Sidney Poitier as Jack Parks

FOR LOVE OF IVY 1968lecinemadreams.blogspot.com /2015/08/for-love-of-ivy-1968.html

After more than a decade of shouldering, with both dignity and grace, the damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’tburden of being Hollywood's first African-American superstar (the representative movie face of the entirety of blackAmerica, while at the same time liberal Hollywood’s unofficial Civil Rights symbol), Sidney Poitier’s appearance inthe well-intentioned, but nonetheless cringe-worthy 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? successfully broughthis trademark Noble Negro character to its logical conclusion. I number myself among those who felt that by 1967, ifPoitier's godlike paragon of Afro-American perfection was the kind of sugar necessary to make the medicine of racialequality go down, then the time had indeed come for a complete overhaul of the cinema image of the Americanblack male.

I was just ten-years-old at the time, but Irecall Sidney Poitier being all over the placein 1967. First, there was To Sir With Love,which I went to see more times than I cancount; In The Heat of the Night , which waspowerful, but I can’t say I enjoyed it much;and the release of the much-ballyhooed andthen-controversial Guess Who’s Coming toDinner?, was such a major event in ourhousehold (my mom both adored Poitier andwas a Katherine Hepburn fan), it occasionedthe rare movie outing for the entire family.(As much as I can't really abide the movienow, you have no idea what a groundswell ofcontroversy it sparked when it came out. I also remember how weird and eye-opening it was that no matter howdivided opinions were about the film's themes, blacks did not wage any public protests against the film. All level ofpicketing, angry protests, violent threats, and acts of hostility leveled at theaters showing this almost comicallycircumspect movie were the usual domestic terrorists: white racists and extremists.

With Poitier starring in three such profitable and high-profile films in the same year, signs would seem to indicate theAcademy Award-winning actor’s already illustrious career (1964 Best Actor -Lilies of the Field) was on theascendance. But, irony of ironies, after being virtually the sole lead black actor working consistently in films for manyyears, Poitier's popularity started to decline in direct proportion to the emergence of the youth-market fueled, blackfilm explosion of the 1970s. With a new decade dawning, and with it an exciting array of new black talent and afro-

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Abbey Lincoln as Ivy Moore

Beau Bridges as Tim Austin

centric narratives filling movie screens, Poitier must have found it dismaying to have the very doors he had been soinstrumental in opening for actors of color, feel as though they were beginning to be closed to him.

Sidney Poitier’s screen persona—that of the non-threatening, nobly acquiescing, almost saintly blackmale—embodied the assimilationist ideals of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. But it wasn’t long beforefactions of the African-American community began to find the sexless, selfless characters Poitier played in films likeA Patch of Blue (1965) and Lilies of the Field more representative of white fantasy than black reality. In thetumultuous social climate of the late '60s, as Civil Rights assimilation gave way to the more self-identifying thrust ofthe Black Power Movement, and galvanizing events like the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (fourmonths after the release of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?) signaled a new self-determination and militancy;Poitier's image (inseparable from Poitier the actor) had become an anachronism.

Thus it was perhaps with no small sense ofrelief on his part when Poitier at lastdiscarded his socially-appointed halo andembarked upon a series of human-scaleroles designed to update and reconstruct hisimage. That he essentially had to write,produce, and eventually direct most of theseroles in order to achieve this points to thelevel of reluctance he faced within theindustry when called upon to relate to him asanything other than a symbol of tolerance. In1969s The Lost Man Poitier played a militantrevolutionary (!), a single father in A WarmDecember (1973), and a thief in A Piece ofthe Action (1977). But his very first attempt atdownsizing the saintly Poitier mystique wasin the charming romantic comedy, For Loveof Ivy.

Debunking the myth of the contenteddomesticwho's happy to be "Like one of the family."

The upscale suburban household of theAustin family is thrown into a tailspin whenIvy (Lincoln), the family maid of nine years,decides to quit, move to New York andattend secretarial school; or, in other words,make a life for herself. Certain she’s simplylonely, the younger members of the family,Tim & Gena (Bridges/Peters), elect to findher a boyfriend. Not just any suitor, sincethey certainly don’t want her falling in loveand leaving to get married or anything, butsomeone who’s altar-shy and willing to wineand dine Ivy with no strings attached. Theirbest candidate for the job is Jack Parks(Poitier), the wealthy owner of a trucking

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Lauri Peters as Gena Austin

Leon Bibb as Billy Talbot

Carroll O'Connor as Frank Austin

company whose reputation as a swinger assures Ivy won’t be whisked away, and whose illegal mobile gamblingoperation makes him a shoo-in for a littlemaid-courtship extortion.

