Emmett Lavery Movies

Bright Road was a real rarity in 1953: a major-studio production with an all-black cast. Based on an award-winning short story by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, the film is largely set at a rural black school in an unspecified Southern community. Idealistic new fourth-grade teacher Jane Richards (Dorothy Dandridge) makes it her mission in life to "reach" troublesome failing student C. T. Young (Philip Hepburn). Just when Jane and the boy are making progress, tragedy strikes, plunging C. T. into the depths of depression and defeatism. But with the help of the school's compassionate principal (Harry Belafonte), Jane is able to get C. T. back on the right track--and as a bonus, the boy becomes an unexpected hero in a moment of crisis. Handled in a leisurely, understated fashion, Bright Road represents perhaps the best directorial effort of Gerald Mayer, MGM's resident "keeper of the 'B's" in the 1950s. Best scene: C. T.'s euphoric reaction upon earning a passing grade for the first time in his life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made in the same atmosphere and paranoia that spawned the infamous Joseph McCarthy, this is an anti-communist propaganda movie looking more at the dark side of communism than at its subject matter--the life and times of Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary. Mindszenty was imprisoned as an enemy of the State for his outspokenness and, during his trial, it was revealed that his confession was obtained by the use of torture, hypnosis and drugs. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

If Grecian storyteller Aesop really did exist, he was most likely a black slave. He wasn't an Austrian actor with an Egyptian name, but that's who played him in A Night in Paradise. Turhan Bey portrays the fable-spouting Aesop, who tries to escape his bondage by disguising himself as an old man. It is at the lavish court of King Croesus that the greyed-up Aesop first meets luscious Grecian princess Merle Oberon. The low-born talespinner is smitten, and determines to win the princess for his very own. Moral: If Universal buys a novel by George S. Hellman titled The Peacock's Feather, transforms it into a picture called A Night in Paradise, and appoints onetime Abbott and Costello cohort Arthur Lubin as director, you know what you're in for. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old manor house in London, built in 1804 by a British admiral (C. Aubrey Smith) and blitzed in 1940 by one Adolf Hitler. Through the portals of this house pass a vast array of Britons, from high-born to low. The earliest scenes involve gay blade Lt. William Trimble (Ray Milland), wronged country-girl Susan (Anna Neagle), and wicked landowner Ambrose Pomfret (Claude Rains). We move on to a comic interlude involving dotty Mr. Simpson (Reginald Owen), eternally drunken butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton), and cockney plumbers Mr. Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and Wilkins (Buster Keaton). Maidservant Jenny (Ida Lupino) takes over the plot during the Boer War era, while the World War I sequence finds the house converted into a way-station for soldiers (including Robert Cummings) and anxious families (including Roland Young and Gladys Cooper). Finally we arrive in 1940, with American Gates Pomfret (Kent Smith) and lady-of-the-house Lesley Trimble (Ruth Warrick) surveying the bombed-out manor, and exulting over the fact that the portrait of the home's founder, Adm. Eustace Trimble (Smith), has remained intact -- symbolic proof of England's durability in its darkest hours. The huge cast includes Dame May Whitty, Edward Everett Horton, Wendy Barrie, Merle Oberon, Nigel Bruce, Richard Haydn, Donald Crisp, and a host of others -- some appearing in sizeable roles, others (like Arthur Treacher and Patric Knowles) willingly accepting one-scene bits, simply to participate in the undertaking. Seven directors and 21 writers were also swept up in the project. Forever and a Day was supposed to have been withdrawn from circulation after the war and its prints destroyed so that no one could profit from what was supposed to have been an act of industry charity. Happily for future generations, prints have survived and are now safely preserved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This modestly produced film version of Gregor Ziemmer's book Education for Death surprised everyone at RKO--and in the film industry--by becoming one the biggest hits of 1943. The "children" invoked in the title are borne on behalf of Adolf Hitler; according to the film, it is standard operating procedure in Nazi Germany for young girls to willingly submit to being impregnated by Aryan men (with or without the benefit of clergy) in order to sustain the "Master Race." Those who refuse are ticketed for sterilization, or worse. One of the holdouts is Bonita Granville, a German girl raised and educated in America whose taste of democracy has made her utterly resistant to Nazism. In the film's key scene, the near-naked Bonita is publicly flogged for her defiance, whereupon Bonita's lover, "good Nazi" Tim Holt, suddenly has an awakening of conscience and stops the whipping. This act of courage results in the executions of both Holt and Granville, but they willingly go to their deaths rather than accede to Hitler's demands. It is true enough that many people flocked to see Hitler's Children because of the sensational, censor-provoking aspects of the film, but equal numbers of filmgoers and critics also recognized the above-average artistic contributions of director Edward Dmytryk and scriptwriter Emmet Lavery (both of whom received substantial cash bonuses for their work on this film). Hitler's Children was the second biggest moneymaker of RKO's 1943-44 season, only slightly behind the Cary Grant vehicle Mr. Lucky. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide