of miscegenation and interracial interactions between minority males and white females in Post-World War II independent cinema. Elia Kazan’s studio film Pinky (1949) exemplifies the perceived acceptable studio representations of interracial coupling. My examination of Kazan’s film provides a starting point from which to evaluate other textual situations of interracial interaction, particularly in relation to casting. In contrast, Pierre Chenal’s adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son, Sangre Negra (1951) exhibits key differences in interracial depictions between studio productions and independent productions of that era. After a comparative analysis of Kazan’s and Chenal’s films, further exploration of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) as an unintentionally racialized film, allows for an investigation into the casting of Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea as the primary characters. An analysis of these three films permits an evaluation of depictions of miscegenation and interracial interactions through an independent lens, distinguishing between acceptable mainstream allowances (via institutionalize censorship) of such depictions, and the comparative freedoms allotted to independent productions. This thesis provides an overview of the limitations of studio productions and their failures to adhere to changing social conventions, broadening the current discourse of film analysis from more canonized Hollywood films to lesser known and lesser criticized independent films, as well as establishing an understanding of Western culture’s influence upon the censorship of racial depictions during this period.