With Ivy thinking she's dating Jack just tohelp the family business (the Austins own adepartment store and contracts with Jack'strucking company), and Jack doing it to avoidexposure of his illegal nighttime activities,each thinks they know what they're gettinginto as the embark on their arrangedrendezvous. And if you’ve ever seen a moviein your life before, there’s no mystery as tohow things between Ivy and Jack will playout.The farcical plot is negligible, but the contextis what fascinates. The well-intentionedAustins mistake their need for Ivy with actualconcern for her welfare. She's a bufferbetween the acrimonious father and son, asister of sorts to the daughter, and shecompletely runs the household. Whiteliberalism is lampooned, black self-reliance ischampioned, and among a cast of charactersat loggerheads over how to best live theirlives, Ivy emerges the one clear-headedindividual who never strays from her desireto strike out on her own and make a life forherself.

Genre-wise, it's all familiar territory that feelssomehow unfamiliar due to the fun of seeinghow significantly these Doris Day/RockHudson tropes are turned on their headswhen (at long last) the lovers at the center oftheir own narrative—permitted to be funny,determined, amorous, conflicted, self-assured, independent, and imperfect—areblack. A rarity then, and not exactly acommonplace occurrence now.

With a screenplay adapted by Robert AlanAurthur (All that Jazz) from a 19-page storytreatment written by Poitier himself (that was turned down by three studios), For Love of Ivy is one of those familiar,old-fashioned romantic comedies built around a grand deception. A lie first contrived to bring the lovers together,followed by a misunderstanding, ending with a romantic reconciliation. It’s exactly the kind of movie Hollywood haschurned out for years. And therein lies the twist. For the longest time, Hollywood’s depiction of African-Americans in movies has been defined by the narrowparameters of symbols, stereotypes, sidekicks, or vessels of suffering in need of white rescue. Black characters justbeing human in a motion picture is still such an original concept, you could use plots from silent movies and the film

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Nan Martin as Doris Austin

40-year-old Sidney Poitier Grooves at a '60s HappeningPoitier's comforting, buttoned-down image began to look dated as the more militant '70s approached

would come out looking like an innovative act of cultural insurgency by the mere casting of African-Americans in thelead roles.

Paraphrasing the sentiments of a movie critic from the time—after having played so many solemn, “uplift the race”roles, Poitier, as a black movie star, was more than entitled to exercise his right to appear in the same mindless,escapist movie fare white stars like Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis had been making for years. Sidney Poitier hadearned the right to be in an amusing, escapist diversion.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMWhen a film dismissed at the time of itsrelease for being too light and conventionalprovides: 1) One of the screen’s mostindependent, dimensional black femalecharacters, 2) The still-rare occurrence of ablack romance at the center of amainstream, non-niche motion picture, 3) AnAfro-centric narrative in which the goals andobjectives of the black characters are in noway invested in, nor dependent upon, thehappiness of white characters—perhapsthere’s a bigger statement to be made aboutwhy it is today, during the Administration ofour first black President, Hollywood stillseems unable to move beyond butlers (TheButler- 2013), maids (The Help- 2011), andslaves (not enough space to list them all).

I have a real soft spot in my heart for ForLove of Ivy...and not just because I findPoitier and Lincoln to be suchan engaging couple. Thebroadly farcical aspects of itsplot notwithstanding, I respondsentimentally to For Love of Ivybecause the character of IvyMoore is one of the mostsatisfyingly believable blackfemale characters I've everseen in a film.

Surprisingly, this feather-lightcomedy was directed by DanielMann, the director behind thefilm adaptations of thedramas Come Back Little Sheba, The Rose Tattoo, and I'll Cry Tomorrow. Sidney Poitier was inspired to write ForLove of Ivy to provide his four daughters with an alternative to the usual glamorized (fetishized?) images of blackwomen onscreen. Stars like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Diahann Carroll (with whom Poitier once had anaffair) were favored for their Eurocentric features and exotic sexuality. Poitier wished to present his daughters with amore authentic representation of black womanhood.And authenticity is exactly what I find in the character of Ivy, as embodied by the late Abbey Lincoln. Ivy is a

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Jack - "Looks like you've got a pretty good setup here."Ivy - "Too good!. I don't want to die here."

