I Passed for White

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 .

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.

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!

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 . . . .

This film stars Sonya Wilde as a biracial lady and James Franciscus plays her boyfriend who has no idea she isn't 100% lily-white. At first, Sonya doesn't want to pose as white--but she doesn't really fit in with black folks as she appears white. After being refused jobs and being mistreated as biracial, she meets Franciscus and lands a job--and she's tired of not fitting in and just lets people think she's white. After all, in America in 1960, you'd certainly be treated like a second-class citizen if you weren't pure white--which is a stupid shame.

Once the pair marry, things are occasionally a little tough. After all, she's told so many lies about her family and Franciscus and his parents want to meet them. Her lies are a bit hard to swallow and it's not surprising that his mother starts to worry. After all, when the pair are going to LA on their honeymoon (where she told them her parents were), she tells him they can't see her family....as they've just hopped a boat for South America and don't plan on returning!! An additional problem develops when she slowly starts to see that her husband and his family are racists. Can this charade go on any longer--especially when she becomes pregnant? This is generally a very good and engaging film. Here and there are a few moments that seemed like they could have been handled better, but for a relatively low-budget film this can be forgiven. Well worth seeing and an interesting curio. However, I must add that the ending sure felt a bit anti-climactic.

It's an interesting coincidence that this film (which had been on my Netflix queue for some time) came when it did. Just a few days ago, I finished the brilliant novel "Diary of an Ex-Colored Man"--which deals with the same themes as well as discusses why a light-skinned person would want to pose as white. It's a sad story--and a perfect compliment to this film.

I am quite surprised that the lovely Wilde didn't appear in any other films--and only a few guest appearances on TV shows up until 1962. What ever happened to her? I could find nothing on IMDb or when I did a Google search. Odd...

By the way, the DVD print is very, very scratched in places. This doesn't seriously impede the film but it is surprising on a DVD. It could really use some restoration work. However, there are no captions and it would have been nice to have them.