Review of Bright Road

After more than 15 years of reading about this movie from Donald Bogle's bio of Dorothy Dandridge, I finally watched this on YouTube. She plays a newbie teacher at an elementary school who has a troubled student named C.T. Young (Philip Hepburn). Her eventual co-star in the groundbreaking Carmen Jones, Harry Belafonte, debuts here as the school principal. Unlike in the latter where their singing voices are dubbed by classically trained opera singers, their natural musical voices are heard here. I found the whole thing pretty compelling though it seemed to be holding back somewhat dramatically much of the time. I did think the death of C.T.'s friend Tayna Hamilton (Barbara Ann Sanders a.k.a, Randolph) very touching. And finding out on the cast list that a fellow student named Booker T. Jones was played by Rene Beard, Our Ganger Matthew "Stymie" Beard's younger brother, was a nice surprise especially since I previously saw him in the Our Gang-inspired feature Who Killed Doc Robin? So on that note, I recommend Bright Road.