Pinky Film Analysis

Released in 1949, Pinky regales the tale of Patricia “Pinky” Johnson (played by Jeanne Crain) and her struggles in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era. Pinky, a certified nurse from up North, relocates back to Mississippi because she is afraid of being discovered passing, or having black blood but being so light skinned that one can pass for white. However, she is in love with Dr. Thomas Adams, played by William Lundigan, a white man whom she met while she was living in Boston for nursing school. Upon her return to Mississippi, her illiterate grandmother Aunt Dicey takes care of her, but eventually asks her to take care of her dying, white friend, Miss Em. Despite her efforts to go back to the North in order to escape from the racial barriers of Mississippi, Pinky reluctantly agrees to

take care of Miss Em, but firmly states that she will be returning to the North with Dr. Adams after she finished her duties to Miss Em. At first, Pinky and Miss Em do not get off to a great start due to resentment from both Miss Em and Pinky. Throughout her caretaking of Miss Em, Miss Em develops a liking for Pinky and Pinky begins to respect Miss Em much more. During one day of treatment, Pinky encourages Miss Em to draft a will because she does not have one. Miss Em reluctantly agrees, drafts a will, and entrusts it to Dr. McGill. Despite how strong she was, Miss Em eventually passes under Pinky’s eye. Upon the reading of her will, we discover that Miss Em left Pinky her house in an effort to make her do something with who she really is (a black person) and not as a passing white. Because she feels cheated, Miss Em’s Cousin, Melba Wooley, (played by Evelyn Varden) challenges the will and insists that Pinky forced Miss Em into writing the will to leave everything to her. Pinky begs the retiring Judge Walker to represent her case in court where she wants to win the house that is rightfully hers. In the end, Pinky wins the court case and gets to keep the house. Her beloved Tom wants her to sell it and move to the West with him where she can pass forever, instead of having to be discriminated against in the South. Pinky decides that she really is an African American and that moving away would make her something that she is not. She also thinks about why Miss Em would give her the house in the first place and concludes that Miss Em must have believed that Pinky could do something great. At the very end of the film, we see that Pinky has opened a schoolhouse for the Black community of her town. The film was based on the book Quality by Cid Rickett Sumner, but was adapted into a screenplay by Phillip Dunne. It was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by Elia Kazan.
In totality, I thought that Pinky was an amazing display of acting. The way that Ethel Waters portrayed Aunt Dicey was brilliant. She gave the viewers the classic Mammy stereotype: she had been with the family forever and though she was not the smartest in a literal sense, she carried wisdom unlike any other. The film was constantly building the Mammy stereotype even more by discussing Aunt Dicey’s superstitious nature and her immense pillars of Christian faith. Another phenomenal performance came from Jeanne Crain as Pinky. Because she was an actual white actor, I believe that that helped the viewers sympathize with Pinky even more because we could understand the lunacy of the situation even more since Crain was an actual white woman. Another aspect of Crain’s performance was that she displayed a certain charisma on screen that supplemented her character’s intelligence and audacity to do what she thought was right. Another performance that I feel is often overlooked is Evelyn Varden’s performance as Melba Wooley, Miss Em’s snobby cousin, who tries to prevent Pinky from inheriting the house from Miss Em. Though I hate the character itself, as I am sure most people do, Varden delivered a very compelling performance that spoke at length about this society’s racial prejudice. Without such a good performance on this end of the plot, viewers would not have been able to sympathize with Pinky as much and it would have subtracted a level of realism from the film.
The time in which Pinky was released was a very politically volatile time period. With World War II having ended only four years ago, there was still a national spotlight on racial discrimination. The pressure of a draft where both black and white men were drafted to fight alongside each other helped create a national bond between all races. Due to the draft having only been four years removed from the release of the film, the screenwriters and producers had some concern over how the public would receive a film that highlighted racism. After having originally intended to write the script himself, Zanuck noticed the intense political tensions that the film was dealing with and opted to let the more experienced screenwriter Phillip Dunne compose the script. As Judie Smith discusses in her book Visions of Belonging, the screenwriters faced an immense challenge in not only addressing the race issue, but also addressing it in a way that would not disturb viewers who watched the film. Also, there were lots of question marks concerning foreign markets that did not have the same definitions of race as the US. For instance, in certain countries like Brazil and France, Pinky would have been considered a white woman because they did not believe in the “One Drop Rule.” Dunne talked about how this along with the more local race scene influenced the way he wrote the script heavily. (Smith 187) In Smith’s book, she discussed what Dunne did in an attempt to qualm tensions of race in the script. The most influential action of the screenplay is that Jeanne Crain is left with a choice: a choice between choosing to be black or choosing to be white. By allowing Crain to choose the race that she belongs to and by making her decision to go along with the demands of the society she was a part of, it not only triumphantly enforced her decision to help the black community as the climax of the plot, but also downplayed the racial nature of modern society by setting the plot up where she had a choice. (Smith 186) This helped not only to appeal more to the African American viewers in the fact that they were “the victors” of the film because that is the camp that Pinky sides with, but also helped appeal more to the White viewers because it softened the social forces of Pinky’s environment by not allowing her to make her decision instead of forcing her into a particular crowd.
Pinky is littered of instances where Jeanne Crain is treated a particular way until an alternative racial distinction plays its way into the script. One of the most obvious instances in the film where Pinky is immediately treated differently because of her “true” race is during the episode where she is at Jake’s house trying to get her grandmother’s money back. When Jake’s girlfriend shows up and begins to start a ruckus with Pinky and the two officers show up, Pinky was originally perceived as a white woman so the cops immediately gave her the benefit of the doubt in the altercation and were only going to arrest Jake and Rozelia, but upon discovering that Pinky was indeed also African American, decided to arrest all three of them. The second most obvious difference in treatment comes in the grocery store towards the end of the film where Miss Em’s snobby cousin Melba Wooley announces to the storeowner of Pinky’s true race. Upon finding out, there is an immediate change in the way Pinky was treated in the store. Firstly, the storeowner is reluctant to serve Pinky in the first place. Secondly, he raises the price of the black cap from $2.99 to $4.98, because he sees that Pinky only has a five. Then, he is reluctant to give her the two cents of change that she is entitled to. This scene highlights the perceived difference in races to the general public; it shows that this society truly did value one racial distinction over another, despite what their eyes actually tell them. The final example comes at the hand of Pinky’s lover Dr. Thomas Adams. While he originally wants Pinky to move back to the North with him and to start a new life with him and all of his family, upon discovering that Pinky is considered “black,” he decides that they should both move out west, where they never have to tell anyone, including his family. This proves that even though Dr. Adams realized that Pinky was not inherently different than anyone else, he was still afraid of his social circle’s reaction to Pinky technically being a “black woman.” All three of these instances relate to race as a social construct. Despite the fact that she was initially seen as a white woman, as soon as society found out that she had a single hint of black blood in her, it immediately changed the way they perceived her as a human being.
Racism based on physical attributes, or phenotype racism, is also prevalent in Pinky.

