Roderick "Chuck" Nelson (John Drew Barrymore), scion of one of San Francisco's wealthiest families and a prisoner of war during the Korean conflict, was never the same after his experiences and his brother, Lexington (Dean Jones), thinks the best thing for him is a Mexican fishing trip to help snap him out of his lassitude. While there, Chuck falls for his guide's daughter, Ginny (Julie London), who confesses she's "a quarter" (black) when he proposes marriage but, deeply in love and a new man because of it, he only replies, "Statistics bore me". Chuck brings Ginny home to his controlling mother, Cornelia (Agnes Moorehead), who seems to outwardly approve but when the couple are photographed in her cousins' (Anna Kashfi & Nat King Cole) nightclub and newspaper headlines scream the young millionaire married a quadroon, all hell breaks loose. Turned out of their hotel, harassed by neighbors, and treated harshly by police, the couple are separated by Cornelia who uses drugs and brainwashing to bring about an annulment on the grounds Ginny concealed her heritage from Chuck. During a sensational courtroom trial with everyone against her, Ginny is forced to strip before the judge to see if she's tan all over...
The Civil Rights movement was a hot-button topic of national concern in the late 1950s when MGM decided to exploit the issue with a soapy saga of miscegenation produced by schlockmeister Albert Zugsmith and directed by eccentric auteur Hugo Haas, a fringe-dwelling cross between Ed Wood and Alfred Hitchcock. Haas, a past master at the puerile potboiler, hit the big time here but thankfully couldn't break free from the methods his obsessive madness invariably took. Low-rent psychodrama is just that and all a bigger budget does is make a silk purse out of a sow's ear to the point where, in this case, Haas' murky run of the mill mise–en–scènes were considered "careful suspense" by the NY Times. What's interesting about this sordid exercise in exploitation is that Haas' mania for masochistic romance eclipses any real opportunity for the exploration of prejudice and the one-dimensional black and white hate comes through loud and clear. No attempt is made to show grey and because intolerance is a given with no hope for the future, the lovers' persecution seems right out of "Oliver Twist". The couple's rocky road does, however, make for entertaining melodrama and the above-average acting for this sort of thing also kicks it up a notch or two.
Sexy singer Julie London, with her trademark mane cascading down her back, gives her "high yeller" a restraint not generally associated with put-upon heroines and John Drew Barrymore's vulnerable Korean War vet showed that sensitivity was actually within the cult actor's ken. The genteel veneer Agnes Moorehead gives her mean, manipulative matriarch adds some class to the crass crises cooked up for our entertainment while Albert Zugsmith's quirky stable of quasi-personalities such as Jackie Coogan, bandleader Ray Anthony, and Charles Chaplin, Jr. make their usual unmemorable impressions. Marlon Brando's volatile wife, the exotic Anna Kashfi, was more famous for her messy divorce than any real talent she may have possessed but she acquits herself nicely as the elegant hostess-wife of nitery owner Nat King Cole who croons the title tune and sings another while tickling the ivories in his swanky club. They're progressive blacks, civilized and wise to the ways of the world, creating a stark counterpoint to the small-minded neighbors, cops, business owners, and family that surround the seemingly star-crossed pair who, incidentally, consummate their love on a beach the night of the quarter moon. Julie's fisherman father is also an exception, a salty Irishman who felt he married above his meager station when he took a "mixed" maiden as his bride and Julie's black lawyer, intelligently interpreted by James Edwards, embodies all that's good in an otherwise predatory profession and makes a revealing "whitebread" role model for his race.
The movie's take on race "relations" plays it safe by making Julie's grandmother a Portugese-Angolan descended from African royalty (which speaks volumes on Hollywood's own bias) and stops short of calling the kettle black in other ways, too. The closest this movie gets to raw reality is a group of neighborhood teens (led by Chaplin) surrounding Julie while taunting, "eenie meenie miney mo" (as in "catch a _____ by the toe...") but that's probably more a case of Production Code prohibitions than any true sensitivity. The movie was obviously inspired by an infamous 1924 court trial that rocked the nation (Rhinelander v. Rhinelander) and although attitudes towards interracial marriage hadn't progressed much in 35 years, change was on the horizon and NIGHT OF THE QUARTER MOON was given a hopeful ending that didn't happen in real life.
