美国国家公共电台 NPR 50 Years After 'Loving,' Hollywood Still Struggles With Interracial Romance

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Fifty years ago today, the Supreme 1 Court's Loving decision legalized interracial marriage. Right about that time, shooting wrapped up on a movie dealing 2 with that very topic. "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" would become a huge hit. But NPR critic Bob Mondello says Hollywood's prejudices were long standing 3 and did not disappear overnight.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE 4: There had been interracial romances onscreen even in the silent era, but they were almost always pictured as either comically foolish or flat out doomed 5. D.W. Griffith ended his silent tragedy "Broken Blossoms Or The Yellow Man And The Girl" with the deaths of both his title characters, a Chinese immigrant and a London prizefighter's daughter. The silent drama "The Bronze Bride" about a white fur trapper who marries a Native American woman also ended with tears. And in "Show Boat" in 1936, things end happily for nearly everyone but Julie, the wife of the show boat's white leading man. She is of mixed race but has been passing as white.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SHOW BOAT")

HELEN MORGAN: (As Julie, singing) Can't help loving that man of mine.

HATTIE MCDANIEL: (As Queenie) How come y'all know that song?

IRENE DUNNE: (As Magnolia) Why? Do you know it, Queenie?

MCDANIEL: (As Queenie) For sure I does, but I didn't ever hear anybody but colored folks sing that song - sounds funny for Ms. Julie to know it.

DUNNE: (As Magnolia) Julie sings it all the time.

MCDANIEL: (As Queenie) Can you sing the whole thing?

MORGAN: (As Julie) Course I can. What's so funny about that? (Singing) Oh, listen, sister. I love my Mr. Man.

MONDELLO: For loving her Mr. Man, Julie will end up drunk and alone. And in that, she had lots of company on screen. Hollywood had adopted a motion picture production code in 1930 which explicitly 6 prohibited the depiction 7 of, quote, "sex relationships between the white and black races," end quote. The code was meant to curb 8 what bluenoses of that era considered immorality 9. And with interracial marriage then illegal in 30 states, depicting 10 it would arguably have been condoning 11 an illegal act.

Though "Show Boat" had been a hit on Broadway, movie theaters might well have refused to play it even with the production code seal of approval. But the filmmakers had a trick to get around objections. Audiences, they noted 12, were not actually seeing a black-white couple on screen. The biracial character was played by Helen Morgan, a white actress. And the same thing happened when "Show Boat" was remade in the 1950s.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SHOW BOAT")

ANNETTE WARREN: (Singing) That man of mine.

MONDELLO: This time Ava Gardner not only wasn't black. She's not even singing. Though she could have. She recorded this track they didn't use.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SHOW BOAT")

AVA GARDNER: (As Julie, singing) Tell me he's lazy. Tell me he's...

MONDELLO: Colorblind and in several senses tone-deaf, this qualified 13 as Hollywood artificiality at its peak. The same casting trick was used in the drama "Pinky" about another character who was passing as white.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PINKY")

ETHEL WATERS: (As Dicey Johnson) You know I never told you pretend you is what you ain't.

JEANNE CRAIN: (As Pinky Johnson) I didn't mean to, Granny. It just happened.

MONDELLO: Passing was relatively 14 easy for actress Jeanne Crain. She was white and got an Oscar nomination 15 as best actress for pretending not to be.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PINKY")

CRAIN: (As Pinky Johnson) Don't try to tell me it doesn't matter. I couldn't stand that.

WILLIAM LUNDIGAN: (As Dr. Thomas Adams) Of course it matters. It makes problems, important problems. But let's try and face them like rational people.

CRAIN: (As Pinky Johnson) Rational - what's rational about prejudice?

MONDELLO: Foreign films weren't as timid. In the 1930s, Josephine Baker 16 starred in the French-made "Princesse Tam-Tam" playing a Tunisian woman who's the muse 17 of a white novelist. In the U.S., though, that sort of film only played in theaters catering 18 strictly 19 to black patrons until about 1956 when Hollywood dropped the code stipulation 20 about race. That allowed a blonde Inger Stevens to have this incendiary conversation with "Harry 21 Belafonte" in "The World, The Flesh And The Devil," a science fiction film in which a nuclear war had left the two of them virtually alone in the world.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL")

INGER STEVENS: (As Sarah Crandall) You know me well enough to be honest with me.

HARRY BELAFONTE: (As Ralph Burton) Don't push me. I'll be so honest it'll burn you.

