I Passed for White

I Passed For White seems to be a hidden gem like its leading lady Sonya Wilde. Her voice & sweet personality mixed with innocent xensuality reminded me of a young Marilyn Monroe. I began watching this sometime back, months ago on YouTube, & finally got back to it, after it came to mind yesterday. There's been a lot of focus on African-Americans pasing for Caucasion but some in various areas of the US have also passed themselves off as Native Americans, without a drop of Native American blood, when their ancestors were found listed as a person of color. That's the case with some so-called tribes of the South.

No matter what they passed as to avoid racism, it's a ugly blemish on a huge part of American society, that can't live & let live, & feel it's their right to punish people who not only don't look white, but even those known to have non-white ancestry.

This movie showcases that ignorance perfectly. My only complaint is the ending which made it feel unfinished. I for one wanted more.

Just imagine that Sarah-Jane , Fannie Hurst's heroine , was able to marry Troy Donahue in Douglas Sirk's remake of "imitation of life"(1959) ;a light -skinned pretty girl like her,her desire was to escape from her condition ; and after marrying James Franciscus (replacing Donahue) ,then the problems begin : the screenplay is thoroughly implausible :how would snub bourgeois parents accept this union while swallowing the heroine 's never-to-be-seen background ?One should note that the denouement is downright reactionary (a person of mixed-race must know her place), but although immensely superior,Sirk's exponential tear-jerker was too (back where both girls belong).

The most interesting character is the husband :first acquaintance shows a very nice man , considerate ,with a beaming smile .But further acquaintance shows that he is the splitting image of his smug parents: he is a racist macho (scene of the meeting with the brother ) and he won't be the dashing attentive escort the viewer expects him to be :no rebellion against a rotten society .....

Fortunately ,things have changed ; more than in the rather bland "guess who's coming to dine" , the great Sidney Poitier,by marrying lovely actress Johanna Shimkus, showed the whole world that interracial unions were a most natural thing .

Viewed 60 years later, this 1960 movie raises so many questions that it's hard to know what to make of it. It's not even clear if this is supposed to be a satire or a serious exploration of important issues. But it shows how much has changed since then.

A young, light-skinned African-American woman, tired of discrimination, decides to move away from home and pass for white, as the title says. With lightning speed she gets married to a wealthy white man, but, predictably, gets tied up in knots trying to hide her past. Her new in-laws get suspicious about the fact that they never get to meet her family, or even talk to them on the phone--not even after she gets pregnant. Things get worse when everybody notices that she's too good a dancer for a white woman, or, um, maybe "good" isn't really the word for what she does on the dance floor. And why, O why does she always seem to be on such good terms with all those traveling "" jazz musicians, who aren't allowed to fraternize with the white customers in the jazz clubs she keeps dragging her husband to?

But, of course, the biggest tension in the film is her increasing anxiety about what color the baby's going to be. We all know what it would do to an upper-class white family if their white daughter-in-law, who inexplicably knows too many jazz musicians, had a black baby . . . .

But the greatest mystery of all is: How do you get to a happy ending out of all this? And did she? Hmmm . . . .

Fred M. Wilcox's claim to fame is having directed several classic MGM movies: "Lassie Come Home", "The Secret Garden" and "Forbidden Planet", but this final movie, made for Allied Artists. Is a quite well-made drama with that exploitation movie title "I Passed for White". Writing, producing and directing, he does a fine job with the material.

His script weaves together two major themes: the endemic racial prejudice that continues to exist in America (see: the way jerks like Trump and Vance ridicule Kamala Harris due to her mixed-race status) and more significantly what happens when one lies about oneself instead of finding strength in one's true identity.

Sonya Wilde impresses in the difficult title role, as Wilcox carefully details her problems growing up in a world that's anxious to pigeonhole her. She looks 100% Caucasian but is a member of a Black family, with both her kindly grandma and jazz saxophonist brother identifying as Negro. Tired of being picked on, she heads for Chicago to try a new life on her own, and is fortunate (?) enough to be seated on the plane next to dreamboat James Franciscus.

Growing up I was a big fan of Franciscus, enjoying him as star of "Naked City" and especially "Mr. Novak", and later thrilled (literally) when he starred in Dario Argento's "Cat O' Nine Tails". He was virtually an identical movie type to his contemporary Robert Redford, whose stardom came later and clearly has overshadowed Jim's 100%.

Sonya's inability to stay true to herself in Chicago is quite believable, and once she tries to pretend she's not a Negro in order to make a living and have friends, the lies expand and multiply, and poor Sonya is doomed to suffer.

Franciscus is quite convincing as the too good to be true ideal husband with the kicker that both he and Sonya are genuinely in love. But... society and its pressures intervene.

One interesting fact is that the original score is by "Johnny Williams", one of his first movie assignments, including plenty of excellent jazz music by the future wunderkind of film music. This is a classy, A-movie all the way, with only Wilcox's version of the usual (fake) Hollywood happy ending giving the wrong message in an otherwise sincere drama.

If "I Passed For White" was released today it would stur up quite a storm! Imagine not knowing what race to identify yourself with? The character of "ETHEL" gives a touching performance as a GAL that just does not know which way to turn! A B movie that few have seen this classic is alot of fun!