No Way Out

Plot synopsis:
Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier), an intern who has just passed the state board examination to qualify for his license to practice, is the first African-American doctor at the urban county hospital at which he trained. Because he lacks self-confidence, Luther requests to work as a junior resident at the hospital for another year. Johnny (Dick Paxton) and Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark), brothers who were both shot in the leg by a policeman as they attempted a robbery, are brought to the hospital's prison ward. As Luther tends to the disoriented Johnny, he is bombarded with racist slurs by Ray, who grew up in Beaver Canal, the white working class section of the city. Believing that Johnny has a brain tumor, Luther administers a spinal tap, but Johnny dies during the procedure. Wondering if Ray's antagonism may have caused him to be careless, Luther consults his mentor, chief medical resident Dr. Daniel Wharton (Stephen McNally), and Wharton concedes that a brain tumor was only one possibility. Feeling that he must prove the accuracy of his diagnosis, Luther requests an autopsy, but Wharton informs him that according to state law, they cannot proceed without the permission of the deceased's family. When Ray refuses, as he does not want his brother's body to be cut up, Wharton confers with the head of the hospital, Dr. Sam Moreland (Stanley Ridges), about requisitioning an autopsy.
Moreland, aware that a scandal over the black doctor's actions could endanger funding, denies the request in the hope that the incident will be forgotten. Upon learning from police records that Johnny was married, Wharton and Luther visit his widow, Edie Johnson (Linda Darnell), who tells the doctors that she divorced Johnny a year and a half ago, and that she hates his whole family. Although she does not reveal it to Wharton, his sympathetic attitude persuades her to visit Ray to ask about the autopsy. Ray tells her, however, that Johnny would be alive if he had had a white doctor, and that Wharton wants to have the autopsy to cover up the truth about Luther's actions.
Edie's racist feelings are revived by Ray, with whom she had committed adultery, and he convinces her that Wharton played her for a "chump", and that she can make up for her past infidelity to Johnny by contacting Beaver Canal club owner Rocky Miller (Bert Freed) and telling him about Johnny's death. Accompanied by Ray's other brother George (Harry Bellaver), who is deaf, Edie goes to the club, where Rocky and his pals lay plans to attack the black section of town, which they call "Niggertown".
Although Edie desperately wishes to leave, Rocky forces her to stay. Meanwhile, Luther arrives at the hospital and learns about the upcoming attack from Lefty Jones (Dots Johnson), a black elevator operator. Luther tries to dissuade Lefty from organizing a counterattack, but Lefty reminds him of a race riot that occurred while Luther was away at school, during which Lefty and his sister were beaten. Luther then contacts Alderman Tompkins to try to avert the riot, while Lefty and a large group of blacks, including Luther's brother-in-law John (Ossie Davis, uncredited), meet and plan their strategy. Edie watches in disgust as the whites prepare their weapons, but leaves before the blacks surprise the whites by attacking first. As victims of the riots are brought in to the hospital, Wharton is called in from home. Before he departs, however, a drunken and disheartened Edie arrives at his house, and Wharton leaves her in the care of his black maid, Gladys (Amanda Randolph). Although Edie fears that Gladys will harm her because of her connection to the riot, Gladys tenderly cares for her when she collapses.
At the hospital, Luther tends to the victims until a white woman orders him to take his "black hands" off her son. Stunned, Luther walks out, and the next morning, after Wharton returns home to find Edie chatting with Gladys, Luther's wife Cora (Mildred Joanne Smith) arrives and announces that Luther has given himself up to the police for the murder of Johnny Biddle. Cora relates that after he left the hospital, Luther realized that the coroner would be forced to conduct an autopsy if he were charged with murder. Wharton assures Cora that he will stand by Luther, and after he leaves with Edie, Cora's stoic demeanor in front of the whites crumbles and she cries in Gladys' arms.