STEVENS: (As Sarah Crandall) I know what you are, if that's what you're trying to remind me.

BELAFONTE: (As Ralph Burton) That's it all right. If you're squeamish about words, I'm colored. And if you face facts, I'm a Negro. If you're a polite Southerner, I'm a Negra. And I'm a nigger if you're not.

STEVENS: (As Sarah Crandall) I'm none of those things, Ralph.

BELAFONTE: (As Ralph Burton) A little while ago, you said you were free, white and 21. That didn't mean anything to you, just an expression you've heard for a thousand times. Well, to me, it was an arrow in my guts 22.

STEVENS: (As Sarah Crandall) Ralph, what do I say? Help me. I know you. You're a fine, decent man. What else is there to know?

BELAFONTE: (As Ralph Burton) That world that we came from, you wouldn't know that. You wouldn't even know me. Why should the world fall down to prove I'm what I am and that there's nothing wrong with what I am?

MONDELLO: Good question, and others were asking it, too, in the British film "A Taste Of Honey," in the drama with Hollywood's first interracial kiss, "Island In The Sun," and in the era-defining "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner," which arrived six months to the day after interracial marriage was legalized by the Loving decision. Lawyers had only had to make their closing argument to nine justices. Spencer Tracy's summation 23 went out to more than 40 million moviegoers when he said this to Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER")

SPENCER TRACY: (As Matt Drayton) Anybody could make a case and a hell of a good case against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you're two wonderful people who happen to fall in love and happen to have a pigmentation problem. But I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard 24 could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse, and that would be if, knowing what you two are, knowing what you two have and knowing what you two feel, you didn't get married.

MONDELLO: And that broke the logjam, right - not really. Hollywood spent the rest of the 20th century debating how to follow "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and mostly deciding not to. Bromances with black-white pairings were fine - say, the "Lethal 25 Weapon" franchise 26. Attract stars of sufficient wattage, and you could dare the audience to resist Kevin Costner at the height of his fame and Whitney Houston at the height of hers in "The Bodyguard 27." And there were occasional problem dramas that tackled the issue head-on as an issue - Spike 28 Lee's "Jungle Fever," for instance.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JUNGLE FEVER")

WESLEY SNIPES: (As Flipper 29 Purify) She's white.

SPIKE LEE: (As Cyrus) White. Man, you...

ANNABELLA SCIORRA: (As Angie Tucci) Yeah, well, he's black.

DEBI MAZAR: (As Denise) If your father ever found out, I don't know. Hey, look; this is the '90s. There's nothing wrong with it, you know?

MONDELLO: But for many in Hollywood, the risk of alienating 30 some part of the audience has not seemed a risk worth taking on a multimillion-dollar budget. So Will Smith and Denzel Washington have spent most of their careers appearing opposite African-American love interests, and Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise have not. Never mind that multiracial casting has been a boon 31 of the box office for, say, "The Fast And The Furious" films. There are of course outliers. Jordan Peele's satirical horror flick 32 "Get Out" is a witty 33 look at social stereotyping 34.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GET OUT")

DANIEL KALUUYA: (As Chris Washington) Do they know I'm black?

ALLISON WILLIAMS: (As Rose Armitage) Should they?

KALUUYA: (As Chris Washington) You might want to, you know...

WILLIAMS: (As Rose Armitage) Mom and Dad, my black boyfriend will be coming up with weekend. I just don't want you to be shocked that he's a black man.

MONDELLO: With a first-time director and no-name stars, "Get Out" has taken in almost a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office. Also this year in "Everything, Everything," an African-American girl in a bubble and a white neighbor fall in love. The supporting cast of "Beauty And The Beast" turned out to have two interracial couples once the magic spell was broken. And in the upcoming comedy The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani will tell the true story of how he met his wife.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIG SICK")

KUMAIL NANJIANI: (As Kumail) I've been dating this girl. She's white.

ADEEL AKHTAR: (As Naveed) A white girl?

NANJIANI: (As Kumail) OK, you can't look like you and yell white girl. It's OK. We hate terrorists.

MONDELLO: These films make sense. The Pew Research Center recently reported that in 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available, 17 percent of all U.S. newlyweds had a spouse 35 of a different race or ethnicity. That compares with 3 percent in 1967, the year of the Loving decision and of "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner." The nation has changed, and Hollywood will, too. At the moment, though, it's still playing catch up. I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF JACKIE WILSON SONG, "YOUR LOVE KEEPS LIFTING ME HIGHER AND HIGHER")