The movie may transcend it's exploitative raison d'etre by being first and foremost a love story but there's no denying it's also a "ripped from the headlines" upper-crust "kitchen sink" stinker -and lots of fun because of it. London's Sunday Times awarded this trash classic its dreaded "ring up and complain" rating but I say write Warner Archives and request a re-release on DVD.
The Civil Rights movement was a hot-button topic of national concern in the late 1950s when MGM decided to exploit the issue with a soapy saga of miscegenation produced by schlockmeister Albert Zugsmith and directed by eccentric auteur Hugo Haas, a fringe-dwelling cross between Ed Wood and Alfred Hitchcock. Haas, a past master at the puerile potboiler, hit the big time here but thankfully couldn't break free from the methods his obsessive madness invariably took. Low-rent psychodrama is just that and all a bigger budget does is make a silk purse out of a sow's ear to the point where, in this case, Haas' murky run of the mill mise–en–scènes were considered "careful suspense" by the NY Times. What's interesting about this sordid exercise in exploitation is that Haas' mania for masochistic romance eclipses any real opportunity for the exploration of prejudice and the one-dimensional black and white hate comes through loud and clear. No attempt is made to show grey and because intolerance is a given with no hope for the future, the lovers' persecution seems right out of "Oliver Twist". The couple's rocky road does, however, make for entertaining melodrama and the above-average acting for this sort of thing also kicks it up a notch or two.
Sexy singer Julie London, with her trademark mane cascading down her back, gives her "high yeller" a restraint not generally associated with put-upon heroines and John Drew Barrymore's vulnerable Korean War vet showed that sensitivity was actually within the cult actor's ken. The genteel veneer Agnes Moorehead gives her mean, manipulative matriarch adds some class to the crass crises cooked up for our entertainment while Albert Zugsmith's quirky stable of quasi-personalities such as Jackie Coogan, bandleader Ray Anthony, and Charles Chaplin, Jr. make their usual unmemorable impressions. Marlon Brando's volatile wife, the exotic Anna Kashfi, was more famous for her messy divorce than any real talent she may have possessed but she acquits herself nicely as the elegant hostess-wife of nitery owner Nat King Cole who croons the title tune and sings another while tickling the ivories in his swanky club. They're progressive blacks, civilized and wise to the ways of the world, creating a stark counterpoint to the small-minded neighbors, cops, business owners, and family that surround the seemingly star-crossed pair who, incidentally, consummate their love on a beach the night of the quarter moon. Julie's fisherman father is also an exception, a salty Irishman who felt he married above his meager station when he took a "mixed" maiden as his bride and Julie's black lawyer, intelligently interpreted by James Edwards, embodies all that's good in an otherwise predatory profession and makes a revealing "whitebread" role model for his race.
The movie's take on race "relations" plays it safe by making Julie's grandmother a Portugese-Angolan descended from African royalty (which speaks volumes on Hollywood's own bias) and stops short of calling the kettle black in other ways, too. The closest this movie gets to raw reality is a group of neighborhood teens (led by Chaplin) surrounding Julie while taunting, "eenie meenie miney mo" (as in "catch a _____ by the toe...") but that's probably more a case of Production Code prohibitions than any true sensitivity. The movie was obviously inspired by an infamous 1924 court trial that rocked the nation (Rhinelander v. Rhinelander) and although attitudes towards interracial marriage hadn't progressed much in 35 years, change was on the horizon and NIGHT OF THE QUARTER MOON was given a hopeful ending that didn't happen in real life.
The movie may transcend it's exploitative raison d'etre by being first and foremost a love story but there's no denying it's also a "ripped from the headlines" upper-crust "kitchen sink" stinker -and lots of fun because of it. London's Sunday Times awarded this trash classic its dreaded "ring up and complain" rating but I say write Warner Archives and request a re-release on DVD.