Following the autopsy, the coroner confirms that Johnny died of a brain tumor and that Luther was justified in performing the spinal tap. Wharton, Cora and Edie are pleased that Luther has been exonerated, but Ray insists that the doctors are conspiring to bury the truth. Luther leaves with Cora, following by Edie, who denounces Ray before she departs. After overhearing Wharton tell the coroner that he is leaving town for a much-needed rest, Ray and George overpower the police guard and escape. When Edie returns to her apartment, she finds Ray and George waiting, and Ray, whose leg is bleeding profusely, beats Edie to make her call Luther and tell him to meet Wharton at his house. Drunk and in shock, Ray raves that he is going to kill Luther, then leaves Edie with George. By turning up the volume on her radio, which George does not notice, Edie prompts her neighbors to break down her door, then escapes and calls the hospital prison ward for help.
Meanwhile, when Luther enters Wharton's house, Ray holds a gun on him, beats him and shouts racist slurs. Edie arrives and tries to stop Ray from killing Luther, but Ray's physical pain and obsessive hatred have pushed him beyond reason. Edie turns out the lights as Ray shoots at Luther, and although Luther is wounded in the shoulder, he retrieves Ray's gun as he collapses in pain. Edie coldly tells Luther to let Ray's leg bleed, but Luther asserts that he cannot kill Ray simply because of his racism, then uses the gun and Edie's scarf to fashion a tourniquet. As a siren announces the arrival of the police, Luther tells the hysterical Ray, "Don't cry, white boy, you're gonna live."

Tags: revenge

Review:
However, I wasn't exactly surprised.The film follows Dr. Brooks (Sidney Poitier), an ER doctor whose first real-world experience is as intern in the prison ward of a New York hospital.
The racist Ray Biddle soon accuses Brooks of murder, but won't allow an autopsy to be conducted on his brother to determine the cause of death.Poitier turns in a great performance as the hard-working young doctor, who is debased by the hollow accusations of a bigot.
Mankiewicz and Samuels do an amazing job at bringing life to a situation that was taboo for the time.Aside from the competent acting and well-executed script, the film featured a moving and well-choreographed race riot that fully captures the raw hatred that can surface between groups of people who face the same everyday problems and circumstances, but are torn by one difference (color, or creed, or religion).This is definitely a film well worth seeing.
Anyway, with Widmark and Poitier, and a fine supporting cast with some famous names, you have a very, very interesting movie that is long overdue to be made available to the public.To the film's credit, this shows bigotry on both sides: black and white, although it concentrates more on white against black.
Linda Darnell Deserved Best Supporting Actress Nod. A lot has been praise has been deservedly given on this site to Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark.
Not naturally racist, she gives into Widmark after he wickedly questions her about views on blacks, making her turn to what she had probably always been taught.Had Darnell been given the chance to give any more performances like this, she would probably have had a longer, more substantial career.Why the Academy didn't notice her is a mystery, especially after giving a Best Supporting Actress nomination to Nancy (WHO?) Olson in the same year..
This film is a bright spot on the resumes of all involved, particularly Poitier, who plays someone who is human more than noble, and Widmark, who puts a realistic face on raw, naked bigotry..
The comparison does not make you very optimistic as far as the development of movies with a social message is concerned.No Way Out is a very good story about racism - maybe the best ever told on screen.
Sidney Poitier is a very young, upwardly mobile doctor with high ethic standards, Richard Widmark a nasty, racist piece of "white trash" from Beaver Canal who accuses the black doctor of having killed his brother while under his care.
This sounds pretty plain, but the screenplay succeeds in giving the characters real personal traits, and the actors fully live up to their task.I have never seen Sidney Poitier better than here - and this apparently was his first screen appearance!
It makes of Poitier's character a well intentioned conscientious individual many people without regard of race (or gender or religion or whatever) can relate to.Richard Widmark as the black doctor's racist adversary gives an equally brilliant performance.
Unforgettable to me is the conversation between the girl from Beaver Canal, the racist's brother's former wife, and the black servant of a white doctor, the boss of Sidney Poitier's character.
A very effective and engrossing racial drama, with standout performances by Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark.
