I enjoyed the film, but why would they have a white actress playing the part of Molly? The scene where she says something like 'They'll hang me, cos I'm a Negro' stretched believability there for a bit!
Oh, and Howard da Silva was brilliant in this. Slimy, smug, with manic menace. It's criminal that he was lost to movies for a while because of HUAC accusations.
You beat me to it LOL.
That's exactly what's bugging me.
The fact of her being a negro is mentioned a lot of times throughout. You're not going to tell me they couldn't find a black actress to fill the part.
Totally baffling.
Did anyone notice that the some of the dialog looked looped when they mentioned Molly's race? When Clark uses the "n-word" when he was talking to his father, E.J., that dialog looked ADR. When Molly says "They won't believe me. I'm a negro!" That scene is done in close-up, and it makes me feel that it was shot after the movie was complete. One more scene with Mike Reese & D.A. Muncie is not ADR, but also could have been shot in post. I'm sure all the controversial racial subject matter could be due to the fact that Howard Desilva, the director & the writer were all blacklisted (especially with all the "witch-hunt" comments in the script).
shareAccording to director Cy Endfield, the casting of a white actress as Molly was forced by the distributors of the film, Monogram Pictures-Allied Artists, who were uncomfortable with the movie in general and the racial undertones in particular.
Here are quotes from Cy Enfield published in a booklet included with the Spanish DVD release, by an outfit named Bang Bang Movies:
"Hal (Chester)'s support was very important as executives at Monogram Pictures-Allied Artists, who were in charge of distributing the film, did not like the project; it scared them. For example, in the screenplay, Molly Rankin was to be played by a young black woman. There was a universal message in the situation she was living, but it was neutralized because the studio forced us to cast a white actress. As I learned later, the decision was made under pressure from the distributors, who did not want racial themes in the film".
(I had to translate back into English since the booklet was in Spanish, so the wording might be slightly different from how Endfield originally formulated it but the meaning, hopefully, remains the same)
Thank you for the clear and informative explanation. I cannot comment on your translation, but the account of why a white actress was selected for the movie makes sense given Hollywood's reluctance to deal with racial issues and the general state of race relations at the time. Even so, for a 90 minute "B" movie, it hold one's attention.
shareI just saw this on TCM, and in the scene
---SPOILER---
where Stanton and his son find out that Molly has disappeared, the son says that they can blame the murder on her because "the police won't take the word of a n!gger over ours"--the word was clear as a bell, not looped, beeped out, etc. However, when Molly is talking to Duryea and Gale Storm shortly afterward, it's very obvious that when Molly says "I'm a Negro", the word "Negro" was looped in for the "N" word.
Unfortunately I didn't get to see the rest of the movie--a friend stopped by and we had to go out--so I don't know if the word is in other parts of the film. It's odd that it was allowed in one scene but not in another. Be interesting to know if it was replaced in the rest of the film on current prints.
It's odd the distributors insisted the studio not hire a black actress to play Molly but all of the racial references were left in the movies.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.