The Deck Was Stacked In Favor Of The Black Guy

Ralph (Harry Belafonte) was not a coal miner. He was an engineer. He therefore had various mechanical skills which made him adept, as he himself later said, at making things run (phones, radio, lights, etc.). This was a necessary plot point in order to allow the survivors to recapture a small bit of civilization.

I don't see how this has anything to do with men of the 50s supposedly being more mechanically-minded. That's a fallacy -- most men were no more adept at mechanical things then than now. It is true that, in the world of computers and the complex, ultra-sophisticated kind of electronics and devices we have today, fewer people have the knowledge or equipment necessary to repair such things. Such tasks were much easier 50 or 60 years ago when, mechanically, most machinery was much more basic and far less complicated than today. But even allowing for this major difference, most men in 1959 couldn't have rigged up new electric lines, telephones, and all the rest of the stuff Ralph does. Very few had the requisite skills to do so.

As to the thread topic, this movie tried desperately to be about something, which is why the racial issue was brought into it. Unfortunately it chickened out by depicting Ralph not only as a mechanical whiz but as someone too noble, too pure, too conscious of race and "his place" to even touch Sarah (Inger Stevens), even though she makes it obvious again and again that she wants a romantic/sexual relationship with him.

This was playing it safe for the audiences of the 50s. Most people (blacks as well as whites, but certainly whites) would have felt anything from uncomfortable to outraged at the notion of a black man and white woman going to bed together. This just crossed too many societal boundaries of the day, at a time when miscegenation (racial intermarriage) was illegal in perhaps half the states (throughout the South, of course, but elsewhere as well). Basic racial integration was enough of an issue for most people without delving deeper into prejudices against people of different races marrying. This, plus the introduction of a mildly bigoted white man as a rival for the woman, sent this movie down the drain of conventionality, ducking the issues it raised...made worse by a sappy, conveniently artificial ending (of all three walking off happily together) that raised more questions than it answered -- mainly, how do the two men resolve the still-lingering issue of who gets the girl?

I always thought the character of Ralph was drawn rather condescendingly -- making him too good and too talented. On the other hand, it was a good way of eliminating ancillary issues and getting to the nub of the problem: race. Ralph is a good man in every way, so to a white woman race could be the only "objectionable" quality about him. If he had been some ignorant lout, she'd have had good reason to avoid him, or keep their relationship on a formal level. (This is basically the same method used in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, where Sidney Poitier's character is such a catch that the girl's parents can have no "legitimate" objection to him, leaving them to confront their own racial biases.) But while in both films the white girl wants a sexual relationship with the black man, in TWTFATD Belafonte is compelled to reject any such thoughts for himself; while in GWCTD, Poitier also wants such a relationship -- though even there he has so far resisted bedding the woman. Still, it's much more realistic and confronts the basic issue much more directly than this movie.

As for Ben (Mel Ferrer), he's so coldly unpleasant -- apart from wanting to shoot Ralph so he can have Sarah all to himself -- that it's hard to see why Sarah would want anything to do with him, other than because of his race -- which, of course, isn't an issue for her. The whole film really screws up what it intended to be its central point.