My mother wanted to watch a movie. She didn't know what. I looked around on Roku. Came across I Passed for White, about a young woman (Sonya Wilde) who marries rich WASP James Franciscus never telling him she's Black. When she runs into her darker complected jazz musician brother, her husband attacks him. "GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY WIFE!" She still doesn't tell him. When she gets pregnant, she worries that the baby will look Black.
In one scene, she's a much better dancer than the other ladies at the country club and her horrible husband stops her.
I was surprised that they kept referring to African-Americans as "Black" in the movie. I thought that was still a racial slur in 1960, but maybe that was the point.
We watched it to the end. My mother didn't think it was very good. So there was another movie I knew was on there. I showed her Lost Boundaries, 1949, about a doctor who, with his wife, passed for white for over twenty years. They lived in a small New England town. They had the same problem, worrying that they would be exposed when their children were born.
The father joined the Navy during World War Two because they had a severe shortage of doctors, but the US military was segregated. In the Navy, Blacks could only work in food service. A Naval Intelligence officer shows up. They investigated him. He had been a member of a Black fraternity in college. "Do you have Negro blood?"
Word gets out in town that the family is Black. The daughter's boyfriend hears the news. He tells her, They're saying your family is Negro!
"Did they say anything bad about us?" she says. Best line in the movie.
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