On INTRUDER IN THE DUST (1949)

 This 1949 drama, based on a novel by William Faulkner, is not as well known as the 1962 drama, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, based on a novel by Harper Lee. But it should be. Like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, it's the story of racial injustice in a small Southern town that's told from the viewpoint of someone who was a young person in that town.

My love of classic films started at a very early age. My grade school years, to be exact. One of my favorite days as a student at St. Leo's Elementary in Los Angeles was the Friday afternoon we students gathered in the auditorium for a special event. The nuns pulled out the school's projector, pulled down the screen, and showed a movie. The movie was the 1946 family film, THE YEARLING, directed by Clarence Brown and starring Claude Jarman Jr. as the poor country boy who keeps a trouble-making young deer as a pet. I loved it. So did the rest of the student body in the auditorium that day. The sentimental, poignant movie was in rich Technicolor and we were the generation that grew up seeing shows in black and white on big box-like TV sets.

My father realized my fascination with classic films and honored it. He occasionally invited me to watch an old film that he loved with him when it aired on local TV. One such film was INTRUDER IN THE DUST. Dad was a big fan of Puerto Rican actor, Juano Hernandez. Hernandez had significant roles in the 1950 movies YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN starring Kirk Douglas and THE BREAKING POINT starring John Garfield. The Black/Latino also had an important role in 1964's THE PAWNBROKER with Rod Steiger.

Claude Jarman Jr., of THE YEARLING, and Juano Hernandez co-starred in 1949's INTRUDER IN THE DUST. Clarence Brown, director of THE YEARLING, directed this racial drama. It is not sentimental and in rich Technicolor like THE YEARLING. It's raw, frank and in black and white.

As the movie opens, a church bell tolls. There's a somber tone to the scene. A wide shot shows a town square with no motorists on the road and no pedestrians on the sidewalks. We're taken inside a barber shop. A White man enters and says "Where's the shoe shine boy? Seems to me I ain't seen one darkie on the road since yesterday." A customer answers the a White man was "Shot in the back. By a nigger."

Lucas Beauchamp is arrested and charged with murder. As he's escorted in the jailhouse, he walks by a line of mean middle-aged White male faces. Then the camera rests on the sympathetic face of a young man. He's Chick (Claude Jarman Jr). Lucas calls out to Chick. He wants Chick's Uncle John as his lawyer. Chick is now conflicted about his friendship with Lucas. He was a guest in Lucas's home after he fell into a creek once. Lucas gave him something dry to wear and some food to eat. We see the mixture of caution and care in his eyes as he treats the young White man with kindness.

Chick's Uncle John will defend Lucas. Chick will learn some truths about injustice and inequality in his hometown.

This is a film that really displays the acting gifts of Juano Hernandez. He can do more with one line of dialogue and a glance than some actors can do with whole paragraph of dialogue. Hernandez embodies the  gray-haired man described as "proud, stubborn, insufferable."

Will the truth come out? Will Chick help the truth come out? We shall see. 

Two veteran actors who previously performed work by the celebrated Preston Sturges deliver strong dramatic supporting role performances in this film. There's Porter Hall as the one-armed man. Hall was in screwball comedies written and directed by Preston Sturges -- 1941's SULLIVAN TRAVELS as a Hollywood movie studio executive and 1944's THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK as a Justice of the Peace. In the 1950s, Elizabeth Patterson was known as Mrs. Trumbull, the neighbor to The Ricardos, on I LOVE LUCY. In the 1940 Christmastime classic, REMEMBER THE NIGHT, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, she played the kindly Aunt Emma to MacMurray's character. REMEMBER THE NIGHT has a screenplay by Preston Sturges.

Patterson is memorable as Miss Eunice, the 79-year old woman who stands up against a racist mob of men who want to break into the jailhouse and harm Lucas. She bonds with Chick to do the right thing.

INTRUDER IN THE DUST runs about 90 minutes and is great viewing for Black History Month. You can find it on YouTube. I am so glad Dad introduced me to this 1949 classic when I was a kid.