We first see this towards the beginning of the film where Pinky gets into the altercation with Jake and Rozelia. Because the cops could tell from a distance that Jake and Rozelia were black, they immediately assumed that they were in the wrong. It was only while the cops were arresting them that they discovered that Pinky, too, was “black” and that she must also be in the wrong so they arrested her as well. This also explains why the cops slapped Rozelia when she brought up the fact that Pinky was also “black” because it was unheard of for a black woman to say such a thing about a white woman. A second example of phenotype racism comes when Judge Walker is talking to Pinky, Rozelia, and Jake in his office. He acts under racial pretenses against Jake as he warns him to “keep his hands off of other people’s money.” This displays Judge Walker’s lack of trust towards Jake dealing with other people’s money, primarily because he is black, and assumes that he will probably jip his “customers” again. Pinky does a very good job at highlighting the differences in phenotype racism and racism based on

blood.
The southern belle stereotype in this film is only moderately explored. Dunne’s script establishes Miss Em and Melba Wooley as the typical southern belles of this town. As we discussed in our post-film discussion of Jezebel, the southern belle is a woman who is very hospitable and can lead the domestic side of her household and does not rely on her husband to do so. In Jezebel, Aunt Belle is the absolute embodiment of the southern belle philosophy. In Pinky, we do not see near as much of the daily interactions of Miss Em because she is incapacitated for much of the film, so we must infer from conversations that happen throughout the film. Throughout many different conversations in the film, the idea of Miss Em’s independence in her home is discussed, which establishes her as a southern belle in the film. Her cousin Melba is also an embodiment of the southern belle philosophy. As we see in scenes like the grocery store scene, Melba carries this sense of entitlement and prejudice due to her family’s esteem. While prejudice is not necessarily a part of the southern belle stereotype, family prevalence and esteem is generally accepted as common attributes of a southern belle.
Quality, the book written by Cid Rickett Sumner that Pinky is based off of, was released in 1946, which is very close to the end of World War Two. Sumner wrote the book in order to capitalize on a wartime unity that had emerged as a result of the draft since 1941. Pinky used the leftovers of that same movement in order to captivate its audience as not only a film that was centered on a love story, but also as a film that explored something deeper and more socially relevant: racial constructivity. By displaying social actions on based on phenotype and paralleling those actions with actions towards Pinky, by having characters assume she is white because of her extremely white skin tone, the screenwriter creates an image that presents the foolishness of the “one drop rule.”
As a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed Pinky because I though it presented an interesting dynamic in a creative way. I loved the fact that Pinky, who was considered a black character in the film, was cast to be played by a white woman, Jeanne Crain. Also, Ethel Water’s performance as Aunt Dicey was a very good choice because Water’s delivered a very compelling and convincing performance. The one major aspect of the film that I did not care for was the lack of backstory between Pinky and Dr. Adams. I felt that the screenplay needed to expand on their relationship dynamic more in order to draw attention away from the racial aspect of the film. As Bosley Crowler says in her film review in the New York Times, “the personal drama and interior conflicts that smolder and smoke within this set of complications have not been fanned to full flame by the script.” I believe that if the screenwriter expanded more on the relationship, they could have added another dynamic to the plot that is not present in its current form. I also did not buy into the ‘happily ever after’ theme that the ending implies. In this time period, people would not have been completely okay with that type of ruling from the court. As Jake says to Pinky and Aunt Dicey, “ I got a nice house and no fire insurance.” At this time, white supremacy groups in the area would have targeted Pinky and likely set her new home ablaze instead of ever allowing her to open up her clinic and nursery school for the black community. Aside from those two objections, I enjoyed the film in totality and thought that it did compelling job of dealing with a difficult subject in a graceful manner.