Jack - "You've got to die somewhere."Ivy - "Well, isn't it better not to go ignorant and alone?"

The Set-Up

dignified, independent woman who wants love and a better life, and best of all, isn’t looking to be rescued or savedby anyone but herself. She's a woman who only works as a maid...it's only what she does, not who she is.

When I watch For Love of Ivy, I see my four sisters, my mom, and every black woman who has ever had to defineherself, for herself, because society, by and large, can't be bothered. I've no doubt that the main reason thecharacter of Ivy resonates with me is because, when I was small, my mother worked for a time as a maid. Later,when I was a pre-teen, my parents divorced. I remember my mom going to night school and getting her driver'slicense, eventually working her way to a managerial position in government at San Francisco’s Federal Building. Allthe while sending all of us kids to privateCatholic school.That she eventually came to meet and marrya terrific, well-to-do gentleman who was herown Sidney Poitier figure (and a dynamitefather figure for me), making it possible forher to quit her job and live out her days incomfort, is the kind of real-life "Hollywood"ending for a deserving woman that makesthe fairy tale romanticism of For Love ofIvy feel a good deal less sappy for me thanperhaps it does to others.

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For Love of Ivy was taken to task for being corny in the Swinging 60s. In today's atmosphere of misogynist, mean-spirited rom-coms, therespectful, genuinely sweet romance at the center of the film looks positively cutting-edge.

After nearly 20 years in the business, leading man Sidney Poitier finally gets a love scene

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"What do you want?""I'm not sure. I just know I haven't got it now."

Ivy Is The Only Austin "Family" Member Required To Use The Service EntranceThis silent, throwaway shot of Ivy returning home from a date contains the crux of the reason she wants to leave. A reason right under the

noses of the people who profess love for her, yet are unable to understand why she wants to quit.

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Principally a jazz singer and songwriter, here is 25-year-old Abbey Lincoln as sheappeared in the 1956 film, The Girl Can't Help It

Making her film debut (far right): Jennifer O'Neill of The Summer of '42 (1971)

Self-reliant and proud, my mother, as remarkable as she sounds, isn’t really unique among black women. There'slots like her around. But I never saw any black women like my mother represented in the movies (glamorized andglorified, to boot!) until I saw For Love of Ivy.

PERFORMANCESFor all its abundant charm, For Love of Ivy isa bit of a puzzler when it comes to comedictone. It’s like when I was a kid and easy-laugh sitcoms like Gilligan’s Island airedbefore laugh-free “heartwarming” humorshows like The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. In tryingto adjust to this shift in tone, I always felt asthough my funny bone had a short in it orsomething.Watching For Love of Ivy, comedicallyspeaking, I get a sense of where it’s comingfrom: it’s partly one of those fraught-with-complications Cary Grant romantic comedies like That Touch of Mink ; partclass-satire along the lines of Goodbye Columbus; and part bourgeois romantic comedy, like Cactus Flower.Unfortunately (and in many ways puzzlingly) the bubble-light comedy of For Love of Ivy has trouble staying aloft.I get a sense of where the comedy in the filmis coming from, but too often it never reallyarrives. Farces this thrive on pacing, wit, anda kind of effortless effervescence, but thecomedy rhythms in For Love of Ivy alwaysfeel a little off. Beau Bridges as one of thosesuper clean-cut hippies that only exist in themovies, has great comic energy. He’s aterrific actor capable of conveying sinceritywhile inhabiting the genre-mandatedhyperactivity of expression, inflection, andbody language. But too often it feels as ifhe’s working a particularly tough room.

Sidney Poitier, playing a morally dubious character for the first time since Blackboard Jungle (1955), looks to beenjoying himself and is more relaxed than he’s been in years. Cutting a dashing figure in his tux, and fairly oozingsex appeal and star quality, Poitier finally gets the chance to look the part of the matinee idol he’s always been.Poitier has a splendid chemistry and rapport with co-star Lincoln, but when it comes to the comedy; the palpable

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Making her film debut (far right): Gloria Hendry, the first black Bond Girl in Live & Let Die (1973)

Tim Harbors A Not-Too-Secret Crush On IvyNo stranger to onscreen interracial relationships, Bridges fell in love with Diana Sands in 1970s The Landlord, and most recently, portrayed

Tracee Ellis Ross' father on the TV show, Black-ish

intelligence behind his piercing eyes has a way of grounding even the most convoluted of plot contrivances in anemotional reality antithetical to the breeziness of tone required of material like this. (It would be six years beforePoitier loosened up enough to give his disarmingly funny performance in Uptown Saturday Night -1974.)