When the thieves Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark) and his brother Johnny Biddle (Dick Paxton) are brought to the prison wing of the City Hospital shot in the leg by a police officer, the black intern Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier) is assigned by Dr. Dan Wharton (Stephen McNally) to treat them.
RICHARD WIDMARK does nothing to tone down his performance as a nasty racist capable of making crude racial remarks to doctor SIDNEY POITIER in this stark, way ahead of its time shocker, a B&W classic that also gives LINDA DARNELL a role outside her usual glamor girl parts.In fact, Linda is so deglamorized that she's hardly recognizable as the girl with the meltingly beautiful face who played so many ingenue roles opposite stars like Tyrone Power at the start of her career.
Taking On a Life Of It's Own. Sidney Poitier made his screen debut in No Way Out about a young black doctor accused of 'murder' by Richard Widmark.
Seeing the two of them you would hardly believe that they in fact became lifelong friends in real life.The Biddle Brothers, a pair of white trash rednecks, from a neighborhood called Beaver Canal in a large American city, get brought into an emergency room with gunshot wounds.
While doing a spinal tap his patient dies and the rabidly racist Widmark playing the older Biddle, accuses Poitier of murder.No matter how off the wall his charges are, some people listen and some have to investigate.
"No Way Out" is an outstanding film starring Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, and Linda Darnell, which deals with prejudice in a community hospital and the community in which it stands.
When his brother dies, Widmark blames the black doctor, Poitier, in what is apparently his first screen appearance.
In an attempt to get an autopsy that will clear him of any wrongdoing, Poitier and his boss, played by Stephen McNally, appeal to the brother's ex-wife, Linda Darnell, to talk to Widmark and convince him to consent.
When Widmark's version of the story gets out, the seething community explodes, and a race riot breaks out.The liberal use of the N word is a little hard to take in this movie, and the blatancy of Widmark's hatred and prejudice is shocking.
Widmark could have said that he sees everyone else advancing (like Poitier's doctor) except his own part of town, the white working-class part, and had a telling point, more relevant in today's economy than 60 years ago.
As a result, white resentment gets focused downward on black advances instead of upward on those political and economic interests that make it so difficult for all colors to advance together.Despite the limitations, the film remains a compelling drama of racial conflict.
Richard Widmark reprises his psycho image, this time as a racist thug arrested with his dying brother after being shot in the leg while trying to rob a gas station, and Poitier is the doctor assigned by idealist head doctor Stephen McNalley to work in the county hospital's lock-up criminal ward.
Between all the mutual admiration between Poitier and McNalley the film gets preachy, but finds some legs (literally) when attractive Linda Darnell comes in as the dying brother's estranged wife and opens a can of worms with her relationship with Widmark and other racists from his part of town.
This movie is patently offensive--and because of that, it succeeds in telling a story that really packs an emotional wallop.Sidney Poitier plays a young doctor who was unfortunate enough to treat two brothers who are thieves on the jail ward of the hospital.
Unfortunate, because one brother dies (through no fault of the doctor) and the other is such an insane racist (Richard Widmark) that he is sure the doctor killed his brother--though it's only because Poitier is black that he believes this.
A classic film with excellent acting from then two young guys, Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier.
But it's also about where someone is from, like the Beaver Hill community where Ray (Richard Widmark) and his brother are from and that Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier, already fantastic in his screen debut), the one black doctor at the county hospital, is not but knows racism very well.
It's extraordinary to see this in 1950 of all times, and it still hits very well dramatically in 2008; seeing Widmark spare off of Linda Darnell as his late brother's ex-wife (who is, it seems, torn between the old Beaver Hill world she was in, which was decadent and low-class and with many low-lifes, and moving on to something else), or to Poitier, or to anyone, is to see someone who could try and move past just being a character actor and be a real compelling force as a star.
As mentioned, Poitier shines here right off the bat, and supporting work from the likes of Ossie Davis and McNally work very well for what's required.It's all in the script, and Mankiewicz's script is chock-full of true and spot-on (if occasionally stilted) dialog, while his direction merely props it up in simple means (often his camera wont leave a few actors on set, so we can see every little thing they'll do, or wont do, in the scene).
