Review of Pinky

Racial-issue melodrama has light-skinned black nurse (Jeanne Crain, improbably cast but doing good work) named a recipient in the will of a wealthy white southern dowager whom the nurse took care of in her final days; the will is contested by the deceased woman's greedy cousin, who is shown not only to be racist but a bigot and a liar as well. Atmospheric actors' piece, adapted from Cid Ricketts Sumner's book, allows white actress Crain to have a white boyfriend, but very little contact with the blacks on-screen (Pinky's own people!). There's a balky hesitancy detectable right from the start, and director Elia Kazan does very little to warm up the scenario. Still, the slim plot becomes absorbing by the second-half, with only the audience pulling for the resilient heroine. Crain has been directed to wear a racial chip on her shoulder with both pride and defensiveness (mostly she just looks unhappy). I didn't quite believe her relationship with laundress-grandmother Ethel Waters (who disappears after the courtroom sequence, one in which Pinky doesn't even take the stand in her own defense); however, Crain's misty-eyed, youthful determination brings out something extra in the role which neither the script nor the direction accounted for. She's tough, certainly, and stubborn, but she's also an intelligent presence--nobody's victim--and she garners our respect. Crain, Waters, and Ethel Barrymore (doing her usual dryly-bemused turn) all received Oscar nominations. **1/2 from ****