Forward Pass: Pinky And The Pinko
A white woman who passed for white. A white woman who passed for black.
In 1949 Director John Ford was hired to direct a film called “Pinky” for 20th Century Fox. The story follows a young light-skinned black woman from the South who leaves home to the North and is able to become a Nurse because she is able to pass for white. Pinky Johnson returns to the South to visit her grandmother who raised her named Dicey. Dicey is a laundress for a white family and she is illiterate, but she isn’t stupid, and she strongly advises Pinky to stay in her own backyard knowing full well all about the white world that is out there waiting to destroy Pinky who is set on leaving the south for the North. Pinky does leave and when she returns, she declares to Dicey that she has passed for white while studying to be a nurse in the North and that she has fallen in love with a white man. A doctor named Thomas Adams who she met while working in the hospital. Thomas has no idea that Pinky is Black. Dicey is incensed with Pinky’s choices. Director John Ford was replaced very early in the production of Pinky because the film’s producer Darryl F. Zanuck was unhappy with the dailies of the movie he was seeing. Zanuck fired Ford and hired Director Elia Kazan to finish the movie. Kazan wanted to start production of the movie from scratch and cast Dorothy Dandridge as Pinky because he wanted a black actress to play a black woman, but Zanuck insisted on employing white actress Jeanne Crain to continue playing Pinky. Kazan was one of our most socially conscious filmmakers. His films are about race, antisemitism, the environment, labor, and political issues that are still affecting the country greatly today. Other than his legacy of great films Kazan is mostly famous for naming names during the McCarthy communist witch hunt era. After which people who worked in the industry were blacklisted from working in Hollywood because of their affiliation with the communist party exposed by Kazan. In 1999 Kazan received an honorary academy award. The event was picketed by demonstrators angry that Kazan was being awarded after he cost others their careers while he was able to keep working. Many members of the audience that night decided on a silent protest. And when Kazan was introduced by Filmmaker Martin Scorsese, they “sat on their hands” Didn’t applaud. The moment was clearly very awkward even for Kazan himself. What is partially vexing is the hard left politics of the people who chose to sit on their hands and protest Kazan were completely throwing away a lifetime of positive work and a career and life spent contributing to the greater good of humanity and the greater good of the art of filmmaking. It also exposed a great hypocrisy. You’re going to sit on your hands for Kazan yet continue to collect a paycheck working for the same studios, producers and companies who also kept working after the blacklist era and continued to make a fortune. The whole idea was ludicrous and exposed a mean streak in hard left politics. The counterproductive and absurd protests that we still see today. Ignored was the pain and regret and humiliation felt by Kazan himself. Did communists believe that there was honor among thieves? Did Kazan not have the right to continue working? In the end the hand sitters and protestors looked like the assholes that they were. The same people protested the DNC a year later and filled arenas at Ralph Nader For President events and helped get George W. Bush elected over Al Gore. If that tells you how much they actually care about civil liberties being protected. Apparently, the freedoms of Elia Kazan went out the window in their eyes because he didn’t side with their idea of freedom. Kazan wanted Pinky to be played by a black actress, he could have quit in protest, yet he felt the content of the film and its message was an important one enough to continue on with. A true progressive believes that some progress is better than none. Pinky was released in theaters on September 29, 1949. It caused a significant shitstorm because of its subject of race relations and also the casting of Crain to play a black woman. It was nonetheless a critical and commercial success, and netted Crain, Barrymore, and Waters all Academy Award nominations. While Pinky enjoyed wide success in the southern United States it was banned by the city of Marshall, Texas. In Marshall a man named W. L. Gelling managed the segregated Paramount Theater and at the Paramount blacks were restricted to seats in the balcony. Gelling booked Pinky for exhibition in February 1950, a year in which Movies were not protected by the first amendment. Gelling was convicted and fined $200. He appealed the conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court then overturned Gelling’s conviction based on the free-speech protections given to movies in the recently decided case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson Marshall’s city commission “reactivated” the Board of Censors, established by a 1921 ordinance, and designated five members who demanded the submission of the picture for approval. They disapproved of its showing, stating that it was “prejudicial to the best interests of the citizens of the City of Marshall.” Gelling exhibited the film anyway and was charged with a misdemeanor. Three board members testified that they objected to the picture because it depicted a white man retaining