Kenny Washington Movies

Despite its lack of production values and box-office "names," The Jackie Robinson Story is one of the best and most convincing baseball biopics ever filmed. Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson plays himself, and quite well indeed. The film traces Robinson's career from his college days, when he excelled as a track star at Pasadena College and as UCLA's All-Sports record holder. Upon his graduation, Robinson tries to get a coaching job, but this is the 1940s, and most doors are closed to black athletes. After serving in the army, Robinson plays with the Negro Baseball League, where his uncanny skills attract the attention of Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Anxious to break down the "color line" that exists in major-league baseball, Robinson is chosen in 1946 to play for the Brooklyn farm team in Montreal. In a harrowing sequence, Rickey lets Robinson know what he's in for by bombarding him with insults and racial slurs. The manager is merely testing Robinson's ability to withstand the pressure: he wants a black ballplayer "with guts enough not to fight back." Robinson agrees to ignore all racial epithets for the first two years of his Brooklyn contract. Despite the unabashed hatred to which he is subjected during his year with Montreal, Robinson steadfastly continues to turn the other cheek, and in 1947 he graduates to the Dodgers lineup. After a slow start, Robinson justifies the faith put in him by Rickey. The Dodgers win the pennant race, and slowly but surely the ban on black players vanishes in the Big Leagues. Though a model of restraint by 1990s standards, The Jackie Robinson Story is surprisingly frank in its detailing of the racial tensions of its own era. It falters only in a couple of silly vignettes involving comic-relief ballplayer Ben Lessey. The cast is uniformly fine, including Louise Beavers as Robinson's mother, Ruby Dee as his wife Rae (Dee would later play Robinson's mother in the 1990 TV movie The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson), Joel Fluellen as his brother Mac, Minor Watson as Branch Rickey, and best of all, Richard Lane as Montreal manager Clay Hopper. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Elia Kazan directed this, one of Hollywood's early attacks on racism, starring Jeanne Crain as Patricia "Pinky" Johnson. Patricia is a light-skinned black woman who is studying nursing at a New England medical institute. A white doctor, Thomas Adams (William Lundigan), has fallen in love with Patricia and wants to marry her, but Patricia refuses his proposal. Convinced their interracial union would never work out, Patricia believes Thomas would never be able to endure the acrimony that would be heaped upon their marriage. Patricia leaves New England to return to her childhood home in the South, where her grandmother (Ethel Waters) works for rich widow Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore). When Miss Em takes ill, Patricia cares for her. Upon Miss Em's death, it is discovered that she has bequeathed her entire estate to Patricia. Miss Em's family disputes the will because Patricia is black, and a courtroom battle ensues over the estate. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Even when decked out in a Foreign Legion uniform, Dick Powell looked, talked and acted like an urban private eye. In Rogues' Regiment, American secret agent Whit Corbett (Dick Powell) joins the Legion in order to track down Nazi war criminal Carl Reicher (Stephen McNally) in French Indo-China. Hampering his search is a native uprising which consumes most of the film's running time. Vincent Price contributes an amusingly despicable supporting role as Mark Van Ratten, an erudite art collector who sidelines in gunrunning. Though Dick Powell doesn't get to sing (not that he really wanted to!), leading-lady Marta Toren offers two sultry nightclub numbers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Playwright Lillian Hellman first wrote of the horrible Hubbard family in her 1939 play The Little Foxes. In this lavish 1941 film version, Bette Davis takes over for Broadway's Tallulah Bankhead in the role of conniving turn-of-the-century Southern aristocrat Regina Hubbard Giddens. Regina's equally odious brothers (Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid) want her to lend them 75,000 dollars to help build a cotton mill. To do this, she must make peace with her long-estranged husband, Horace (Herbert Marshall) -- and failing that, she tries to arrange a wealthy marriage between her daughter, Alexandra (Teresa Wright), and her slimy nephew Leo (Dan Duryea). Horace refuses to give Regina the money, whereupon Leo is pressured by his father (Reid) to steal bonds from the family business. Regina uses this information as a means of blackmailing her brothers for a share in the new mill. In retaliation, Horace claims that he gave Leo the bonds as a loan, thereby cutting Regina out of the deal. When Horace suffers a heart attack, Regina makes no effort to give him his medicine, and he dies without revealing his willingness to loan the money to Leo. Regina is thus still able to strongarm her brothers into giving her a piece of the mill -- but the price for her evil machinations is the loss of her daughter's love and respect. The Little Foxes caused a censorship stir in 1941; by refusing to give Horace his medicine, Regina technically gets away with murder. However, the censors decided that Regina was punished enough when her daughter left her to marry an honest newspaperman (Richard Carlson). Given the usual Tiffany treatment by producer Sam Goldwyn, The Little Foxes was a success; several years later, Lillian Hellman wrote a "prequel" to The Little Foxes, titled Another Part of the Forest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide