In the years immediately following World War II, Hollywood finally seemed to wake up to the fact racism was a bad thing (to be fair, there are still parts of the country that still haven’t figured that out). Granted, Hollywood didn’t own up to how they had depicted African-Americans (or other people of color) in the years before or during WWII (In This Our Life, John Huston’s follow-up to The Maltese Falcon, is not considered one of his best among his fans, but it does deserve credit for how it depicts its African-American characters, and Sahara, the WWII movie co-starring Humphrey Bogart, also treats its African-American characters with dignity and respect, but those were few and far between), but at least they were finally willing to confront racism as a subject. In 1949, there were four movies dealing with racism against African-Americans: Home of the Brave, directed by Mark Robson, Intruder in the Dust, directed by Clarence Brown (and adapted from the novel by William Faulkner), Lost Boundaries, directed by Alfred L. Werker, and Pinky, directed by Elia Kazan. Of those, Intruder in the Dust is considered the best of them, with the least amount of compromises in regards to the Hays Code, studio timidity, or racist sensibilities. I like Intruder in the Dust, particularly for the performances of Juano Hernandez, Will Geer, and Porter Hall, but I believe the best movie to deal with racism in the immediate post-WWII era was No Way Out, directed and co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who co-wrote the movie with Lesser Samuels; Philip Yordan also did uncredited work on the script).
Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier) is the first African-American doctor to work at an unnamed city hospital (modeled on what was then called Cook County Hospital in Chicago, now called John H. Stoger Jr. Hospital). One night, when he’s the attending physician at the prison ward, Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark) and his brother Johnny are brought in after they were both wounded in the leg during an attempted robbery. Ray is a racist, and he’s further inflamed when Dr. Brooks, to the bemusement of the guards on duty, believes Johnny is suffering from a brain tumor and starts checking for that (giving Johnny a spinal tap), rather than being concerned with the gunshot wound. Johnny ends up dying, and Ray accuses Dr. Brooks of killing his brother. Dr. Brooks convinces his superior, Dr. Dan Wharton (Stephen McNally), they need to perform an autopsy on Johnny, and since they need the approval of a family member (and Ray certainly won’t approve), the two doctors approach Johnny’s widow, Edie Johnson (Linda Darnell), to approve an autopsy to prove Johnny died of a brain tumor and not a gunshot wound. Edie, however, is torn between conflicting loyalties, especially when Ray (as much as she despises him) plays on her racism. At the same time, Brooks’ co-worker Lefty Jones (Dots Johnson), a hospital orderly, and other members of the African-American community realize the whites are going to cause a riot, and despite Brooks’ pleas, are preparing to respond with force of their own. This leads Brooks to take matters into his own hands by having himself arrested for Johnny’s murder to force an autopsy, but this also leads to a confrontation with Ray.
This was a departure for Mankiewicz, as he was known for dialogue-driven comedy/dramas such as A Letter to Three Wives, People Will Talk (appropriately enough), The Barefoot Contessa, and best of all, All About Eve. At first glance, this material might have been more suited to someone like Kazan. However, Mankiewicz apparently sought this material out because he wanted to make a Kazan-type film. What’s interesting is that Mankiewicz doesn’t try and soft-pedal the material. He wanted to show the ugly nature of racism, and we certainly get that with Ray, not just in what he says to Dr. Brooks, but also in the way he acts towards Dr. Brooks, such as when Ray attacks him at the end. Granted, in the over 70 years since this movie was made, Hollywood still seems to only be able to portray racism at its most obvious, so this may not seem like a stretch today. However, unlike many of the movies tackling racism in some way today, Mankiewicz also shows more casual racism. We get that with the hospital guards who question what Dr. Brooks is doing in treating Ray’s brother in a way they wouldn’t question a white doctor, as well as in in the scene where those guards give Ray bad news about a fight between his friends and members of the African-American community, and they use a racial slur not as blatant as the n-word, but still offensive. Mankiewicz also shows that in the scene where Dr. Wharton is trying to convince Dr. Moreland (Stanley Ridges) to approve Dr. Brooks’ request to have an autopsy performed, and Moreland is more concerned about the fact if he fires Brooks, it’ll be bad publicity – plus, he tells Wharton not to tell him about race. Finally, there’s the scene where Ray takes a scalpel and slips it into Dr. Brooks’ pocket and the nurses don’t immediately come to his defense after Dr. Brooks accuses Ray of stealing it, even though Brooks is a doctor there. In his commentary on the DVD, film noir specialist Eddie Muller speculated the reason why the movie wasn’t shown too much on TV is because Mankiewicz didn’t pull any punches when it came to showing racism.
Admittedly, Mankiewicz does slip up in other ways. Some of that is plot points – the scene where Dr. Wharton, while waiting for the elevator at the hospital, is telling someone he’s going to a hotel seems to be there only so Ray can be in earshot so after he and his brother George (Harry Bellaver) overpower a guard, they can lure Dr. Brooks there. Some of that is the speeches some characters get stuck with, particularly Cora (Mildred Joanne Smith), Dr. Brooks’ wife. And some of that is Mankiewicz does, unfortunately, trying to placate white audiences by making sure there are “good” whites in the picture, so we get scenes like when Dr. Brooks gushes about how much he appreciates Wharton (it makes sense he’d be grateful to Wharton, but it comes off as patronizing to Dr. Brooks).* Still, for the most part, Mankiewicz keeps control of the material. Also, while his is first and foremost a message film, Mankiewicz, with the help of cinematographer Milton R. Krasner (who shot two other movies for Mankiewicz), make this look like a noir film, especially in the fight between the poor whites and the African-Americans, or at Wharton’s home when Ray is getting ready to ambush Dr. Brooks. The plot also has the trappings of a noir in the fact it’s about an innocent man who gets caught in a quagmire, as well as a good bad girl in the form of Edie, who does briefly backslide into being racist thanks to Ray egging her on, but then turns away from that. Mankiewicz and Samuels also portray George in an interesting way in that George is a deaf-mute, but that doesn’t account for, or excuse, his racism.
Like many actors who have played racists over the years, Widmark in real life was a liberal (he even apologized to Poitier after many takes until Poitier told him they were just acting – the two became friends, and went on to co-star again in The Long Ships and The Bedford Incident, while Poitier would later direct Widmark in Hanky Panky). Widmark had made his mark by playing villainous or treacherous characters in movies like Kiss of Death and Road House (Panic in the Streets, the Kazan film that came out the same year as No Way Out, was Widmark’s first attempt to play against type), but what’s revealing in his performance is how he isn’t afraid to make Ray look pathetic as well as racist, especially at the end when he collapses. Darnell would later call this the only good film she ever did, and while I wouldn’t agree (I like Unfaithfully Yours and A Letter to Three Wives, the latter her first film with Mankiewicz), I certainly think it’s her best performance. The way she’s able to let you know what Edie is thinking when she tricks George to get away from him (she blasts the radio loudly, knowing he can’t hear it but the neighbors will, and when they come in, she gets away in the confusion) is a good example of, as is the scene when she bonds with Gladys (Amanda Randolph), Wharton’s maid. Like Widmark, McNally was mostly known for playing villainous characters (the same year this film came out, he played James Stewart’s outlaw brother in Winchester ’73), but he plays well against type here. Rudolph manages to make the most of her stock role, and there are also early appearances from real-life couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as a couple (Dee plays Dr. Brooks’ sister, while Davis plays his brother-in-law). But the movie rests on Poitier’s shoulders. This was his first leading role (he had been an extra in a feature and had also appeared in a documentary), but Poitier already seems like a natural. Admittedly, Dr. Brooks is the type of role that Poitier would find himself playing more and more over the next two decades, but there are some interesting wrinkles here, especially at the end. It may seem like a sop when Dr. Brooks decides to treat a wounded Ray even after Ray attacks him, but his rationale for treating Ray is that he’s trying to stay true to the Hippocratic oath, rather than some false statement about trying to get along. Not only that, but long before the famous scene of Poitier slapping a white man who slapped him in the film In the Heat of the Night, Poitier gets to snarl, “Don’t cry, white boy, you’re gonna live” to Ray when he’s crying in pain. It’s scenes like that which help make No Way Out still hold up today as both a good anti-racist film and a good film, period.
*-On the other hand, when the hospital orderly (Dot Johnson) tells Dr. Brooks about how the African-Americans are going to fight the whites, and Dr. Brooks tells him they’ll be no better than the whites are if they resort to violence, the orderly responds, “Ain’t it asking a lot for us to be better than them when we get killed just for trying to prove we’re as good?”, which is not something you’d expect to hear in a 1950 movie.
