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TCM Spotlight: Noteworthy African American Performances
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
It’s another compelling night of films featuring great performances by Black actors on Turner Classic Movies, kicking off with African American film pioneer Juano Hernandez giving a critically praised performance as a freed slave in Stars in My Crown (pictured) (1950), one of the few Black characters to feature prominently in a Western of that era. Hernandez also appears in a smaller role in tonight’s next film, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (1964), which more notably features Thelma Oliver in a pivotal (and controversial) scene with Best Actor Oscar nominee Rod Steiger. The film also includes a terrific Quincy Jones musical score combining jazz, soul and related genres and marks the feature-film debut of Morgan Freeman (in an uncredited role as “Man on Street”). Following that is John Huston’s 1942 drama In This Our Life, which is headlined by Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland and George Brent, and whose key plot element — driven by Ernest Anderson as a young Black paralegal falsely accused of manslaughter and Hattie McDaniel as his mother — was rare at the time in its depiction of racial discrimination. Finally, late-night viewers can check out Super Fly (1972), the influential blaxploitation crime drama starring Ron O’Neal in a dynamic performance as a cocaine dealer trying to find a way out of the illegal drug business, with his story punctuated by Curtis Mayfield’s famous soundtrack.