User Reviews

Andrew Duggan and Jane Wyatt are the upper-class middle-aged white couple with a grown daughter about to seal the deal of selling their house to a still-pretty young black couple with a couple of kids played by Raymond St. Jacques and Cicely Tyson. At first, the conversation is friendly, even when discussion turns to social differences between both husbands and wives. But after the sale is completed, some tensions, especially concerning the St. Jacques character, come to the fore, and it's not pretty, that's for sure! In summary, Neighbors is quite a thoughtful piece about race relations at the time that makes one wonder with even now having a black president currently in office if anything has changed for the better concerning the social strata between the races considering some of the recent headlines of some incidents...

Cicely Tyson is one of the best actresses ever. In this staged drama, she plays Vickie Ives Gunther, former singer turned housewife and mother. Vickie doesn't cook or clean because she has a full-time housekeeper. She does nothing because she's tough and stubborn. She and her husband come from Harlem to the Riverdale section of the Bronx which is a very posh section of the city to this day much less in 1971. Jane Wyatt plays the role of veteran suburban housewife, Mary Robinson, perfectly on par with Cicely Tyson who you can't take your eyes off of because she's brilliant. Th two couples are as different as you can imagine. Wyatt and her husband are white while Tyson and her husband are black. They're selling their suburban home for $98,200 and the younger couple are interested in buying it. They come for the visit despite the misgivings on both sides. The acting is first rate and the writing is somewhat needs to come alive more. It's only an hour but it does pack punches.

This is a brilliant, corrosive little play by Arkady Leokum of about an hour's running time that was adapted for television by Fielder Cook. Its simple plot concerns a well-to-do, smugly liberal white couple entertaining their black neighbors, who don't, as things turn out, like to be entertained this way. I have not seen this one since it was first aired but remember it as one of the best hours of TV drama I have ever seen. At times Neighbors plays like a very serious, upper middle class version of All In the Family, but ten times better. There are no illusions in this one, at least none that the viewer can see, as the well-intentioned but innately snobbish and patronizing white couple were and are a perfect symbol of a certain variety of liberalism one seldom sees portrayed on television, probably, one suspects, since show business people tend to be on the Left on most issues, it cuts too close to home for comfort.

I agree with the comment already posted. Besides being similar to "All In The Family", it was also like an inter-racial "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?", also involving two couples, one couple the "guest" of the other, the difference being, the illusions being stripped away (the "game playing") have to do chiefly with racial identity instead of family life. I thought particularly eloquent the black man's cathartic, confessional statement that, while still working in the fields and illiterate, before confessing that his wife, Vikki, taught him to read, he was merely "one jackass behind another". Vikki seems dismayed to the bottom of her soul that her husband has to go through this painful, too-revealing process of self-revelation, yet again, and Cicely Tyson, in playing her, shows this very well.

I find it interesting that the music that the black man dances to, and tries to get his wife, and the white couple, to dance to, as well, is Otis Redding's version of "Satisfaction", a black man's rendition of a blues rock standard composed and popularized by white men (The Rolling Stones)in emulation of black American music. This, rather than music both composed and performed by blacks. It underscores the theme of black-white relations, borrowing, theft, identity, hinting at white men equating being cool with acting black.

I was pleased to find a reference to "Neighbors" on the IMDb, because it was a play I saw only once or twice more than thirty years ago, yet it made such an impression on me. I found myself using the black man's phrase, "I got me one hunk of woman !" for several years afterward when I wanted to come off as tough, cool and macho. I was also pleased to read on IMDb that "Neighbors" was directed by Fielder Cook, who did such a great job directing the ground-breaking Rod Serling teleplay, "Patterns", in 1955.

Speaking of television in the 1950's, I find the presence of Jane Wyatt in "Neighbors" to be welcome, as she had starred alongside Robert Young in one of the classic, iconic "serene and silly" TV family sitcoms of all time, "Father Knows Best".

I thank IMDb for this opportunity to comment on a play I saw so long ago, yet which made such a great impression on me. My thanks to Arkady Leokum, the cast of "Neighbors", and WNET Channel 13, as well.