Take a Giant Step

I wanted to like this movie, as I'm becoming aware of the many Hollywood movies which were ahead of their time. In a large respect, this movie did so when exploring the many problems a black family would have in a predominately white neighborhood in the 50's. However, when portraying Johnny Nash as a teenager exploring the underbelly of the city, the dialogue bogged down and it wasn't believable. So mine is a blended rating

Beautifully directed (Philip Leacock), beautifully cast and beautiful story, by: Louis S. Peterson ... (screenplay) & Julius J. Epstein ... (screenplay) Louis S. Peterson ... (original play) Acting is superb by all- I will give a pass, a gentle one to Johnny Nash as he sings, some may find his character rather lukewarm. My apology is it's fine, for his character. The films affect on me was at the time I watched it (airing on broadcast 'TheGrio' network) urging, yet in vain, for anyone and everyone in the household to come sit down and watch this "great, great film" with me. One particular scene is brilliantly... written? To make it past potential censorship and that is the barroom scene with the ladies. The mere dialogue will also make it past the children in the household, until the word "prostitute" is said out loud by Johnny Nash.... Just, watch it. Every part of it is so well done, it's a film you really will find yourself unable to turn from the screen.

I agree this was a similar story to "Rebel Without a Cause" in that as a disaffected and displaced teen, Nash is angry but doesn't know at what, specifically.

The scenes with the grandmother are nice, as when he pours her a glass of beer. Their relationship could have been more elaborated for the audience.

The scenes where he is in a bar, meets some call girls, and actually visits one in her apartment then borrowing $2.00 for bus fare. It is about his curiosity, boredom with middle class life. He lives in, at that time an all white neighborhood, and finds the lifestyle predictable and boring.

Look for Beah Richards, and Ruby Dee is excellent. Overall worth viewing, Original and refreshing presentation. 9/10.

Continuing the reviews of African-Americans in film in chronological order for Black History Month, we're once again at 1959 when an 18-year-old Johnny Nash played a frustrated black teenager in a mostly white neighborhood who gets expelled from school because of troubles with his history teacher and smoking in the rest room. When he comes home he tells his "Gram" (Estelle Hemsley) what happened and decides to run away than face his parents Lem (Frederick O'Neal) and May (Beah Richards). I'll stop there and just say what a revelation it is, having previously known Nash as just the singer of the hit song "I Can See Clearly Now" from the early '70s, to see him here acting up a storm with so many of his veteran supporting cast. Of them, Ms. Hemsley, O'Neal, and Ms. Richards convincingly convey the struggles they all experienced moving from a poor neighborhood to the middle class one they now inhabit with Ms. Hemsley especially showing what a wise and outspoken woman she can be. She's definitely one you wouldn't want to mess with, that's for sure! Other worthy performances worth noting include Ruby Dee as the maid Christine when she opens up to Spence (Nash's character) about her background and Paulene Myers as the prostitute Violet who didn't realize how young he was when she invited him to her place. So in summary, Take a Giant Step is well worth seeing. P.S. Other people of color that appeared here include: Frances Foster, Royce Wallace, Bernie Hamilton, Smoki Whitfield, Ellen Holly in another good turn as barfly Carol, Roy Glenn as a minister, and Bill Walker as Frank the bartender. The last one would eventually have lasting fame as the Reverend Sykes in To Kill a Mockingbird when he told the daughter of Atticus Finch, "Jean Louise, stand up. Your father is passing." Oh, and since I always like citing any performer with a connection to my current home state of Louisiana, Ms. Richards was a graduate of New Orleans' Dillard University.

Restless black kid in a mostly-white small town wrestles with the values he's been taught by his working parents, whose kowtowing to the whites has left their son combative and surly (add to this a normal siege of hormones for a 17-year old boy, and the picture nearly becomes a race-reversal variation of "Rebel Without a Cause"). Handsome, clean-cut Johnny Nash is very good as the troubled youngster who, in a silent pantomime, stands up to his teacher over lessons involving the Civil War; however, the dialogue from screenwriters Julius J. Epstein and Louis S. Peterson, adapting Peterson's play, alternates between frank and occasionally very awkward. The writers get the action off to a false start with an argument between the kid and his dying grandmother (nothing substantial gets said because the characters keep answering each other's questions with more questions). After Nash chats up some prostitutes and returns home with beer on his breath, the film takes on the shape of any number of teens-in-trouble co-features. The fact that race is the central issue doesn't exactly make the film more relevant or even an anomaly--it's more of a novelty. ** from ****