His brother, also wounded, lies beside him and is a fierce racist, who gets the fixed idea that the coloured doctor (Sidney Poitier in his first major film) killed his brother on purpose.
Richard Widmark is good, if maybe somewhat over-directed as the redneck criminal whose brother dies under Poitier's hand.
Richard Widmark's character, deplorable racist Ray Biddle, and his performance so raw and impressive (and physical), it reminds you of how easy it was and is for some people to be hateful about race--it's about blindness, really, to what was right in front of him.
And that was an black doctor, played by Sidney Poitier in his first film role, setting up a lifetime of roles where he played the symbolic African American that conservative white America could deal with and accept most easily.There are what seem like unavoidable moments where the issue becomes the focus outside of the plot, where it seems to almost start to preach, but amazingly, these are few and brief.
The growing importance of Linda Darnell in the plot gives it human depth, and the white doctor who is Poitier's mentor plays his role with as much subtlety as his saintly position allows.There are a number of moments where you think, no, that's not likely--turns in the story, little details.
Fortunately, there are compensations, including a full blown race riot, bravely shown with everyone having hate in their eyes, both sides.Director Joe Mankiewicz has always leaned, through these classic Hollywood years, to movies with human depth, and here he takes a chance by taking on a visible "issue" of the time, much as Stanley Kramer did with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in the 1960s.
Racist Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark) mistakenly believes that black Dr. Brooks (Sidney Poitier) killed his brother while he was actually trying to save him.
Mankiewicz you can watch it without fear, this name means finest movies, all them in high pattern, once more on a dared subject to touch, racism, he puts Poitier on fire and dangerous ground at first sigh, however after its debut launched him into stardom, Widmark portraits a perfect white man relegated by american social system where there was no place to those maladjusted people like him, came from a bad area where their fathers used to be drinking, taking foward their worst behaviors, the back people trying to survive in nearby area always on conflits with neighbours, in such context this picture took place, Mankiewicz does again almost a masterpiece with this warning message!!Resume:First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 9.
Looking back at Widmark's career, his performances are savage even by today's standards, and he perhaps never played a character so utterly vile as that of mobster Ray Biddle in Joseph L.
With racial tension across the city brewing, Brooks and Wharton visit Ray's ex-wife Edie (Linda Darnell) in the hope that she can make Ray see sense.By keeping the majority of the story within the hospital setting, Mankiewicz and co-writer Lesser Samuels (who would go on to pen the great Ace in the Hole for Billy Wilder) keep the animosity at a personal level.
There's "no way out" of the hospital, but also no way to escape the hatred in the air.Not only is this one of the great shocking films of the 1950s that deals with racism, but it marks Sidney Poitier's film debut!
This is truly a remarkable, outstanding film dealing with racism at its worst.Richard Widmark, as the racist hoodlum, delivers a walloping performance.By the way, Sidney Poitier, as the black physician who is unfortunate enough to have Widmark's brother die while being examined, is the real star of the movie.
They should have at least said and introducing Sidney Poitier as Dr. Brooks.Widmark, the epitome of racism here, is so bigoted that he will not even accept an autopsy result showing that his brother had a brain tumor.
Richard Widmark gives an outstanding performance as a race-baiting hoodlum whose target is a black doctor, played by Sidney Poitier whose performance is excellent.
Stephen McNally, Poitier's boss in the hospital, prizes the young doctor's skills and has a high opinion of him while Linda Darnell is indifferent to blacks.
No Way Out (1950) *** 1/2 (out of 4) A vile, racist criminal (Richard Widmark) is brought into a hospital where he objects to being treated by a black doctor (Sidney Poitier).
The doctor eventually begins to work on the man's brother who eventually dies and this leaves the racist thinking that the doctor killed him on purpose, which sets off a wide range of events, which leads to a race riot as well as the black doctor having to make a decision that could effect his future.
I think the film's greatest moments are early on when Poitier is trying to treat the man while not letting Widmark's insults effect him.
No Way Out however is clear in presenting the Sidney Poitier character as a central player in the drama who is able to act for himself, rather than having justice handed down to him by charitable white people.
Another menacing portrayal by Richard Widmark,another strong performance by the great actor.Although the other stars (Poitier,Darnell,McNally) are quite good,he steals every scene he is in,and the scenes in which he does not play seem weaker by comparison.
What Biddle can't forgive Brooks ,it's to be an educated man ,to have been able to become a doctor whereas he has remained a crude brute ,reading comics (so does the deaf-dumb)and still leaving in a lousy part of the town.Look at his face when Brook is examining his brother:if looks could kill,his probably would.Biddle's hatred knows no bounds and is impervious to any straight thinking.Mankiewicz's directing is not as inventive as in previous ("THe ghost and Mrs Muir" )or later ("Suddenly last summer" "sleuth" ) works,but Widmark makes it all worthwhile..
After a white criminal dies on the operating table, his bigoted brother blames the black doctor, leading to race riots in the city.
Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier) suffers a baptism of fire on his first night as a fully-fledged doctor on a hospital's prison ward when a villain gunned down during an armed robbery dies while being treated by him under the hateful gaze of the patient's racist brother Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark).
Although Brooks wasn't to blame for the patient's death, Biddle convinces himself otherwise and allows the episode to fuel his racism.Judging by the limited release this movie received in 1950, racial hatred was as much of a hot potato back then as it is today, although it's difficult to see a film which makes such unflinching use of racist language ever being made today.
While Stephen McNally's senior doctor is probably the only person who seems untouched by racist feelings - and therefore comes across as the least believable of a cast of intelligently scripted characters - he still employs a black woman as a maid, which would be seen by some as subjugation; Biddle is an out-and-out racist, although Mankiewicz and Samuels' script suggest deep-seated reasons for this prejudice that they choose not to explore too deeply.
This 1950 movie is a powerful drama which confronts the issue of racial hatred in a way which is far more direct and challenging than was typical for its time.
Linda Darnell is also good as the conflicted and confused Edie who's naively used by Ray to trigger the race riot.Whilst things have moved on a great deal since "No Way Out" was made, it still packs a punch as a potent and hard hitting snapshot of people's attitudes and the social tensions which they created in the early 1950s..
There is also some showing of black racism towards white although admittedly, the central core of the film is Richard Widmark's attitude towards Sidney Poitier.
Dr. Luther Brooks (Poitier) is an African American doctor who is assigned to treat two white trash robbers in the prison ward, brothers Johnny (Dick Paxton) and Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark).
No dice they said, thinking it was a bluff, and so a movie career was born that's lasted a half century.Complementing Poitier in his breakout role include Richard Widmark as the uber-racist Ray Biddle, and Linda Darnell as a waitress from the wrong side of the tracks trying to make a better life after escaping a stormy marriage with Johnny Biddle, who's death triggers the conflict of the story.
***SPOILERS*** Racially charged and explosive crime drama that takes place in and out of County Hospital and spills over into the surrounding area with Sidney Poitier in his first staring role as Doctor Luther Brooks who puts both his life and career on the line in the movie.
It's when Dr. Brooks and his good friend and boss at County Hospital Dr. Dan Wharton, Stephen McNally, go to see Johnny's widow Edie, Linda Darnell, for her to authorize her husbands autopsy they not only find out that she's been divorced from Johnny for over a year but like her brother in law Ray has no interested in helping Dr.Brooks because of his racial background.Richard Widnmark really wins the movies acting honors as the racist and mentally unbalanced Ray Biddle.
After a criminal (Harry Bellaver) dies in Dr Brooks' care, his low-life brother Ray Biddle (played by Richard Widmark, who can hurl racial epithets with the best of them) accuses the doctor of murder, and the incident sparks civil unrest across the city.There's a haunting sense of futility about the film.