Lost Boundaries
| Lost Boundaries | |
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| Directed by | Alfred L. Werker |
| Produced by | Louis De Rochemont |
| Written by |
William L. White (story) Charles Palmer (adaptation) Eugene Ling Virginia Shaler Furland de Kay (add. dialogue) |
| Starring |
Beatrice Pearson Mel Ferrer Susan Douglas Rubes |
| Cinematography | William Miller |
| Edited by | Dave Kummins |
| Distributed by | Film Classics |
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Release date
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Running time
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99 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Lost Boundaries is a 1949 American film directed by Alfred L. Werker that stars Beatrice Pearson, Mel Ferrer (in his first starring role), and Susan Douglas Rubes. The film is based on William Lindsay White's book of the same title, a non-fiction account of Dr. Albert C. Johnston and his family who passed for white while living in New England in the 1930s and 1940s. The film won the 1949 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Screenplay.
William Lindsay White, a former war correspondent who had become editor and publisher of the Emporia Gazette, published Lost Boundaries in 1948. It was just 91 pages long, and a shorter version had appeared the previous December in Reader's Digest. The story was also reported with photographs in Life, Look, and Ebony. White recounted the true story of the family of Dr. Albert C. Johnston (1900–1988) and his wife Thyra (1904–1995), who lived in New England for 20 years, passing as white despite their Negro backgrounds until they revealed themselves to their children and community.
Lost Boundaries focuses on the experience of their eldest son, Albert Johnson, Jr., beginning with the day Albert Sr. tells his 16-year-old son that he is the son of Negroes who have been passing as white. The story then recounts the lives of the parents. Dr. Johnston graduates from the University of Chicago and Rush Medical College, but finds himself barred from internships when he identifies himself as Negro. He finally secures a position at Maine General Hospital in Portland, which had not inquired about his race. In 1929, he establishes a medical practice in Gorham, New Hampshire. He and his blue-eyed, pale-skinned wife Thyra are active in the community and no one suspects their racial background, at least not enough to comment on it or question them. In 1939 they move to Keene, New Hampshire, where he takes a position at Elliot Community Hospital. At the start of World War II, he applies for a Navy post as a radiologist but is rejected when an investigation reveals his racial background. Struck by this rejection, he then shares his and his wife's family history with his eldest son Albert, who responds by isolating himself from friends and failing at school. Albert joins the Navy, still passing as white, but is discharged as "psychoneurotic unclassified". Albert then tours the U.S. with a white schoolfriend, visiting relatives and exploring lives on either side of the color line. Much of the book is devoted to Albert Jr.'s personal exploration of the world of passing, where he learns how the black community tolerates its members who pass but disapproves of casual crossing back and forth between the black and white communities. The other Johnson children have their own problems adjusting their new identity and the acceptance and rejection they experience. Finally, Albert Jr., attending the University of New Hampshire tells his seminar on international and domestic problems "that perhaps he could contribute something to this discussion of the race problem by telling of the problem of crossbred peoples because he was himself a Negro."
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