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15 Exiles (1967–1971)
- The University of North Carolina Press
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c h a p t e r 1 5 EXILES (1967–1971) v As much as popular culture distorted the black male, it performed a greater disservice to the black female. Skin color confined her to two basic roles: dark-skinned women played domestics, and light-skinned women played exotic sex symbols. Suffering the double prejudice of race and gender, black actresses such as Ruby Dee and Diana Sands either played housewives or stayed off screen. For years, there was no female equivalent to the Sidney Poitier icon.∞ In 1968, NBC launched the sitcom Julia. Ironically, it starred Diahann Carroll. She played a nurse, war-hero widow, and single parent. The show exposed Carroll to the same criticisms faced by Poitier; ‘‘Watts it ain’t,’’ commented Variety. Like Poitier, Carroll staked no claim to ghetto authenticity . She admitted that whites comprised her target audience: ‘‘I’d like a couple million of them to watch and say, ‘Hey, so that’s what they do when they go home at night.’ ’’ Her nurse exhibited the same refined integrity as Poitier’s teachers, detectives, and doctors.≤ Poitier wanted to present a more genuine black woman, an imperative guided by fatherhood. On television, in the movies, and in magazines, his daughters saw only white standards of beauty—even when the celebrity was black, such as Diahann Carroll. He wanted his girls to develop positive self-images. He also wished to stretch Hollywood’s tight boundaries on black intimacy. So he coined his own story, featuring himself as a romantic hero. After three weeks of isolation in his study, he emerged with a nineteen-page outline called Ivy. In the treatment, his wealthy playboy falls in love with a domestic.≥ Martin Baum took it to three major studios. All declined, honestly explaining that an all-black romance fettered its appeal. In March 1967, Baum presented it to Palomar, the new film production wing of ABC Television, which gambled on it. They hired Robert Alan Aurthur to write the screenplay, now titled For Love of Ivy.∂ 316 through playing god Nearly 300 women auditioned for the title role. Few major pictures had ever offered black women such a developed part. The winner was Abbey Lincoln, who had last acted in Nothing but a Man. An accomplished jazz singer, wife to famed drummer Max Roach, and political activist, Lincoln transmitted pride. She also possessed demure beauty. Poitier paid her a high compliment: after an excellent take, he shouted out, ‘‘Man, she’s so colored!’’∑ Starting in October 1967, they filmed in Nassau County and Manhattan , racing to beat the New York winter. The location shooting included a day in Greenwich Village, where a casting call for extras, posted throughout the Bohemian neighborhood, effected a cavalcade of scraggly beards, steel-rimmed glasses, peace beads, and headbands. One man arrived with a monkey on his shoulder. The extras earned twenty-seven dollars, some camera exposure, and an endorsement from Poitier. ‘‘Give them time, they may come up with something,’’ he said. ‘‘As long as they hold on to love, they’ll be all right.’’∏ Poitier’s recent success occasioned copious publicity, most of which trumpeted the picture’s pioneering presentation of blacks. Poitier played a sophisticated hustler, a departure from his morally impeccable heroes. Lincoln’s maid was not a stereotype but a complex protagonist. They had a genuine screen romance, the kind unavailable to Poitier throughout his career. ‘‘If For Love of Ivy delivers even a fraction of what it promises,’’ anticipated one critic, ‘‘it may well be the most shatteringly revolutionary film to be done in this country in years.’’π v When the picture arrived in July 1968, that assertion seemed laughable. Underneath the patina of contemporary significance lay an old-fashioned, ultra-conventional romantic comedy—‘‘a descent into an ocean of matinee goo,’’ according to Gordon Gow. Ivy Moore (Lincoln) works for the Austins, a wealthy Long Island family. After nine years, she wishes to move to New York City and attend secretarial school. But the Austin children —the shaggy Tim (Beau Bridges) and the cute Gena (Lauri Peters)— want her to stay. They figure that Ivy needs a beau, ‘‘a good-looking nogoodnik ’’ who will charm but not marry her. That man is Jack Parks (Poitier), who runs a trucking operation by day. By night, he operates a roving casino from the back of an eighteen-wheeler. Tim threatens to expose the scam unless Jack takes out Ivy.∫ Predictably, Ivy and Jack...