A Patch of Blue
After becoming the first African-American performer to win a Best Actor Oscar®, for his performance in
Lilies of the Field (1963), Sidney Poitier had emerged as such a box-office force that MGM's Pandro S. Berman declared he would produce
A Patch of Blue (1965) only if Poitier agreed to play the leading role. Based on a novel by Australian novelist Elizabeth Kata, the script told of a friendship between a black man and a young white woman who has been blinded by her sadistic, bigoted mother and is therefore unaware that her new friend is of a different race.
Once Poitier had committed to the project, he worked with Berman and writer-director Guy Green in updating the screenplay and making it more attuned to his onscreen personality. In the novel, the girl shares some of her mother's prejudices and reacts traumatically when she discovers the truth, pushing her newfound friend into the hands of racist vigilantes. "Nothing of that kind was left in the picture, the meaning of which depended on the fact that she did not mind discovering her friend's Negro origin," Berman commented. Thus, as re-envisioned by Poitier and his associates, the story takes on a much more optimistic tone; even though the friends eventually part, each has benefited from the relationship.
MGM tested 150 unknowns before signing Elizabeth Hartman as Poitier's costar. "I believe I was lacking the things they wanted an actress to lack," the Youngstown, Ohio native modestly commented to Sidney Skolsky at the time. The columnist observed that the 24-year-old Hartman was "shy, timid - She always takes her Raggedy-Ann doll to bed with her." Although she would appear in a half-dozen other films, Hartman grew increasingly reclusive with the years and died at 45 in a fall from her fifth-floor apartment, an apparent suicide.
Shelley Winters, cast as the monstrous mother, said in interviews that it was very difficult for her to speak the racial epithets used by her character in
A Patch of Blue. "I've always found something to like in the characters I've played, but not this time," she said. "I really hate this woman." Despite her animosity toward the part, Winters won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for her shrewish performance. The film also was nominated in the categories of Best Actress (Hartman), Art Direction/Set Decoration, Black and White Cinematography and Original Score. Although neglected this time by Oscar, Poitier won a nomination for a British Academy Award as Best Foreign Actor.
A Patch of Blue proved a box-office winner, even in the South. In Atlanta, its first two weeks' grosses broke a record held by
Gone With the Wind (1939). Old taboos still held, though; a modest, eight-second kiss between the leading characters was cut for Southern audiences. Poitier, meanwhile, had become frustrated by the limitations imposed upon his screen romances: "Either there were no women or there was a woman, but she was blind, or the relationship was of a nature that satisfied the taboos. I was at my wit's end when I finished
A Patch of Blue."
Director: Guy Green
Producer: Pandro S. Berman, Guy Green, Kathryn Hereford (associate)
Screenplay: Guy Green, Elizabeth Kata (novel Be Ready With Bells and Drums)
Cinematography: Robert Burks
Music: Jerry Goldsmith
Art Direction: George W. Davis, Urie McCleary
Cast: Sidney Poitier (Gordon Ralfe), Shelley Winters (Rose-Ann D'Arcey), Elizabeth Hartman (Selina D'arcey), Wallace Ford (Ole Pa), Ivan Dixon (Mark Ralfe), Elisabeth Fraser (Sadie), John Qualen (Mr. Faber), Kelly Flynn (Yanek Faber)
BW-106m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning. Descriptive Video.
by Roger Fristoe
Guy Green (1913-2005)
Guy Green, an Oscar®-winning cinematographer who did his best work for David Lean in the '40s (
Great Expectations,
Oliver Twist) and who later developed into a notable film director (
A Patch of
Blue) died on September 15 in his Beverly Hills home of kidney failure. He was 91.
He was born on November 5, 1913 in Somerset, England.
Long fascinated by cinema, he became a film projectionist while still in his teens, and was a clapper boy by age 20. He bacame a camera operator during World War II in such fine war dramas as
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing;
In Which We Serve (both 1942) and
This Happy Breed (1944). His big break came as a director of photography came for Carol Reed's
The Way Ahead (1944). He was eventually chosen by David Lean to photograph
Great Expectations (1946), and his moody, corrosive look at Dickensian London deservedly earned an Academy Award. His work as a cinematographer for the next few years were justly celebrated. Film after film:
Blanche Fury (1947), Oliver Twist (1948),
The Passionate Friends (1949),
Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951),
The Beggar's Opera (1953),
I Am a Camera (1955), all highlighted his gift for cloud-soaked period pieces with sweeping vistas of broad landscapes.
He made his directorial debut in a modest crime drama,
River Beat (1954). Some minor titles followed:
Portrait of Alison (1955);
House of Secrets (1956); the ingenious mystery thriller
The Snorkel (1958); the controversial child molestation drama
The Mark (1961) starring Stuart Whitman in an Oscar® nominated performance; and his breakthrough picture,
The Angry Silence (1960) which starred Richard Attenborough as an outcast who tries to battle labor union corruption. This film earned Green a BAFTA (a British Oscar equivilant) nomination for Best Director and opened the door for him to Hollywood.
Once there, he proceeded to make some pleasant domestic dramas:
Light in the Piazza (1962), and
Diamond Head (1963), before moving onto what many critics consider his finest work:
A Patch of Blue (1965). The film, based on Elizabeth Kata's novel about the interracial love between a blind girl (Elizabeth Hartman) and a black man (Sidney
Poitier) despite the protests of her bigoted mother (Shelley Winters), was a critical and commercial hit, and it earned Green a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director.
Strangely, Green would never enjoy a critical success equal to
A Patch of Blue again. Despite his talent for sensitive material and handling of actors, Green's next two films: a forgettable Hayley Mills vehicle
Pretty Polly (1967); and
The Magus simply didn't attract the moviegoers or the film reviewers. He redeemed himself slightly with the mature Anthony Quinn-Ingrid Bergman love story
Walk in the Spring Rain (1970); and the historical drama
Luther (1973), before he stooped to lurid dreck with
Jacqueline Susan's Once Is Not Enough (1975).
Eventually, Green would find solace directing a series of television movies, the best of which was an adaptation of the Arthur Hailey (of
Airport
fame) novel
Strong Medicine (1986) starring Sam Neill and Annette O’Toole. Green is survived by his wife Josephine.
by Michael T. Toole
