Bright Road (1953)

Interesting facts

Bright Road is a 1953 low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story "See How They Run" by Mary Elizabeth Vroman. Directed by Gerald Mayer and featuring a nearly all-black cast, the film stars Dorothy Dandridge as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to communicate with a problem student. The film is also notable as the first appearance by Harry Belafonte, who costars as the principal of the school.

Production

Bright Road was produced at MGM by Sol Baer Fielding.

"See How They Run" was Mary Elizabeth Vroman's first published short story, written while she was a schoolteacher in rural Alabama. First published in Ladies' Home Journal in 1951, it also appeared in Ebony magazine in 1952. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased the rights to adapt the story to film, Vroman helped write the screenplay, and as a result, became the first black member of the Screen Writers Guild.

Belafonte and Dandridge were known to audiences for their singing talents, which are showcased in Bright Road. Early in the film, Belafonte sings "Suzanne (Every Night When the Sun Goes Down)", and later, Dandridge briefly sings words from the Alfred Tennyson poem "The Princess: Sweet and Low" to the tune of a lullaby. Belafonte and Dandridge costarred again in the musical film Carmen Jones (1954).

Dandridge had been attracted to the lack of racial conflict in the story. She wrote that she was "profoundly fond of ... a theme which showed that beneath any color skin, people were simply people. I had a feeling that themes like this might do more real good than the more hard-hitting protest pictures.

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