his love for a woman after learning that she was a Negro, a white man kissing and embracing a Negro woman and two white ruffians assaulting Pinky after she tells them that she is colored. In a concurring opinion, Justice William O. Douglas wrote that the Marshall city ordinance was unconstitutional as it represented prior restraint on free speech. “The evil of prior restraint, condemned in the case of motion pictures, is present here in flagrant form. If a board of censors can tell the American people what it is in their best interests to see or to read or to hear then thought is regimented, authority substituted for liberty, and the great purpose of the First Amendment to keep uncontrolled the freedom of expression defeated.” In his own concurring opinion, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, “This ordinance offends the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment on the score of indefiniteness. The first amendment saved Pinky. While the actress who played Pinky was white the character of Pinky is pure southern black woman. Pinky is harassed by racist local law enforcement while attempting to reclaim money owed to her grandmother. Two white men try to rape her. Dr. Canady, a black physician, asks Pinky to train black nursing students, but Pinky plans to return to the North. Dicey asks Pinky to stay temporarily to care for her ailing, elderly white friend, and neighbor Miss Em. Pinky has always disliked Miss Em and considers her another of all the other racists white people in the area. Pinky relents and agrees to tend Miss Em after learning that when Dicey had pneumonia, Miss Em cared for her. Pinky nurses the strong-willed Miss Em, but does not hide her resentment. However, as they spend time together, she grows to like and respect her patient. Miss Em bequeaths Pinky her stately house and property when she dies, but greedy relative Melba Wooley challenges the will. Everyone advises Pinky that she has no chance of winning, but she begs Miss Em’s old friend, retired judge Walker, to defend her in court. With great reluctance, he agrees to take the case. Pinky washes clothes by hand when her grandmother is sick in order to pay court expenses. At the trial, despite hostile white spectators and the absence of Dr. Adams, the only defense witness, presiding judge Shoreham unexpectedly rules in Pinky’s favor. When Pinky thanks her attorney, he coldly informs her that justice was served, but not the interests of the community. Tom, who has arrived from the North after tracking Pinky down, wants her to sell the inherited property, resume her masquerade as a white woman, marry him and leave the South, but she refuses, firmly believing that Miss Em intended her to use the house and property for some purpose, and Tom leaves. Pinky establishes a clinic and nursery school on the property. Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge were interested in playing the role of Pinky. In the end, Jeanne Crain was chosen. Elia Kazan, who assumed directing duties when John Ford was fired, was unhappy with the casting choice, and later said, “Jeanne Crain was a sweet girl, but she was like a Sunday school teacher. I did my best with her, but she didn’t have any fire. The only good thing about her was that it went so far in the direction of no temperament that you felt Pinky was floating through all of her experiences without reacting to them, which is what ‘passing’ is. The story of the film Pinky is a complex one. On one hand it was one of the first films made that delt with racism toward black people. It was one of the first main characters in film history that was a black woman. Yet it was a white woman who was cast. In this sense Pinky is similar to Amos and Andy or even Al Jolson and white actors dawning face pant and headdresses to play native Americans in early westerns. Something the original director of Pinky John Ford was noted for in his own films. Yet there are important lessons to take from Pinky and its court case and its positive reaction at the box office showing that perhaps audiences were more ready for a movie with that type of serious content than many originally believed. Movie audiences are always way ahead of Hollywood and the businessmen who make a large portion of the major decisions on what type of films are made. Regardless of the problems with Pinky, Audiences embraced the content and social issue of the film. Showing that even as early as 1949 fifteen years before the signing of the civil rights act major movie goers were ready for a film and story about race and racism in America. They were also ready for a black female lead even though theoretically speaking they didn’t get one. But that doesn’t wholly diminish the value and the intent of Pinky or the audience’s positive reaction. The fact that today white audiences are shook about a black mermaid makes audiences of 1949 seem even more intelligent and tolerant by comparison. It also tells the story of a filmmaker named Elia Kazan who regardless of his past discretions deserves some respect put on his name as a great film artist and as a man who helped push progress in film more than most of the people who sat on their hands against him that day in 1999 have. Pinky was 20th Century-Fox’s second-most-successful film of 1949 and the year’s sixth highest-grossing movie. It garnered three 1950 Academy Awards all for women. Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters
