Research Catalog

Title

Pinky [motion picture] / Twentieth Century Fox ; produced by Darryl F. Zanuck.

Publication

Chicago : Films Incorporated, 1949.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Kazan, Elia
• Crain, Jeanne
• Waters, Ethel, 1896-1977
• Barrymore, Ethel, 1879-1959

Description

3 film reels (102 min.) : sd., b&w.; 16 mm.

Summary

This was one of the first Hollywood films to address issues of racial prejudice and identity. Jeanne Crain stars as Patricia Johnson or Pinky (an expression used in the black community to designate anyone with light skin who could "pass" in the white community), a bright, young woman who has been attending nursing school in Boston. While there, she meets a handsome physician who wishes to marry her despite miscegnation laws. Believing that such a marriage could never work and unwilling to renounce her black heritage, Pinky returns to her grandmother's home in the South. There, she is humiliated by southern racism and considers returning North to live as a free "white" woman. Ironically, Pinky develops a sense of self through a cantankerous old dowager under her care. When the elderly woman dies leaving her estate to Pinky, the woman's family contests the will but Pinky emerges victorious. Realizing that she has been fleeing her true self, Pinky decides to remain and help her people by converting the property into a nursing school for black women. Though the film broke new ground in the depiction of interracial relations, southern exhibitors refused to screen the movie upon its release. (Circulates).

Subjects

• Feature films
• African Americans > Fiction
• Women > Fiction
• African American women > Fiction

Note

• Based on the novel Quality by Cid Ricketts Sumner.

Credits (note)

• Director, Elia Kazan; screenplay, Philip Dunne, Dudley Nichols; photography, Joe MacDonald; music, Alfred Newman.

Performer (note)

• Jeanne Crain, Ethel Waters, Ethel Barrymore, William Lundigan, Basil Ruysdael.

Title

Pinky [motion picture] / Twentieth Century Fox ; produced by Darryl F. Zanuck.

Imprint

Chicago : Films Incorporated, 1949.

Credits

Director, Elia Kazan; screenplay, Philip Dunne, Dudley Nichols; photography, Joe MacDonald; music, Alfred Newman.

Cast

Jeanne Crain, Ethel Waters, Ethel Barrymore, William Lundigan, Basil Ruysdael.

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Request Access to Reserve Film and Video Collection Special Collections material

Added Author

Kazan, Elia, film director.

Crain, Jeanne, actor.

Waters, Ethel, 1896-1977, actor.

Barrymore, Ethel, 1879-1959, actor.

Branch Call Number

M16 4367 P