Bright Road

Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge in Bright Road

Gerald Mayer's Bright Road, a B feature from 1953, is more significant historically than artistically. Bright Road was the first screenplay based on the work of an African American, Mary Elizabeth Vroman, to be produced by a Hollywood studio. It also contains the first screen appearance of Harry Belafonte. Dorothy Dandridge, then one of the most popular nightclub singers in the country, is the film's star. Unfortunately, Bright Road proves that Hollywood films designed for African American audiences could be just as inane and formulaic as those made for white audiences.

The film is suffused with the liberal humanist uplift that was characteristic of MGM under the stewardship of Dore Schary. The film exists in a pre-integration, separate but equal cosmos where the only white character is the town doctor. It is set in an unnamed rural town in the South. Dandridge plays a schoolmarm and Belafonte, the school's principal. The roles are so refined as to seem Victorian. When Belafonte asks Dandridge for a date, it is to have an ice cream soda. This gentility extends to the, too few, musical numbers. Dandridge sings a lullaby based on a Tennyson poem while Belafonte sings a  restrained ballad.  The fieriness of both performers is much more in evidence the next year in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones. 

The milieu of the film is the idealized white picket fence regionalism found on the MGM back lot. A fantasy land where the Becky Thatchers of town save the Tom Sawyers for civilization and the Huck Finns (and Stagolees) are a lost cause. The problem child of Bright Road is the academically challenged C.T. Despite his sullen challenge to authority, C.T. is a sensitive soul who enjoys drawing nature's creatures and keeping bees. The drama of Bright Road, such as it is, is whether neophyte teacher Dandridge can ignite the torch of learning for the young lad. Is there any doubt? The characters include a girl C.T. is sweet on who has a tell-tale cough and soon goes the way of Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Most of the scenes of the film take place in a classroom where a portrait of a paternal Booker T. Washington looks down. The film is extremely undynamic and proved too white bread, if you excuse the expression, even for 1953 audiences. Most of the child performers are more than adequate, though Belafonte seems stiff and ill at ease unless he is holding a guitar. The film failed to gain any career momentum for him and Dandridge, but, mercifully, it is only 69 minutes long.