No longer home of the brave movie#
No longer home of the brave serial#

But here, Edwards presents a movie star appearance in a difficult role. Unfortunately, African-Americans were consigned to buffoonish or menial roles during the period. I think we'd have to go back to Paul Robeson in the 1930's to find a similar black-man persona. Of course, the movie's mainly remembered for James Edwards' role as a young dignified black man.

No longer home of the brave serial#

Too bad the bulk of his later career, following communist allegations, was spent within the confines of serial TV. There he's egotistical and mean-spirited in totally convincing fashion. Yet, catch him in the noir classic The Sound of Fury (1950). Always virile and athletic, he's a nice guy here. At this point in his career Bridges was one of the most interesting actors around. Anyone like Finch who goes into that maw shouldn't expect to come out.

It's creepy enough to suck the air out of a dirigible. I'm with those who think Lovejoy steals the movie in his own mild way. Yet, it's really Mingo's trajectory that delivers the movie's ultimate message. Lovejoy's low-key performance makes Mingo easy to overlook. Given Mingo's doubts, (understandable, given the intimate nature of the mission that now includes a racial outsider), it's really his ambivalence on which the plot pivots. Finch (Bridges) embraces his old friend Mingo (Lovejoy) is understandably dubious while racist TJ (Brodie) snubs the black man. Note, for example, how the three men react to Moss on his first arrival, which sets the racial stage for what follows. Yet this Hollywood moment is more than offset by the racially charged atmosphere of the remainder. It's much too pat and self-assured to be convincing, more like a happy ending contrivance. I still have trouble with the psychiatrist's (Corey) facile analysis of Moss's (Edwards) problem following island combat. In my book, the 90-minutes is not a complete success. Still, the film's many moments of sheer rawness have stayed with me over time. So far as I know, the movie's rarely been revived- in fact, I had to order a DVD decades after first viewing.

Unfortunately, this is one of the more obscure. Friction erupts when it turns out that one of the men is black The years 1949, 50, & 51, witnessed a spate of social conscience movies before the McCarthyite-HUAC purges put an end to them. It's inconceivable that a great actor like James Edwards didn't make it big in a medium that he understood and dominated with his magnetic presence.įive soldiers are sent to map out a Japanese held island during WWII. Jeff Corey plays the doctor that is instrumental in helping Moss. Frank Lovejoy also makes a good contribution. Finch had known, and liked Moss back home, so when they are reunited, the friendship they had flourishes during a difficult period for both friends. The other surprise of the movie is Lloyd Bridges who made Finch human. Where Poitier is always made the extraordinary hero, James Edwards, was always shown as a normal man, more approachable than the ones that followed him. Edwards was a handsome man who came to the movies before Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, two actors that were tapped for bigger and more ambitious projects. The casting of the wonderful James Edwards is what made this film work the way it did. Marc Robson directed this black and white movie with his usual style and emphasizing the positive side of the friendship between a good man, Finch, a white GI, and his friend and neighbor, Peter Moss, as the two are selected for a delicate mission. Carl Foreman adapted the basic premise of the stage work into a film that occurs during WWII in which a courageous man, Peter Moss, a black man, is made the object of derision and hatred among the white American soldiers that were kept segregated while combating the enemy. After all, Jews were not as accepted in the mainstream society like today and Laurents wanted to raise awareness about how he perceived the prejudice toward people that did not deserve it. Arthur Laurents' original play showed how anti-Semitism was pervasive in the America of those years. 'Home of the Brave' is a classic movie that is not seen often these days.