John Kitzmiller, Euro-American Difference, and the Cinema of the West

Using the international career of the now largely forgotten African American star John Kitzmiller (1913–1965) as a test case, this article analyzes the discourse of Euro-American difference and uncovers continuities that this discourse obscures. Michigan-born Kitzmiller served in Italy during WWII as a military engineer before director Luigi Zampa cast him to play a black American soldier in the WWII drama Vivere in pace/To Live in Peace (1947). Convinced that European cinema offered him opportunities unavailable to black actors in Hollywood, Kitzmiller stayed in Italy and acted in several more films. I suggest that an examination of Kitzmiller’s life and film presence sheds light on the cultural history of the North Atlantic borderland, on the relation between European cinema and Hollywood cinema, and on the role racial hierarchies play in both.