Back To School Special: Bright Road, 1953

So, I happened upon Bright Road when I first heard it mentioned in the HBO original movie, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. This was my first movie with the actual Dorothy Dandridge, not Halle Berry as her doppelganger. I must say that the most distracting thing about this movie is that Dorothy Dandridge was gorgeous. She's supposed to play this schoolteacher and I was just like, "Are you kidding me? She has to be a schoolteacher? I don't think so."


Not that she wasn't a capable actress, sometimes I think some people's talent os overwhelmed by the gift of beauty. I mean check out the trailer! Apparently you did not have to get all ugly to do serious drama in the 1950s.

Anyway, onto the next thing. The story is actually charming if a little light. Dorothy Dandridge is a new 4th grade teacher at a black school in the segregated south. It's based on a short story by Mary Elizabeth Vroman who herself was a schoolteacher in Alabama and the first black person to join the Writer's Guild. She has a rebellious pupil called CT played by Philip Hepburn, the middle child of eight, who repeats every grade he's in. Dorothy sees the potential in him and what he's good at rather than considering him a "backward child" as the other teachers do. She sets out to help him and believes she has until CT's crush Tanya played by Barbara Randolph, dies of pnuemonia. CT goes into a downward somewhat existential spiral. That might be overstating it.

It's not a heavy social issues picture, but it is revolutionary in that it features a predominantly African American cast, there's only one white guy in the whole movie and he's Tanya's doctor. It also features the film debut of Harry Belafonte. The film was a decided commercial failure, most likely due to the time it came out in, but it's pretty impressive that the film got made at all considering how hard it is today to get a film with a predominantly African American cast made. Outside of Tyler Perry, but please don't start me on Tyler Perry. I really can't deal with Tyler Perry.