In the 1950s and through most of the 1960s, few if any Hollywood films dealt in a serious and authentic manner with Black life. The only one that readily comes to mind is white filmmaker Michael Roemer’s “Nothing But a Man” (1964), starring Ivan Dixon as an itinerant Black laborer in the Deep South of the early ’60s. “Nothing But a Man” was a low-budget, realist film that managed to capture the humiliation of being a second-class citizen and, more uniquely, African-American society’s class differences and the fragility of its family structure.
There were no working Black directors in Hollywood then and only one Black star, Sidney Poitier. His self-possessed, charismatic, heroic presence graced a number of films ranging from Stanley Kramer’s work of liberal poster art, “The Defiant Ones” (1958) to the glossy, chaste interracial romance “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967).
Poitier was the Black star Hollywood had designated its token African-American. In fact, he was the first African-American actor to achieve leading-man status in Hollywood films. In film after film he played characters whose humanity and dignity, courage, and keen intelligence made Poitier consistently successful with, even enamored by, white audiences. Poitier’s characters never bowed or scraped to whites, but were so reasonable and humane that white audiences knew their anger, no matter how much it smoldered, would stay within acceptable bounds, and there was nothing to fear. His characters were the type of men who could only arouse hatred or abuse from the most ignorant or racist of whites, and were embraced by those who saw themselves as tolerant and liberal.
During the more militant and race-conscious ’60s, Black activists often put down Poitier’s persona as middle-class, masochistic, and pandering to whites. Nevertheless, he was one Black actor who no longer had to sing, dance, clown, or roll his eyes to have his image appear onscreen. And though Hollywood’s handling of the race problem was neither bold nor imaginative in any way, given the conformist and racist political tenor of Hollywood at the time, the emergence of a token Black star could still be viewed as a minor triumph and celebrated.
Poitier’s first film, “No Way Out,” was a 1950 social melodrama — directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz (“All About Eve”), who also co-wrote the screenplay. Poitier plays Luther Brooks, a 23-year-old, earnest and insecure, newly graduated doctor who is the only Black person on the staff of a hospital in a small, nameless city. The other Blacks there work as orderlies and elevator operators. Brooks is a native son, who grew up in the city and has a touch sentimentalized, striving and loving, working class family, and a housekeeper wife nearby.
Brooks is talented and supported by the other doctors on staff, especially his boss, Dr. Wharton (a stiff performance by Stephen McNally), a stolid, bland liberal who acts as if the world is color blind and politics play no role.
The film’s narrative centers on the death of a young white criminal, shot by police, who dies in Brooks’ care. The man’s brother, Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark), a raging racist sociopath who has also been arrested and shot, is convinced Brooks murdered his brother. Brooks knows an autopsy will clear him, but can’t get the malevolent, race-baiting Biddle to permit one.
The city has both a large Black working class and a white one, of which Biddle is part. Claiming unjust treatment, he stirs them up against Brooks and the city’s Black population, leading to a riot with many injured.
On one level, the film is nothing but a melodrama with an over-the-top, menacing Biddle as its prime racist villain. But Widmark’s striking, all-out performance and Mankiewicz’s screenplay add more profound dimensions to the film. Biddle resents that Blacks are given opportunities he feels his white world lacks. He feels trapped by his class status (“I’m garbage”), and though a thoroughly unsympathetic, self-pitying figure, we see him as a product of poverty, and his racism as the scapegoating of minorities used by lower-status people to victimize and assert superiority over others. (Not so different from many Trump supporters.)
In addition, the film gives Linda Darnell (as Edie), one of her most effective roles. She plays an uneducated waitress who feels crushed by her world (the film makes clear that women like Edie are treated with contempt by their men), and wants out. She also happens to be the ex-wife of Biddle’s brother, and has been Biddle’s lover. At first, Biddle can manipulate the conflicted Edie for help in arming the working-class whites, but she soon is repelled by the violence and by Biddle’s misogyny. She even finds she can establish a relationship with a Black housekeeper, as she discovers the two have much in common. Edie then predictably escapes to save Brooks from Biddle’s murderous aims.
Much of “No Way Out” is conventional, but with more complex social resonances than most melodramas. And though Poitier doesn’t get the dominant share of screen time, in his first film he projects the nobility and intense moral commitments that made him the only Black screen icon of the era.