But while the broader comedydoesn't always catch fire in ForLove of Ivy, the very gentle, veryaffecting character humor andtouching relationships are handledrather extraordinarily. Beau Bridges'character may be a misguidedliberal, but his very real affection forIvy is a rather endearinglyportrayed.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSDisplaying that rare brand ofprofessional generosity I generallyassociate with Clint Eastwood—hebeing one the few leading menwilling to hand over his film to hisfemale co-star—Sidney Poitierallows For Love Ivy to be Abbey

Lincoln's show completely. And the picture is all the better for it.

Abbey Lincoln is a natural at capturing the essence of a uniquely contemporary type of female character: anintelligent, self-possessed individual who nevertheless projects a kind of old-fashioned dignity. Word has it thatLincoln, a singer and Civil Rights activist for whom Ivy represents just her second film role (following the must see1964 drama Nothing But a Man), beat out 300 actresses for the role. I can easily see why. She's one of a kind.

From beginning to end, Lincoln commands the screen in a way born not so much of technical skill, but rather, anability to appear 100% genuine every minute. In the film's brightly-lit, Love American Style TV sitcom gloss, Lincolnstands out as the real thing.Not a single one of her scenes is ever less than compelling because she comes across as incapable of being false.

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Not really given much to do in this film, Nan Martin would go on to play a tougher version of the same role the following year in GoodbyeColumbus. Carroll O'Connor, along with his fame from All in the Family, would play the Rod Steiger role in the long-running TV series based on

Poitier's film In The Heat of the Night

Her performance so fills my heart up, I confess that in the many times I've seen the film, I have yet to make itthrough dry-eyed. Her character is so endearing, and Lincoln's performance at times so emotionally raw, I've prettymuch got the waterworks going full-throttle by the film's conclusion.

Along with Two for the Road and A New Leaf, For Love of Ivy is one of my top favorite romantic comedies. Nostalgiaplays a role (after all, it was released the same year as so many of my most beloved films: Rosemary's Baby,Barbarella, Secret Ceremony, etc.), as does sentiment (Poitier & Lincoln have chemistry to spare). But there's also abittersweet element. I think of Sidney Poitier's heroic career and all he sacrificed in the way of personal choice,taking on roles because of his deeply felt sense of social responsibility. I think of Abbey Lincoln and all the otherblack actresses whose gifts we've all been deprived of because nobody was writing roles like this for black women.

And then I think of how things are today, and how it is clear that more progress needs to be made. For all the outcryfor women to play a larger role both in front of and behind the camera in films, the call seems to come mostly from a

white feminist faction that doesn't always recognize the contributions of women of color. And when it comes to blackfilmmakers creating roles for women, I have to make sure my mind doesn't entertain thoughts of what someone likeTyler Perry would do to a remake of For Love of Ivy (For Love of Medea?).

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For Love of Ivy Should Have Made the Beautiful and Gifted Abbey Lincoln a Movie StarNominated for a Golden Globe, she wisely (in terms of holding onto her sanity and dignity) stuck to her music career. Lincoln didn't make

another film until 1990 - Spike Lee's Mo' Betta Blues.

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Get Out Your Handkerchiefs I have many favorite scenes, but this one slays me. Poitier has never been more charming,

and Lincoln is a heartbreaker

Although For Love of Ivy has been a favorite of mine for years, how I came about rewatching it is due to my beingcontacted by Deep THOTS, a weekly pop-culture podcast hosted by the amazing Angie Thomas, and asked toparticipate in a conversation contrasting the depiction of domestics/maids in 1968s For Love of Ivy with 2011s TheHelp. What a difference 43-years can make...in anti-progress! You can listen to the spirited podcast HERE.

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BONUS MATERIALQuincy Jones' title song was For Love of Ivy's sole Oscar nomination. Listen.

Unused title song composed by John Phillips commissioned for the film by The Mamas and the Papas. Listen.

Nothing But a Man (1964) - Complete film available on YouTube

Copyright © Ken Anderson

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