As a middle aged Caucasian man born in the turbulent 1960's with a rather forward thinking mother, I remember being allowed to stay up late three times (at least, there were possibly more), one being for this movie, another for the T.V. premiere of "Gone With the Wind", and lastly, for the entire week of "Roots". I'll never forget my mother telling my siblings and I that we were going to watch something very important that explained what racism was, and while the other themes of "A Patch of Blue" (child abuse/prostitution) went over my head, the theme of racism from both sides stuck with me. I was thunderstruck by not only Shelley Winters' abuse of Elizabeth Hartman, but her nastiness to Sidney Poitier in the final confrontation scene.
As an adult, I began to see more, such as the reactions from Poitier's friend, and putting it into perspective with the times, got to see it from a different angle. As one other poster pointed out, Winters' character was definitely the lowest of the low of white trash, and to see a black man being better spoken and doing better than her brought out her hatred in truck loads. Shelley profusely apologized to Sidney for the words she had to use, but he needed no apology, knowing that it was a part of the script and a very important message to convey how wrong racism is, and how vile any type of prejudice is.
For that matter, I was also fairly young when I saw "The Diary of Anne Frank" for which Shelley won her first Oscar, and being on the second film of hers I had seen, had an idea of who she was only from "A Patch of Blue". Mrs. Van Daan is far more decent than her character here, but becomes nagging and calculating as the tensions between her and her husband and the Franks becomes too grave. By the time she had the recurring role on "Roseanne", I had read her autobiographies, realized how seriously liberal she was, and admired her bravery for taking on such a role. As for Mr. Poitier, his film work has been so brilliant, making me wish I could have seen him on stage, and all the way through seeing the Sean Combs revival of "A Place in the Sun", kept thinking to myself about how that performance was so greatly influenced by the gentility and humility of one of the greatest actors of the past century, and never even once associated it with the color of his skin.
"Great theater makes you smile. Outstanding theater may make you weep."
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