Black Like Me (1964)
- Starring:
- James Whitmore, Sorrell Booke, (more)
- Director(s):
- Carl Lerner
Synopsis of Black Like Me
Black Like Me is the true story of white journalist John Howard Griffin, who "became" a Negro in the late 1950s. Feeling that the best way to understand what it was like to be black in a segregated south was to experience the feeling first-hand, Griffin (James Whitmore) undergoes extensive-and sometimes painful-skin pigmentation treatments. Though he tends to look more like Al Jolson or Eddie Cantor rather than African American, Whitmore does a creditable job playing a proud man forced into subservience by an unfeeling white society. Unfortunately, the film falls prey to stylistic affectations, notably an overabundance of confusing flashbacks. Though dating and occasionally patronizing, Black Like Me is still a worthwhile effort. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Complete Cast of Black Like Me
- James Whitmore - John Finley Horton
- Al Freeman, Jr. - Tom Newcomb
- Clifton James - Eli Carr
- Walter Mason - Mason
- Lenka Peterson - Lucy Horton
- Llewellyn B. Skinner - Stretch
- Will Geer
- Sorrell Booke - Dr.Jackson
- Roscoe Lee Browne - Christopher
- Dan Priest - Bus Driver
- John Marriott - Hodges
- Richard Ward - Burt Wilson
- Raymond St. Jacques
- Director(s):
- Carl Lerner
- Writer(s):
- Gera Lerner, Carl Lerner
- Producer(s):
- Jules Tannebaum
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