Take a Giant Step

I watched Take a Giant Step off my DVR last night since it seems to be available from the TCM Shop as part of MGM's MOD scheme. This is not to be confused with the MGM movies put out by the Warner Archive, as these are movies that what was left of MGM after Ted Turner bought the library was able to acquire. In the case of Take a Giant Step, that would be a Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production originally released by United Artists; indeed, a lot of things released by UA seem to have wound up in the latter-day MGM's rights holdings.

Johnny Nash plays young Spence Scott. He can't see clearly yet, so he's going through life as an angry young man. To be fair to Spence, however, he's the only black kid around, being the son of black people trying to move up into the middle class who bought a place in a white neighborhood. At the beginning of the movie, Spence gets in some sort of argument with his history teacher (all done silently as the opening theme and credits play over the scene), leaves in a huff, and then goes off to the boys' room to smoke -- a cigar! The janitor catches Spence, and this gets him expelled from school!

Spence goes home where he has a loving grandmother nicknamed Gram (Estelle Hemsley) who is looked after by the maid Christine (Ruby Dee) when nobody else is at home. Gram is old and everybody thinks she's frail, although she does have some fight left in her. Even though she understands Spence's plight at heart -- she wasn't certain being the first to integrate was such a good thing -- she also doesn't take any guff from Spence. You should hear his bad language, peppered by words like "behind" for the rear end that would be decidedly G-rated today. It's shocking. Anyhow, Spence decides to deal with all of this by running away.

Spence's parents Lem (Frederick O'Neal) and May (Beah Richards) don't understand any of this at all. They've clearly taken the Booker T. Washington view on the best way to advance the situation of black people in America, which is to say that they have to be beyond perfect and an example of virtue so that white people will accept them. None of the W.E.B. DuBois or later Malcom X sort of "by any means necessary" resistance that Spence clearly feels at least a bit of sympathy towards. (How much is, I suppose, debatable, since a good portion of his behavior is down to the sort of teen angst that would have fit in in most other 1950s movies.) Anyhow, it goes without saying that Mom and Dad aren't happy with Spence's behavior at all, and they're going to treat Spence like dirt about it, which is just one more reason why he feels they don't understand him.

As for Spence, when he ran away, he decided to go to the black part of town, only to find that he doesn't really fit in there either, in part because he was dumb enough to try to get drinks at a bar and then cavort with prostitutes. He should have joined the military or something. When this doesn't work out, he heads back home.

Take a Giant Step is a movie that is clearly trying hard, considering that is has themes that were clearly relevant for 1959 and probably somewhat daring too. Unfortunately, everybody is sunk, thanks largely to the ridiculous dialog and probably the direction too. Johnny Nash shows why he was a singer and not an actor, knowing only the emotion of constant rebellion for his character and showing no real depth. Poor Estelle Hemsley plays is as though she was asked to be an acid-tongued caricature. Mom and Dad are similarly one-dimensional, and Ruby Dee's maid isn't given enough scenes.

All in all, Take a Giant Step is an interesting curio, but one that sadly isn't particularly good.